Memorandum

City of Lawrence

 

TO:

David L. Corliss, City Manager

 

FROM:

Jonathan Douglass, Assistant to the City Manager

James Wisdom, Director of Information Systems

Lori Carnahan, Human Resources Manager

Marlo Cohen, Human Resources Management Analyst

Jennifer Pereira Personnel Specialist

 

CC:

Alan Landis, Purchasing Specialist

 

DATE:

July 12, 2010

 

RE:

Recommendation to Purchase Time & Attendance System

 

 

In 2009, staff from the City Manager’s Office, Human Resources Division and Information Systems Department issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for an electronic time and attendance system. The RFP was distributed to fourteen Human Resources Software vendors and seven proposals were received.  The proposals varied greatly on their approaches, as some were installed on-site, while others were more of a “Software as a Service” (SaaS) model where you lease the software year-to-year.  A summary of the projected first year costs and five year costs are summarized below:

 

Vendor

Projected

Projected

Name

1st Year Costs

5-Yr Costs

 

 

 

ADP

$207,950

$443,150

CyberShift

$245,580

$303,900

ExecuTime

  $72,544

  $95,244

Kronos

$144,004

$202,924

Novatime

$192,920

$214,760

PDSI

$294,000

$427,760

Stromberg

$138,115

$169,333

 

The proposals from ExecuTime Software and KRONOS Inc. best met the RFP’s minimum specifications.  After viewing a demonstration of each company’s software and checking each company’s references, staff recommends the purchase of ExecuTime Software Time and Attendance System for the following reasons:

 

·         ExecuTime meets the RFP’s minimum specifications

·         ExecuTime had the lowest proposed costs among all vendors.

·         ExecuTime received very positive feedback from their references, including clients who switched from KRONOS to ExecuTime

·         ExecuTime has agreed to integrate their software with Innoprise’s Human Resources and Payroll Software at no additional costs

 

 

Costs Review

Included in Attachment “A” is a cost analysis comparing the final two vendors, ExecuTime and KRONOS.  The first page covers the estimated costs to meet the minimum requirements for the City of Lawrence for the software, implementation, training, file server, and server and database software licenses. The estimated costs do not include the cost of time clocks that may be recommended for some facilities with many employees. There are a variety of time clocks available and staff would work with each facility to determine the solution that would best meet their needs. The cost for time clock options for ExecuTime are listed on the bottom of the second page of the cost analysis. KRONOS offered one model of time clock, and that cost is listed under the KRONOS options on the second page. The entry level costs, not including time clocks, for ExecuTime and KRONOS are, respectively, $77,994 and $144,004 with the SunGard interface.  Since the SunGard interface is no longer required, the costs for ExecuTime and KRONOS are, respectively $72,544 and $115,924.  Future annual maintenance costs for ExecuTime and KRONOS are, respectively, $5,675 and $14,730. 

 

Both ExecuTime and KRONOS quoted servers and Microsoft Server and SQL licenses, but staff is proposing that the hardware and Microsoft Software be purchased via the State of Kansas contracts.  Attachment “A” also includes the recommended server purchase from Microtech Computers, and Microsoft Software licenses from Software House International in the costs summary.

 

There was significant disparity in quoted prices for a time and attendance system that is designed for enterprise class software systems.  Many of ExecuTime’s competitors are large corporations that spend large amounts of money for advertising, trade shows, conferences, and similar forms of expensive marketing.  ExecuTime chooses to partner directly with other Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and payroll software companies that already have large market shares and sales staffs that are looking for a time and attendance solution that is both cost effective and reliable for their existing and potential customers.  ExecuTime has payroll system interfaces for software products such as ACS, ADP, Caselle,  InfiniTec, INFOR, Innovative Software, J.D. Edwards, KVS, ManaTron, NetData, PayChex, PeopleSoft, PDSI, Sage Software, SunGard Public Sector, Tyler Software, Ultimate Software, and many others.  ExecuTime is already laying the ground work for integrating with the Innoprise Software the City of Lawrence is moving to as the City of McKinney, Texas, an existing ExecuTime customer, is also moving to the Innoprise Software System.  ExecuTime is a privately owned company with twenty-five employees that benefits from these partnerships sending them referrals.  ExecuTime provided excellent references allowing us to be confident in this recommendation.      

