The British Computer Society Case Study - The Chartered Institute For IT Professionals With Over 60,000 Members Worldwide Use ASR’s HR Software To Make Considerable Cost Savings Across The Organisation

Valued Customer

The Chartered Institute for IT professionals, the British Computer Society (BCS) has been using ASR’s HR software solution for over four years and is very happy with its choice of system.

Established in 1957, BCS is the leading body for those working in IT. With a world-wide membership approaching 60,000 members in over 100 countries, BCS is the qualifying body for Chartered IT Professionals (CITP). Based in Swindon, Wiltshire, the BCS has grown by nearly 20% in the last year, employing around 220 employees, supported by an HR function of three.

BCS, a registered charity, was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1984. It’s objectives are to promote the study and practice of computing and to advance knowledge of and education in IT for the benefit of the public.

BCS Setting IT Standards

BCS enables individuals, organizations and society to realise the potential and maximise the benefits of IT by:

• Setting and maintaining the highest professional standards for IT professionals including initiating and informing debate on strategic IT issues with Government, Industry, and Academia
• Advising the UK Government and its agencies on IT-related matters regarding proposed legislation
• Representing the profession on issues of importance and liaising with other professional bodies, including other engineering institutions and overseas societies
• Examining and initiating debate on topical IT issues, most recently through the BCS programme of Thought Leadership debates
• Supporting individuals in their career development
• Providing opportunities for networking through the activities of the Branch and Group networks and the Forums.

Experienced Decision Maker

BCS’s Head of HR, Elaine Huntingdon was the key mover behind the introduction of a new HR software system.

Elaine has extensive experience of the worlds of business and technology. Although she first started her career in the education sector she felt that her strong inter-personal skills, drive and ambition were best suited in business. Elaine has worked as a management consultant  and then moved into operational management before taking on a role with a software house; working there for over nine years in a variety of roles, including HRM. It was here that Elaine’s IT knowledge developed considerably, managing implementations and training and the company’s IT support desk.

Elaine joined  BCS in 2002, as Head of HR and at the time, with only 120 employees there was no HR software. However, with Elaine’s previous business and IT experience she understood the benefits of introducing an HR software solution. David Clarke, CEO, joined BCS shortly after Elaine with a clear vision of growing the Society. David was therefore fully supportive of Elaine’s intention to implement an HRIS to support this goal and gave her the go-ahead to identify an HR system which would meet her needs and fit into the organisation’s business plan. One of Elaine’s biggest challenges was to source a system that would provide BCS, a registered charity, value for money.

Elaine short-listed three suppliers to demonstrate their HR software solution at the BCS’s HQ in Swindon. Of the three, ASR’s product stood out in terms of its flexibility and ease of use and Elaine decided to select ASR to provide a second demonstration. A representative from the BCS’s IT department was also in attendance to ensure that ASR’s HR software system would fit with the internal IT infrastructure.

Speak With Suppliers Customers

Elaine comments: “I firmly believe that any software sales demonstration will only tell you so much; the best way to gain a true understanding of the software is to speak to existing users.  It also helps to see the software operating in a live environment; you should soon see if the software delivers what it promises.”

“I received good references from ASR’s existing customers which supported my own view that as a solution to our need, ASR stood out from the others. I liked the flexibility in creating new fields and screens without having to go back to the supplier for help.  This facility to create bespoke screens ourselves has represented a real cost saving.  Four years down the line and I am certainly not disappointed with the decision I made.” BCS chose ASR’s HR Software solution – HR Professional.

Nicola Brogden, HR Adviser joined the BCS just after the decision had been made to purchase ASR’s HR system. Nicola had had previous experience of implementing a payroll software system in a previous role and therefore had an idea of the things that might go wrong.

The Implementation

The HR Professional implementation however, was very straight forward and no data migration was required. Nicola comments: “We managed to populate basic details from the employee data held on our Payroll bureau system. We then configured a report from ASR’s HR software which included the blank fields that we wanted to populate, and used this as a form/input document to be completed by each employee.  This form was constructed in such a way that the data fields were in the same order as the cursor movements on screen, which greatly sped up the data input process.” 

Nicola was also involved in the design work to automate an export from ASR’s HR software to the BCS’s payroll bureau. Nicola and one of ASR’s consultants designed the screens to support this process. The need to duplicate work previously necessary to compile payroll data has been eradicated, saving invaluable time.

Stability is a Must

Elaine said that “The solution has been extremely stable and in the past four years we have not experienced any problems. We also took advantage of the additional functionality offered in V3 and the upgrade happened very smoothly. The changes that we had made in previous versions were immediately available in V3, so there was no need for any additional consultancy or associated cost.”

Nicola uses ASR’s HR Software to cover the whole life cycle of the employee including dealing with applicants, the interview process, adding new starters, running mail merges and reports.

Introducing Self-service

Before rolling out ASR’s self-service software, BCS piloted it with one of their divisions in September 2005 before roll out to the whole organisation, division by division, by the end of 2005.  As part of the self-service implementation ASR’s Training Manager ran multiple seminars at BCS’s HQ making all line managers aware of the functionality available and how to use it.

Since the roll out of ASR’s e-HR software the BCS’s employees can book holidays, check holiday balances online and change or amend personal details e.g. bank details. Elaine says “It is essential that we pick up all those changes made within any payroll period to ensure that data sent to the bureau is correct - for obvious reasons!”

Real Benefits Achieved

Elaine says that the introduction of ASR’s e-HR software: “has made savings across the organisation e.g. there has been a considerable reduction in the amount of internal post to and from the HR Department – there is no longer the need for Absence Cards to be physically sent to HR for manual input to the system. The postroom staff have certainly noticed a difference”

“The time saved in HR has also been considerable with less time now spent on manual input  thereby enabling them to become more involved in  other key HR projects.”

Powerful Reporting

ASR has its own in-built report writing tool, which has been designed with the end-user in mind.  There is a comprehensive library of standard reports but users are also able to easily create their own reports.

Elaine comments: “We have a large number of reports that we run on a regular basis. For example, the executive team require various reports e.g. monthly employee statistics and we regularly provide line managers with reports too e.g. absence including the Bradford Factor Index. Line managers can also run some reports via e-HR.  We are often asked to produce ad hoc reports, which Nicola will put together and I also dip into the system to create and/or run reports to find out key HR information.”

Elaine continues: “I have worked with Crystal Report Writer before and as a reporting tool it is much more complex and probably too difficult for most end users to use. ASR’s in-built report writer is much easier yet still has the capabilities of  producing the reports that we require.”

Excellent Training

Trudy Stradling, the third member of the HR team recently attended ASR’s System Administration course at ASR’s training suite. All of ASR’s courses are run by their own dedicated training team which only train on ASR’s software. Each delegate is provided with a comprehensive training manual, which they keep for future reference. ASR also provides comprehensive UK support to help end-users with the day to day running of the software.

Elaine says: “On completing the training, Trudy was able to come back and immediately put her training to good use by configuring and adding a couple of new histories to our system satisfying yet more of our operational needs.”

BCS continues to evolve ASR’s HR software solution with plans to develop their e-HR, whilst also looking at the recruitment and payroll software. Elaine finishes: “The ASR sales representative was extremely patient and took the time to explain things thoroughly. We are perfectly happy with the way things have progressed since implementation and look forward to developing our relationship with ASR further.”

Find out more about our wide selection of Human Resources software:

	HR Software
	.NET HR Workflow
	Personnel Software
	Recruitment Software
	Training Software
	e-HR Software
	HR Payroll Software