Sage Abra HRMS customers empower employees with affordable self-service technology.

In Kandahar, Afghanistan, a Contrack International engineer pauses while constructing an airfield runway. He remembers that corporate headquarters in the United States doesn’t have his wife’s new cell phone number, and wonders, “How could the company contact my wife in case of an accident?” It’s a worrisome thought, since his job takes him into areas studded with unexploded ordnance.

He logs onto Abra ESS, an Internet-based employee self-service program that links to Contrack’s central Sage Abra HRMS solution. Within seconds, he updates the phone number, then corrects the spelling of his new son’s name and double-checks his vacation schedule—all at the same time.

Around the globe, companies such as Contrack seek to empower employees with better access to real-time human resources and benefits information. At the same time, executives search for ways to increase productivity by relieving the human resources department of time-consuming paperwork and routine employee inquiries.

Employee self-service (ESS) technology addresses both needs, enabling employees and their managers to directly access benefits information, company and personal information, payroll information, and more. Employees view, create, and maintain information from work or home using a Web browser with the Internet or their company’s intranet. ESS can be used to automate procedures online, including benefits enrollment and performance reviews, with electronic forms and workflow. By minimizing the role of HR in routine tasks and requests, the department’s resources are freed-up to focus on more strategic core business initiatives.

In spite of obvious benefits to HR organizations and the employees they serve, most medium-sized businesses have been unable to afford ESS technology until recently. Existing solutions were too complex, designed and priced for large corporations with many thousands of employees.

That changed when Sage Software developed Abra Workforce Connections, an affordable, easy-to-deploy Web-based self-service system designed to meet the specific requirements of mid-sized companies. Because it is easy to use and maintain and it features modular functionality with low technical infrastructure requirements, Abra Workforce Connections is flexible enough to meet the wide range of budgets and needs of mid-sized businesses.

Complementing Sage Abra HRMS, the award-winning human resource management system (HRMS), Abra Workforce Connections connects employees and managers to business processes, and is comprised of two modules: Abra Benefits Enrollment and Abra ESS. Designed with flexibility and affordability in mind, customers can purchase Abra Benefits Enrollment separately from Abra ESS, enabling them to employ only the functionality they need, when they need it. When installed together, these fully-integrated modules form one solution. A third module, Abra eRecruiter, currently in development for release in 2006, will deliver on-line requisition and applicant workflow automation, as well as integration with web-based career centers and job boards.

"We implemented self-service technology to give our employees more access to their employment information, as well as free our HR and payroll staff from some administrative tasks so they can focus on more strategic projects," said Monica Dugan, director of human resources at SSOE, Inc. in Toledo, Ohio. "Abra Workforce Connections was a natural choice for us since we have used Abra HR and Abra Payroll for years and have a great relationship with our Sage Software business partner. Our corporate general applications trainer had positive comments about the intuitiveness and user-friendly features of Abra Workforce Connections."

Abra Workforce Connections is not only easy-to-use, it is easy to customize. A non-technical “system administrator” can define approval and notification workflows, links to documents and web sites, menus, text, logos and colors without the need for programming skills.

Based on the Microsoft .NET framework, Abra Workforce Connections provides flexibility with a high level of data security. It supports multiple database options, integrating seamlessly with the multi-database Sage Abra HRMS, and supporting Microsoft SQL Server, MSDE and Visual FoxPro databases. All user data is centralized and isolated from the application code, thus eliminating a common security weakness in web applications and preventing queries from being injected into the user data.

More important things to do than pushing paper

Most businesses have inefficient methods for making small changes to employee information or processing routine requests. Simple procedures like requesting a day off typically require an employee to fill out a paper form, submit it to his or her manager, who approves or denies it and eventually routes the request through HR. With Abra ESS, the same transaction requires only a few clicks of a mouse.

By automating routine HR workflows, the Abra ESS module provides a central online location for employees, managers, and administrators to view and manage important personal and company information, as well as process HR/payroll requests, approvals and notifications. This centralized form of communications facilitates greater data accuracy because data is entered only once and at the source. Requests receive faster approvals and employees can quickly find their own answers to routine questions concerning payroll and time off balances.

Using Abra ESS, employees can:

• View and update personal information such as contact information, marital status and dependents.
• Make changes to their W-4 forms.
• View payroll information, including paycheck details, pay history, deductions, and tax withholdings.
• Print pay stubs.
• Check for available leave balances, request time off and monitor the status of requests.
• Review benefit information, including dependents, insurance benefits, savings benefits, beneficiaries, employee premium costs, and employer contribution costs.
• Access employment history, performance reviews, skills and training experience.

Abra ESS offers companies dramatic time savings and efficiency gains. By pushing routine inquiries, requests, and approvals out to the workforce, Abra ESS eliminates a large volume of paperwork, allowing companies to re-allocate 30% or more of HR administrative bandwidth to higher priority activities.

