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Univ. of Wisconsin's 30-Year-Old Payroll System Needs a $40 Million Fix
jaroslav writes "The University of Wisconsin is attempting to update a payroll system they have had in place since 1975, but spent $28.4 million in a 2004 attempt with no results, and now is experiencing new overruns in cost and time after 'not hav[ing] the full picture of how complex this project would be.' The current estimate of the redesign is $12 million and years of further work on top of the money already spent."
Extraction of business rules from legacy (probably COBAL) system.
Farm it out to other universities or India.
(Cost: maybe $1 million) Basic requirements and documentation finalized
Phase 2
Take the rules and implement the entire system into a PostgreSQL database Java middle-tier to Java AND web-based interface. Revise documentation.
(Cost: another million)
Phase 3
User acceptance and testing. and go live.
(Cost: 1-2 million)
Profit Finally, hold the remaining funds as a "maintenance fee" and use the interest to cover ongoing support
There are numerous controls and nuances (with-holdings, taxes at the national/state/local levels, 401k, etc) needed for a payroll system to work properly. I guess the real question here is, why did they attempt to develop one in house as opposed to going external. For that kind of money, I'm sure they could have just gotten ADP to do their payroll for a few years, or even got a licensing agreement with Peoplesoft.
Being a graduate of Madcity, I can tell you that they produce some of the best programmers in the world.
"Guess what, ladies and gentlemen? This year's Comp Sci project is writing a payroll system..."
They could teach a 4 year Comp Sci program around it. Planning, implementation, support, and future growth.
Screw paying for it - utilize your existing resources!!!
Then again, with our current dumbf*ck Govenor... At least he's not going to make license plates like Illinois past governors...
no, people soft should NEVER be used. I've been at two universities which implemented it. both times were an unmitigated disaster and people including myself did not receive my paycheck for over a month. Peoplesoft and their engineers suck in every sense of the word and should NEVER be used.
$1 Trillion in new health coverage for 43 million uninsured is not a problem because we spent that much in Iraq.
That $1 trillion is over 10 years. Making it about a quarter as much as we spent on the military during peace time under a Democrat. Which is weird since it seems easier to kill than to heal.
The University of Wisconsin is a state-funded school, and as such is essentially a branch of government. When you are told that massive increases in government spending are necessary investments in the future of America, keep in mind that this is the kind of return which you will receive on that investment.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
You still need the ERP. It's not like you get together a box with all of the goofy union contracts and agreements, court-ordered judgements, and byzantine business rules, fedex it to ADP, and magically get your paychecks to come out the other end.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Yeah, I'm involved in a small gov't - and the cruft that accretes over time is incredible. We have nearly as many employee classifications as employees. (that means nearly every employee has his/her own job description and responsibilities and pay scale.)
We have union contracts. Several different ones, with different benefits. We have different health care benefits, retirement benefits, and so on. In some cases, we have a single employee who has a particular health plan and retirement plan, and they're grandfathered in, so we can't change them.
It's not just a matter of paying all the different taxes; it's that you have to understand all of the classifications, grandfather clauses, pay scales, benefits, and so on. I would guess that for UM, you multiply this by 10 or 20 and you see what you're dealing with.
The *only* way this can be done is to reclassify all your employees into some sort of structure that makes sense; this will invariably be shot down by the union as some members will see an erosion of benefits.
So most organizations will outsource this, blame it all on the consultant, take it to council/board of trustees/etc, and then run like hell from the fallout.
not to mention INTERNAL company payroll needs
I bet you've identified the key problem right here. Instead of a set scale of pay grades I bet there is an maze of different salary and hourly rates that no one can figure out. I further bet that if the school administration first spent 6 months coming up with a streamlined pay scale system and pigeonholed all the employees into it, the new payroll system would be a LOT easier to set up and maintain.
so a big chunk of costs will go to the consultant
It will, and there's where they made the mistake. They purchased an Oracle product for big bucks and tried to get the lowest bidder to customize it. As a result, instead of spending small bucks they wasted big bucks. It would be humming along by now if they'd had Oracle send people to set it all up but that would have cost big bucks up front.
No kidding. I've worked at companies with 50 employees, and companies with a quarter-million employees - and they both use Paychex. Never had an issue. Why do people try to reinvent the wheel? As soon as they forget to take into account Texas' finance law, Sec 481.32(a)(9)(c) article II paragraph 3 or some other random crap, they're out the entire cost of the system all over again in penalties, lawsuits, etc.
And what happens 30 years from now? They're going to shell out $40 billion to start over again?
Has there ever been a Peoplesoft implementation that wasn't a very expensive fuckup? I've certainly never heard of one. The only thing that amazes me about this pathetic excuse for software is that the scam lasted as long as it did before Oracle mercifully put them out of their misery.
I bet a group of enthusiatic CS/IT students with programming skills and maybe one teacher with real life experience can build and/or fix this in 4 months. Give them the tools, have them prepare by giving them access to all personell doing payroll stuff and familiar with the process of payroll and pay them a good salary plus a bonus if they finish it before next winter-semester is over. Give them option to do their thesis or degree paper on the project. Add in a few law students if complicated German-style tax stuff is involved for some extra interdisciplinary flavour and results.
Voila! Top-of-the-line payroll system for something like 100 000$. ... And, sadly, I also bet that that won't happen, because then someone would have to admit that he burned 20+ Million on a project that was implemented start to finish with less than a tenth the money. Sometimes the sad and sorry state of our profession in some places makes me want to cry.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I really can't believe this story. I wrote a integrated Payroll/HR application in 2 years (plus received a US patent for part of it) myself for a major steel corporation in the early 1990's using Clipper! It did all timecard entry, had user-defined union rules, and tax rules. It did taxes for US & Canada plus 21 states. All user defined and maintainable. Printed laser MICR-checks, W2's, direct deposit, retirement and pension calcs, etc. etc. etc. It was used for 15 years until the company was bought out. How fraking stupid are these people? As a side note. You have NEVER felt pressure as when 2000+ United Steel Worker checks are wrong and you don't know why! (It was (L)user error)