The impetus that prompted Anglian Windows to overhaul its HR and payroll systems in 2004 was simple. If it did not replace the incumbent system PS 2000, it would not be able to pay its employees.

“The supplier was pulling the plug on our old system, so had no choice,” says group payroll manager Irene Stannard. “It was a DOS package and IT had been moaning for years that we were not moving on. Since we were going through all the hard work and expense of migrating, we looked at it as an opportunity to maximise the benefits.”

Stannard, who reports along with the HR director to group finance director Phil Tweedie, explains that Anglian has a hybrid structure for human resources. “We cover an awful lot that others would call HR. Our boundaries are very different,” she says.

The payroll team traditionally set up and administered new starters and using the new Elite HR and payroll system from Safe Computing, Stannard and her colleagues take on most of the work to administer employee records, training provision and sick pay. A separate time and attendance system is used at Anglian’s production facility.

The benefits of the updated HR/payroll system have been marked, Stannard says. “The speed of processing is fantastic, and has delivered a lot of benefits when running payroll and printing payslips. We get value from it in faster payroll processing with fewer staff and better headcount reports, so the business gets better information on changes.”

Stannard administers a highly complex staffing operation. In addition to looking after salaried and weekly waged staff, she also deals with payments to self-employed subcontractors through the accounts payable ledger of Anglian’s JD Edwards enterprise application. To produce monthly headcount reports for management, Stannard was not able to extract all the required information from Elite’s standard reports, so Cognos tools are used for this purpose. MRC, a third-party reporting system for JD Edwards, is used to compile the self-employed payment data.

Financial accountant Ros Finon worked alongside the payroll and HR team on the implementation to help generate the headcount for management, which comes out as a spreadsheet listing starters, leavers, closing headcounts and who owns them.

“One of the big benefits of the change is we can get a lot better information into Excel in a manipulative format. Reports from the previous DOS system came out on bits of paper,” Finon explains

“It’s quite quirky how we pay people. Our measurements aren’t numbers of people, but output. We have lots of part timers who do varied shifts, plus people in call centres as well as in our factory, so our measures aren’t physical numbers, but their output and the hours they work.”

In addition to the headcount reports, Anglian’s accountants get weekly cost spreadsheets that include data on hours worked, hourly rates, and amounts paid as bonuses and overtime. The employee cost data is downloaded and stored in Microsoft Access, and sliced and diced using Excel to see where people are working and how much they’re getting paid by factory, product and hourly rate.

“Anglian has always been managed on percentages,” Finon explains. “Provided the cost of doing an operation or function – which may include staff – is within a certain percentage, it’s a tick in the box, and no questions are asked. In other areas, we are very focused on productivity, so there is a mix and match in the reports we produce.”

The new style headcount report generated from the Elite payroll system represented a step away from the company’s traditional output-based reporting. This trend may continue as the company picks up and applies more modules within the organisation, Finon says.

“We see it partly as a better communication tool that can standardise the handling of contracts and inform managers when new people start. That will make life easier, but I’m not sure how you quantify that.”

Company background
Anglian Windows, Norwich
Industry: Construction products
Annual turnover: £250 million
Headcount: 6,000 – 1,500 monthly paid employees, 900 weekly paid, 2,000 canvassers, 1,000 fitters and subcontractors, plus 500 salespeople on commission
Payroll/HR system: Elite from Safe Computing