“Abra ESS assists HR in delivering a more personalized service experience, helping employees to achieve their individual goals,” said Jackie Young, vice president of staffing and organizational development at AAA Southern New England. “Employees go to Abra ESS to check on vacation time, benefits, and training. They like it because they get instant answers, even if they’re on a night shift when HR is closed.”

Taking the dread out of benefits open enrollment

One of the most time-consuming tasks for the human resources department each year is open enrollment for employee benefits. Surveys show that employees are greatly concerned about their benefits, so administrators brace each year for a deluge of questions from employees when the open enrollment period opens. With the cost of healthcare escalating for nearly a decade, companies are anxious to reduce expenses wherever possible.

Abra Benefits Enrollment enables companies to securely conduct the employee benefits enrollment process via the Internet or a corporate intranet. Employees make their benefit elections online and receive instant access to all of the benefit information they need to make decisions, resulting in a dramatic decrease in inquiries to the human resources department. Employees can also review the benefits they selected at any time and enjoy increased feelings of confidence and control over their benefits.

Using self-service technology to facilitate benefits open enrollment presents a number of advantages for the company. Employee morale and satisfaction with benefits packages improves and the human resources staff saves time by eliminating the need to distribute and collect paper forms. For companies that operate in multiple locations, Abra Benefits Enrollment can speed open enrollment by centralizing the process via the Web.

Repps Galusha, director of IT for Wackenhut Services, Inc. in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., a Sage Abra HRMS customer since 1994, says, “Abra Benefits Enrollment helps us streamline the open enrollment process for our dispersed workforce of approximately 3,500 employees spread across 22 states. The Web-based solution essentially closes the loop, allowing our central HR staff to handle benefit plan changes systemically and timely, with minimal errors. A link we created takes enrollment information right from Abra and sends it to each insurance carrier. A more efficient system benefits both our employees and HR administrators."

Abra Benefits Enrollment reduces the overall cost of open enrollment by reducing billing errors, eliminating postage, paper and printing expenses, and shortening the open enrollment cycle. With affordable pricing and low technical infrastructure requirements, Abra Benefits Enrollment provides an attractive return on investment (ROI) for customers.

“Without Abra Benefits Enrollment, our HR department would require two or more additional people to handle the workload,” says Amy Burnham, HRIS manager at Nashville, Tennessee-based Asurion, a specialty insurance provider to the wireless telecommunications industry. “The benefits group went from a five- or ten-minute benefits data entry and review process per employee, to about one minute per employee and no data entry.”

Using Abra Benefits Enrollment, employees at Asurion have year-round access to their benefits information and can quickly and easily update their dependant, beneficiary, marital status, and other information whenever changes occur. Burnham adds, “With the life events management feature, new hires and employees experiencing a qualifying event can change their dependents, beneficiaries, and marital status at any time throughout the year. Abra Benefits Enrollment helped us eliminate day-to-day benefits administration maintenance, allowing the benefits team to focus on strategic initiatives.”

Around the world or down the hall, employees connect instantly with Abra Workforce Connections

Sage Abra HRMS customers eagerly embraced the introduction of Abra ESS and Abra Benefits Enrollment in September, 2004. To date, the solutions have been adopted by over 340 companies. More than 225,000 individual users access the solutions, including the 1,000-plus employees at Contrack International, from the company’s Virginia headquarters to the engineers in Kandahar and around the globe.

Less than a year ago, accessing and changing personal information or requesting vacation time would have taken days for Contrack International employees halfway around the world. “We recorded everything on papers stored in filing cabinets—astonishing for a company this size—and were tearing our hair out,” says Robert Rathbun, Contrack’s human resources director. “We couldn’t even answer the simplest questions, like how many people we had that day in Qatar or Egypt. My first priority when hired was to find an automated system flexible enough to serve our people overseas and robust enough to provide meaningful reports at home.”

“Before, if we received a request to verify employment status, we spent 45 minutes plowing through files,” explains Rathburn. “Now we have an answer in a minute or two. It’s the same with checking invoices, finding the number of employees on a given plan, or locating an employee’s beneficiaries.”

As a result of introducing employee self-service through Abra Workforce Connections, Contrack currently enjoys a 95% reduction in the time it takes to perform many routine HR and benefits tasks. All employees have real-time access to HR data and can easily track benefits, assignments and other routine requests.

“Employees have a hard time calling us from different countries, assuming they can even get a phone to work,” Rathbun adds, “Mail can be slow and unreliable, but Internet is typically available. The Abra Alerts module sends an e-mail reminder when it’s time to re-enroll for benefits. Using the Abra Benefits Enrollment and Abra ESS modules, employees select their insurance plan online. Our people really appreciate being able to go to a Web site to take care of HR matters themselves, regardless of where they are.”