CMS Sage Abra HRMS Quarterly Newsletter

Watch for our December issue of the Sage Abra HRMS newsletter in the mail.

Taming Benefits Management
If you are like many human resources professionals, one of your key objectives is to attract and retain high-quality employees. The benefits that your organization offers are an important component of meeting this objective. And yet, benefits are expensive. Nearly one third of most organizations’ payroll expense...

Headline News
Forrester Research, a nationally recognized industry research firm, recently conducted their Forrester Wave™: Human Resource Management Systems evaluation. Sage Abra HRMS was ranked....

To read the newsletter online, please visit:
http://www.cmshris.com/starinfo/abra/q406/email.html

Clark Art Institute Turns to Channel Duo for Accounting and HR Needs

(Above) Brian Kelly, President of CMS
REVIEW DATE: 03-NOV-2006
By Hailey Lynne McKeefry

The In-House Advantage

CMS worked with the Clark Art Institute to understand the capabilities of the Sage ABRA system and to make sure it understood the needs of the museum, said Gniadek.

"Clark Art's HR systems were completely manual and the museum wanted to make sure they automated the process and put in compliance measurements," said Kelly.

"They also were looking for a full solution to replace their outsourced payroll in order to save money," Kelly said. "Finally, they wanted integration between their accounting, payroll and HR systems."

The museum needed to provide information, such as accrued time-off and paid time taken by employees, directly on employee pay stubs, another option that the external service provider demanded extra fees for.

"We found that there was a charge every time we wanted to access these sorts of features," said Gniadek. "We did a cost/benefit analysis and it made sense for us to bring payroll in house."

In addition, the Clark Art Institute wanted to computerize its manual HR systems and have them closely linked to the museum's accounting system. "We considered having our human resource database customized and written for our own purposes, but the ABRA solution allowed us to avoid that," said Gniadek. "The new system has a database and links with the payroll system so we can enter employee information in one system and it flows over to the other."

In addition, CMS stayed on-site to train two human resource, four finance and two IT employees to use the system.

"We like to configure the software to meet client requirements first and actually get them almost to a live setting and then bring them through on-site training using their own people, own configuration and own operational procedures through the training," said Kelly.

Finally, the HRMS solution provider converted the payroll information from the service provider into a format that could be read by the new system.

The project proved straightforward, and was finished in a matter of weeks, which is typical, said Kelly. "Our organization has been putting in employee systems for over 20 years, so there are not too many things we haven't faced before."

"We installed the new software in November 2004, tested it and ran it parallel with service bureau," said Gniadek. "We cut over to our first payroll in January 2005."

"CMS had a very thorough understanding of how our current system worked and what our objectives were," said Gniadek. "They did a fine job of explaining how this product would meet our needs."

Masterful Return

The new payroll and HR system paid for itself within the first year, Gniadek said.

Cost savings can be traced to cutting out redundant tasks caused by manual systems, as well as the cost of the payroll service bureau.

"There's also the question of the cost of an employee walking out the door with the entire knowledge base in their head," said Kelly. "When processes are manual, the knowledge is lost when someone leaves because it's not captured by any corporate system."

Time savings were similarly notable.

"We also managed to speed the payroll process up," said Gniadek. "We can now complete payroll on Monday and have checks ready for Tuesday. The service provider started on Monday, and we were sometimes biting our fingernails in the hope that checks would arrive by payday on Friday."

Working Together

JMT and CMS find these shared engagements are a win/win for themselves and their clients.

"Together, we offer a complete solution, and that's really attractive to customers," said Kelly. "We have helped customers see that working with two organizations has a benefit. The two components, accounting and payroll/HR, are special animals — and they each need specialized knowledge. We provide that higher level of service for client and focus on those unique business elements."

The two companies continue to look for ways to help each other and work together.

"If I'm at a tradeshow, I'll put up their logo," said Kelly.

The two companies also attend each other's user group meetings and tradeshows, and have done some co-marketing.

In addition, JMT and CMS co-sponsored a seminar for existing and potential customers about the basics of accounting and payroll/HR solutions. The class attracted ten people, said Tiso.

The secret to their success is simple — a similar corporate philosophy, complementary skill sets, and a commitment to staying in touch, said Tiso ".

Communication is really critical," agreed Kelly. "If you want a relationship, you have to continue to talk on a regular basis."

Both solution providers plan to continue the alliance.

"We have had such great success with this relationship that it is absolutely going to continue," said Tiso. "And we'll probably expand it to other customers."

Meanwhile, the Clark Art Institute is moving ahead in mastering and extending the capabilities of its new system.

"There are things that this system can do that we haven't taken advantage of," said Gniadek.

"However, the system is working nicely."

Hailey Lynne McKeefry is a freelance writer in Belmont, Calif. A partner in www.professionalink.biz, she can be reached at: hailey@cyberdeacon.com.

