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KZN Treasury saves time and money with K2 leave management system


Johannesburg, 18 Feb 2015

Location: South Africa.
Industry: Government.
Company profile: KZN Treasury is responsible for the budget for all government entities, policies and procedures within the province.
Software: K2 blackpearl, Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2.
Solution: Leave management.
Users: 450.
Benefits: Application process cut from 15 to 60 days to as quickly as 15 minutes.

Leave statistics and trends are available to management - issues can be attended to immediately and proactively.

Fact sheet
Solution: ITRelated Leave Management Solution
Industry: Government
Provider: K2
User: KZN Treasury

Web-enabled access to leave system, developed on department intranet.

No loss of leave forms.

Problem

KZN Treasury has been in the process of investigating and re-engineering all its human resource (HR) processes. The immediate need emanated from the problems experienced with managing leave and the financial loss from issues stemming from the lack of processes.

Previously, leave forms were submitted and often times not reach HR for capture onto Persal (a transversal government payroll and HR system). Many employees would take leave without completing leave application forms, and leave forms were often mislaid or lost in the process of being sent to HR.

KZN Treasury was also unable to accurately record partial hours, and there was a lack of accountability by both staff and supervisors.

Solution

KZN Treasury had identified it had numerous processes they wanted to manage. It felt a need to introduce business process management (BPM) into the environment.

K2 was recommended to be the best BPM platform for the Department of Treasury. The department adopted the recommendations and acquired the software.

K2 partner ITRelated's Leave Management Solution is designed specifically for government entities and is compliant with the DPSA's leave policies and regulations for government. It is also aligned to the Department of Treasury's business rules. The implementation of this solution will ensure that your department will have cost and business benefits.

As a standard, this role-based solution encompasses service level agreements (SLAs) on all activities, ensuring that everything will be done within the desired time-frames and if not, escalations to management will be enforced.

This leave management solution is Web-based, real-time, event-driven, scalable, inter-operable and flexible and built on tried, tested and reliable technologies and platforms. The solution uses a relational database (MSSQL) and will be compatible to government' department's current and future information and communication technology environment. It is based on the Microsoft dotNet platform and will be able to work on a Novell, Microsoft and Linux operating systems. It will also include e-mail (Novell Groupwise or Microsoft Exchange) and short message services (sms) technology integration.

"The automated leave system will definitely mitigate against the risk of overstated leave pay-outs on termination as a result of full leave credits or incorrect leave credits appearing on the Persal system due to non-submission of leave forms to HR," said Kogie Chetty, Head of HR at KZN Treasury. "While the possibility may still exist that some officials will still not apply for leave despite the automation, the fact that the application process is now a mere press of a button may encourage those to apply considering there is no paper work involved."

Since the process and the leave form are almost like KZN Treasury's manual one, there was no need for extensive change management. Users took to it very easily. Also, all the intellectual property regarding leave rules are embedded in the process and users were not allowed to fill the form transgressing the rules. In the manual process, the leave form had to be sent all the way through the process to HR and then only errors were picked up. The applicant, in this case, would have had to start the process again. In the new process, the applicant is kept informed immediately once his leave has been rejected or approved.

The application process, on an average, takes between 15 to 60 days and some can sit on desks for a year. With the automated process, the process can take 15 minutes to a maximum of six days with the SLAs and the escalations built in. Leave records are adjusted and there is no loss of revenue as a result.

Chetty stated: "The system is completely user-friendly and, with the extensive training sessions embarked upon prior to going live, users have been applying, recommending and approving with ease."

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Editorial contacts

Samantha Morris
K2
(+27) 11 675 1175