A leading South African pharmaceutical company continues to reap the benefits of its 2011 decision to replace the organisation’s existing payroll system with Remunerate, the payroll component of CRS Technologies’ Engage™ human resources and payroll software suite.

The company decided to move to Remunerate because the payroll system it was using at the time was significantly limited in its functionality. For example, earning and deductions codes were difficult to configure and update, which resulted in inaccurate data.

Another major pain point was the generation of reports, which form a crucial component of the organisation’s business operations. To produce the reports needed, supplementary report writing applications had to be added to the existing payroll solution. This was not only extremely cumbersome, but also difficult for the company to manage.

The decision to implement the payroll and leave modules of the CRS Remunerate solution followed a thorough due diligence on various South African payroll vendors.

The pharmaceutical company wanted a system that could be run from a bureau within South Africa. It had to be flexible and user-friendly, while integrating seamlessly with existing business systems. According to the company, Remunerate met all these requirements, and more.

“Not only was the system easy to configure, but creating reports was a breeze. Besides a comprehensive lists of standard reports that can be produced, the CRS payroll solution comes with a report writing tool with which we are able to write custom reports that comply with international corporate compliance requirements.

“Additionally, the leave module enables all aspects of leave to be controlled within the organisation. It incorporates DIY, an internet-based application that enables transactions to be performed interactively.”

A collaborative partnership

The company says that the level of support received from CRS throughout the organisations’ eleven-year relationship has been remarkable.

“As our organisation has grown over the years, so has the complexity of our payroll data and CRS has kept pace with this. The development team is top-notch and does not hesitate to go the extra mile when the situation calls for it. Whatever we ask them to do always gets done and it always works.

“When technical issues arise, these are logged through a ticketing tool and are responded to – and resolved – quickly, expertly and cost-effectively.”

Our association with this client has evolved from being a vendor-client relationship to that of a collaborative partnership, says CRS General Manager Ian McAlister.

“When a new business objective is identified, the client’s team help us understand exactly what their requirements are from a payroll perspective and from there we consult collaboratively to come up with the best solution to meet these requirements. Thereafter we go forward as a team and make it happen.”

Extending the footprint

In 2016, the pharmaceutical company implemented Workday human resource management software globally across the organisation, following which the integration with Remunerate was executed seamlessly.

“This, together with the exceptional performance and support we continued to receive from CRS led to the decision to also bring our international markets on to the Remunerate platform.”

The way forward

In the meantime, CRS’s Engage™ suite had been undergoing several enhancements of its own. “The suite continues to deliver the same reliable and robust functionality, but now through myWorkday, a web-based employee self-service system that enables employees to interact quickly and easily with all the human capital solutions in the organisation, from any location, on any device,” explains McAlister.

CRS is currently migrating the pharmaceutical company to its hosted infrastructure and myWorkday, and is bullish about the value this will bring to the organisation.

“CRS has been integral in enabling us to automate our payroll processes and simplify and improve reporting, which has significantly enhanced efficiencies in the organisation.

“Now, the self-service functionality offered by myWorkday will empower our employees to resolve their payroll queries themselves, instead of having to log a ticket on our internal platform and wait for someone from the payroll team to get back to them.

“This will free up time for our payroll team to actually do the work of payroll and further improve productivity in the organisation.”

Exciting times lie ahead for this pharmaceutical company, McAlister concludes. “The rollout of myWorkday essentially gives their employees a ‘voice’ by enabling them to have control over their employment information. This will further enhance the positive work culture that already exists within the organisation. CRS is delighted to be part of this experience.”

For more information, go to: https://www.crs.co.za/payroll-software/