 

 

Implementation Recommendations 

·         Staff strongly recommends that all departments implement the electronic time and attendance system and move completely away from the current paper based system. This will streamline citywide payroll processes and allow the city to realize a greater return on this investment. When staff called references for the top vendors, the cities that had not put all departments on the system reported that they were not able to maximize the benefits of their electronic time and attendance systems.

·         The vendor’s project manager and the City’s HR/Payroll and Information Systems staffs will work with individual departments to determine the best method for capturing time.  It is expected that in some cases time clocks may be recommended for facilities with a significant number of employees.  In general, many employees will be able to clock in and out from their desktop PC, or a designated time-clock PC for a building.  In cases where a PC is used for many employees, existing spare PC’s will be setup for that purpose as the desktop requirements are minimal since the software uses a browser interface. 

·         One of the considerations will be whether exempt employees should be required to clock in and out using the time and attendance system. While exempt employees cannot be paid according to hours worked, it is acceptable under the Fair Labor Standards Act to track their hours. There may be value to knowing how many hours exempt employees are working in order to manage workloads and staffing. If exempt employees are required to clock in and out, the city will have to draft policies on what activities should be considered work, especially for situations when employees work from home or other locations away from the office.  

·         Staff recommends discussing and drafting policies for non-exempt employees regarding when they are required to clock in and out in situations like breaks (smoke, lunch, etc.), and how to handle non-traditional work situations, such as part-time and seasonal staff in Parks and Recreation that work from ball fields and other facilities and are paid by units (such as a games umpired) rather than hours.  ExecuTime has worked with many other cities that deal with many of the same situations as the City of Lawrence and we will be working with their project manager to realize best practices and methods for the City of Lawrence.

·         There are several security concerns about permitting employees who perform work at home, such as exempt employees, to be able to clock in/out. The recommended process would be to limit the access to the payroll system to those with internal network access to the City’s network or approved access via the City’s virtual private network (VPN) connection.

·         Staff realizes that there are many issues and procedures to be worked on for all employees paid via the payroll system to be able to use the Time and Attendance software, as some employees are called out during the middle of the night may not report to a city facility before beginning work.  There will be situations where the time entry may have to wait until the next day and have the designated payroll specialist for their department to enter their time worked manually. Some of these concerns will require some experimenting and testing by our staff to develop the processes as the project proceeds, but these concerns should not stop the purchase and implementation of an electronic time and attendance system since the majority of the City employees do not work from home.

·         ExecuTime states that once the purchase has been approved, the project implementer assigned to the City of Lawrence is ready to begin work with our departments and staff almost immediately and will begin the process of configuring the ExecuTime system to work with the City’s payroll rules and processes. 

·         When the RFP was originally issued it was planned to implement ExecuTime with SunGard’s H.T.E. Public Sector Payroll system, but the City is currently moving to Innoprise’s HR/Payroll System and we feel it prudent to go ahead and install the ExecuTime Time and Attendance Software and have it functioning and ready so that when the Innoprise HR/Payroll System is installed the time and attendance system will already be ready to be integrated.  Again, both Innoprise and ExecuTime have included interfacing with each other’s software at no additional costs to the City of Lawrence.

·         The automatic integration process with Innoprise’s HR/Payroll will be delayed until the Innoprise project is ready to go live.  Staff members from several departments have been working on the questionnaire for the HR/Payroll system and it is expected to be sent to Innoprise within the week.  In the interim, Information Systems and Finance have a plan on how to work with the data collected by the ExecuTime system until the Innorpise HR/Payroll systems are ready.

·         ExecuTime advises that the majority of implementations begin with the Information Systems, Finance, and Human Resources offices since they are the most familiar with the inner workings of the payroll procedures. After a pay period or two has passed with the first groups, then other departments or buildings are added regularly until all have been completed.

 

Summary

The City currently has an outdated process for collecting and entering work time for the employees of the City, and implementing the ExecuTime Time and Attendance system will go a long way in improving many inefficiencies.  While there are implementation issues to work through it has become obvious that many departments and employees understand the needs and are looking forward to a better process, while others have negative feelings about using technology to monitor time and attendance.   

 

Action Request:

Authorize staff to negotiate a contract with ExecuTime for implementation of a time and attendance payroll software system.  Funding for this project would be from Reserve Funds, Costs estimates are:

 

ExecuTime Software

$59,500 (ExecuTime Software and Services)

Microtech Computers

$2,219 (File Server)

Software House International

$10,825 (Microsoft Licenses)

TOTAL:

$72,544