In the News: Independent Research Firm Cites Sage Abra as Strong Performer

Sage Software was among select companies that Forrester Research invited to participate in The Forrester Wave™: Human Resource Management Systems, Q3 2006. In this evaluation, Forrester Research evaluated Sage Software’s current offering and strategy for HR management systems against approximately 92 criteria.

Sage Software was cited as a Strong Performer in the overall U.S. mid-market evaluation. According to the report*, “Sage, with its [Sage] Abra product, offers the most cost-effective software solution among the products evaluated for companies with fewer than 1,000 employees.”

According to Forrester’s Sage Software Vendor Summary**, “…rated as a Strong Performer in our overall U.S. mid-market evaluation, Sage Software’s Sage Abra product clearly leads as the on-premise HR solution of choice for the small and medium-size business (SMB) company segment (businesses with six to 999 employees).”

At Sage Software, we are committed to providing you robust, easy-to-use HR and payroll solutions that make your job easier and allow you to be more productive. We believe Sage Abra delivers tremendous value at a reasonable price, and we encourage you to give us input about how we can best continue to meet your needs and surpass your expectations.

Sources: *Forrester Research, “The Forrester Wave™: Human Resource Management Systems, Q3 2006”, September 2006, Paul Hamerman with Sharyn Leaver and Elisse Gaynor

**Forrester Research, “The Sage Group is a Leading HR Management Systems Choice for SMBs,” The Forrester Wave™ Vendor Summary, Q3 2006, September 2006, Paul Hamerman with Elisse Gaynor

Introducing Sage Abra Benefits Connections

Sage Abra Benefits Connect is an innovative new service offering for Sage Abra HRMS customers that securely automates communication of Sage Abra customers’ employee benefits enrollment data to your specific insurance carriers, eliminating the need to submit paper enrollment forms and giving you greater flexibility in adding benefits programs or switching among insurance carriers.

If you struggle to send electronic files, with multiple customized formats, to each of your benefits carriers, Abra Benefits Connect will save you time and frustration. Abra Benefits Connect integrates with Abra HR and simplifies the back-end of the enrollment process between the employer and the carriers.

Without Abra Benefits Connect, you may end up working with multiple custom formats, including spreadsheets, ASCII text files, XML, EDI, hard copies and fax forms, depending on the data submission rules of your selected carriers. Abra Benefits Connect eliminates all this complexity and cost by using a standard format to pull benefits data from Abra HR, transforming the data into the specific data formats and media required by each carrier, and delivering the data to the carriers.

Increasingly, carriers are demanding that their customers make the transition to electronic data submission. Paper enrollment forms can result in costly errors, “missed enrollments”, and from some carriers, additional charges for manual data re-entry. Easy-to-use and affordable, Abra Benefits Connect eliminates the errors associated with duplicate data entry and ‘missed enrollments’ both during annual open enrollment periods and for employee changes throughout the year by automatically extracting the benefits data from the customer’s Abra HR database and re-formatting it to meet the specific requirements of each benefit carrier.

Abra Benefits Connect service is secure, and supports the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) ANSI X12 834 specifications for benefit enrollment and maintenance transactions. When paired with Abra Benefits Enrollment, Abra Benefits Connect virtually eliminates the need for handling paper throughout the entire enrollment process, resulting in even greater labor and cost reductions.

Best of all, Abra Benefits Connect does not require any programming on your part, nor the support of your IT staff. All you need is an Internet connection!

For more information on Abra Benefits Connect, including a list of Benefits Carriers, please visit:
http://www.cmshris.com/pdf/Abra_Benefits_Connections.pdf

Or please call CMS directly at 800-517-9099.

Abra Demonstrations In December

Join CMS this December to learn about Sage Abra HRMS Technology Discover the leading HRMS Solution on the market today, designed to help you manage your most expensive resource: People and Benefits.

Dates Available:
Wed., Dec. 6th at 10:30 am
Wed., Dec. 20th at 10:30 am

To register please visit:
http://www.cmshris.com/abrawebinars.html

Or call us at 860-678-4401.

Take An Abra Tour Anytime

Did you know you can take a comprehensive tour of Sage Abra HRMS any time? View each module separately, or view the entire tour in less than 25 minutes!

Click here to start the tour.

ATTENTION Sage TimeSheet - Sage Abra Payroll Customers

If you have recently received and have installed (or plan to install) the Sage Abra version 7.5 maintenance update, and are using the Sage TimeSheet integration, please review the following information:

The Sage Software customer support team recently discovered an issue when transferring time information from Sage TimeSheet to Sage Abra v7.5. Due to changes made in the Sage Abra 7.5 payroll database, two fields are missing from the Sage TimeSheet export to Sage Abra 7.5.

As a result, the import into Sage Abra Payroll does not work, and the time information must be entered manually.

The development teams are working quickly to resolve this issue. We expect to deliver a correction patch early next week (week of November 6). If the patch is available sooner, you will receive a follow-up communication regarding the availability and instructions for downloading the patch.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have created. If you have any questions regarding this communication, please contact the customer support department at 866.719.5198.

Sincerely,
Your Sage Abra HRMS and Sage TimeSheet product teams