Metropolitan Life projects it will reduce its payroll running costs by 15% over a two-year period following the implementation of the UniQue HR administration tool from Q Data DynamiQue (QDD).
Rian du Toit, Metropolitan Life human resources manager, says his department previously operated its payroll on QDD`s mainframe-based QPAC system, alongside HurQles. The replacement UniQue runs on Windows NT. QDD Western Cape divisional manager Delene Smith says the move was made to streamline Metropolitan Life`s business. In addition, mainframe staff are hard to come by and processing resources are significantly more expensive than on PCs.
"There are a lot more PC professionals around, and many more staff can use PCs than mainframes," Smith says. "As far as maintenance is concerned, the new set-up is more efficient and cost-effective."
Du Toit says the reasons behind the conversion were threefold:
* The most important driver was the updates for HurQles were due to cease at the beginning of this year, so the company had no option but to move to another application.
* Metropolitan had acquired Commercial Union and Banknet, which were both working on UniQue. "We gained first-hand experience of the benefits of UniQue relative to HurQles," says Du Toit.
* The company has had a long relationship with QDD, which supplies and supports all the applications.
Du Toit says the new system "reduces running costs by a projected 15% over two years. That is a good return on investment."
Following implementation, Metropolitan has improved flexibility in its data and increased availability of information to its clients, who are line managers and divisional heads. This is achieved through the decentralised HR modules.
"We also decentralised our Namibian payroll," says Du Toit. "We do not have a mainframe in Namibia, so UniQue was a good option." The Namibian branch was previously dependent on the South African region to do its payroll, which is not in line with Namibian legislation.
Smith says: "The new system gives Metropolitan Life far more control. Before the company depended on its IT department. Now it has ownership of the direction it wants to take and when and how it processes its data."
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