Costly HR project fails to deliver

The Office of the City Auditor of Portland in Oregon, US, published a report regarding an originally planned $14 million, 14-month implementation SAP Financial and HR and payroll system project that ended up costing the city some $47 million and taking 30-months instead, says IEEE Spectrum.

In addition to being late and over-budget, the audit report also stated that when completed, the delivered system did not have all the functionality originally promised nor did the city eliminate nearly as many of the 200 identified shadow financial and HR/payroll-related IT systems as expected. Their elimination was touted as being one of the major benefits of (and justifications for) the new system.

The main reasons the auditors gave for the problems centred on poor project planning and inadequate leadership on the part of the City of Portland's executive management from the beginning of the project.

CheckPoint HR, a provider of Web-based human resources management tools for small to medium-sized companies, has debuted its channel partner programme, says PRWeb.

The CheckPoint HR Channel Programme was designed to provide partners with the ability to offer an integrated technology solution to reduce health care and administrative costs, increase efficiencies and streamline operations.

"SMEs are demanding an integrated technology solution to manage HR, benefits and payroll to streamline processes and enable employee self-service via the Web," explains Michael Gavlick, vice-president and director of sales at CheckPoint HR.

Laird Technologies unified employee information for 13 000 multinational employees with UltiPro, states Financial Tech Spotlight.

The HR and payroll processes have also been consolidated for 600 US-based employees. The company has also reduced administrative staff after activating UltiPro in 2009. An announcement in this regard has been made by the top provider of unified human capital management software-as-a-service solutions for global businesses, Ultimate Software.

Laird Technologies is a top company in customised performance-critical components and systems for advanced electronics and wireless products.