A new Web interface for the human resource module of the Banner software system is expected to make it easier for users to execute and track HR transactions as well as enhance data integrity, improve user satisfaction and reduce operating costs. The system will be used at all three campuses.
Known as HR Front End, the interface was developed to resolve some issues that arose with the implementation of the Sungard Banner Enterprise Resource Planning system in December 2003, which included increased workload for HR transaction processors and significantly longer end-to-end processing times.
At the recommendation of the HR/Pay Advisory Group, a task force was formed to examine how Banner was being used and if improvements were needed. The task force recommended developing a Web-based interface.
The HRFE contains modules for processing most of the key HR events that occur during an employee’s career with the university, from being hired through separation. Users can add jobs, end jobs, change labor distribution, enter reappointments and maintain data. The application also offers users a “whole-person” view of an employee’s information, enhanced record-search capabilities, and complete audit trail and transaction histories that enable users to see what data have been changed and by whom.
Previously, the Urbana campus had entered transactions through a paper checklist process, which made it difficult to determine where a transaction was in the pipeline and what its status was, said Matthew Helm, visiting project director in University Administration and the HRFE functional project team leader. “With this system, you can look and see the status of a transaction at any time, where it’s going to go next and whether it’s been applied to Banner.”
More than 150 Banner HR/Pay users from all levels of the university community offered feedback about HRFE’s functionality during its development. The extensive user-input process included 39 sessions with the user community, an online survey that gathered feedback from 213 participants, 17 sessions with business teams, and nine sessions of focus groups that comprised 98 users.
“A key thing about this project is that we have had a cooperative effort with the campuses, and there have been focus groups and testing groups composed of users throughout the project,” Helm said. “We went through a long user-acceptance testing process that lasted several months, which allowed us to get direct feedback from the people who would actually be using the system in production. We did an iterative approach where we coded the application, took it to the users for testing, they would give us feedback, we would make changes and give it back to them to test again.”
Much of the user feedback centered on business processes, such as rules that should be enforced and common errors made during HR transactions that the application should capture, such as entering civil service data for an academic professional employee. Users also had insights that helped the design team customize the routing and security functions for different university units based upon organization, transaction type and user role, Helm said.
Other enhancements include flexible inboxes and outboxes that help processors manage their workloads, transaction wizards that guide processors through complex transactions such as new hires and separations, and the ability to attach documents to transactions and to route transactions through standard, custom and data-driven routes. The system also extensively uses default values to speed data entry.
“There are a lot of different edits that we’ve put in that make it a lot easier for people to input transactions and get good data into Banner,” Helm said.
The HRFE is being rolled out at the Urbana and Chicago campuses to a few colleges or units at a time; the rollout phase should be concluded by the end of June. However, the team continues to make modifications as it encounters errors or situations that it didn’t anticipate during the design and testing phases.
The HRFE project, which is jointly managed by Administrative Information Technology Systems and University Human Resources, is overseen by a group comprising university vice presidents, associate vice presidents and the campus provosts. The project began in December 2004 with a budget of $4.7 million.
