Reference no: EM133330685

CASE STUDY

"Little Corp., a bicycle manufactufer located in Burlington, Ontario is a medium sized business that consisted of just over 200 employees. Of these employees, approximately 50 worked in the office while the remaining 150 unionized employees worked in the manufacturing and warehouse facilities. Little Corp. designed, manufactured, assembled and shipped high-end bicycles (both road bikes as well as mountain bikes) both directly to end consumers as well as to retailers across North America.

At Little Corp., employees kept track of most of their work on Excel spreadsheets.

All manufacturing employees were required to sign in and out of work on a sheet (i.e., paper) that was posted at the main entry to the manufacturing facility. Once per day, this master sign-in sheet was manually entered into a time-tracking spreadsheet by the Manufacturing Department Manager. This employee was not 'computer-savvy' and often made mistakes entering this data into the spreadsheet. Usually, the Production Floor Manager double-checked and corrected any data-entry errors that were made by the Manufacturing Department Manager. While the data entry issue was a problem, an even bigger problem unfortunately involved employees 'cheating and having their co-workers sign them in or out if they were going to be late, or if they wanted to leave early and not get docked any time. Many of the manufacturing employees at Little Corp. were upset that some of their co-workers were cheating the system and wanted somethig done about it. However, they were reluctant to 'tattle' on their co-workers, but rather wanted Little Corp. to put something in place that could stop this from happening.

The Manufacturing Department Manager earns $100,000 per year, working 40 hours per week. It was estimated that she currently spends 5 hours per week manually entering the employees' time data into the spreadsheet. The Production Floor Manager earns $60,000 per year, working 37.5 hours per week. He typically spends 30 minutes per day (5 days per week) double-checking and correcting the time-tracking spreadsheet. Finally, an outside consultant that was recently hired estimated that Little Corp. was losing $25,000 per year-to the problem with employees 'cheating the time-tracking system and having their co-workers sign them in or out.

Once every two weeks, the time-tracking spreadsheet was emailed to the Human Resources Administrator, who then manually re-entered this information into the payroll system. This outdated payroll system calculated Gross Pay, Deductions and Net Pay amounts, and then created a file that was placed on a USB Memory Key (i.e., storage) and driven over to the Payroll Service Provider. Unfortunately, the outdated payroll system that Little Corp. is using often completes the payroll calculations incorrectly, causing re-work for the Human Resources Administrator, as well as unhappy employees who were not paid correctly. Recently, the entire payroll system failed, causing payroll to be delayed by two weeks. This situation led to the manufacturing employees' union filing a grievance.

The Human Resources Administrator earns $48,000 per year, and works 37.5 hours per week. He estimates that he currently spends 10% of his time entering the time data into the payroll system, correcting the payroll system errors and driving the file over to the Payroll Service Provider.

Catherine Boye, the founder of Little Corp. realized that something drastic needed to be done to solve their problems, but was unsure of what to do and where to start. She realized that they needed a better way to keep track of manufacturing employees' time (i.e., an automated time-tracking system) and preferably an automated way of transferring this information over to payroll. She also realized that they were spending $20,000 per year on the Payroll Service Provider company, and she wondered whether there was any way they could run the payroll themselves. The IT Manager at Little Corp. had recently completed a study, and estimated that a Human Resources Information System (HRIS) that could handle both the automated time-tracking and automate the payroll process (with no need for a Payroll Service Provider) would cost $150,000 up-front, and $10,000 per year in maintenance fees. The IT Manager assured Catherine that this new HRIS would eliminate the need for the Manufacturing Department Manager, Production Floor Manager and Human Resources Administrator to be involved with the payroll process, as well as eliminate the need for the use of the Payroll Service Provider company. The HRIS would also solve the issue of employees 'cheating' the time-tracking system. Catherine has asked you for your help by answering the following questions."

Q1) Create a Business Requirements Definition (BRD) statement that defines the business requirement for this Human Resources Information System (HRIS). Be sure to think about the problems that this organization is currently facing and how an HIS could remedy it. Your BRD should be no longer than one paragraph 

Q2) Justify the purchase of this HRIS to Catherine Boye, the founder of Little Corp. Be sure to discuss both qualitative as well as quantitative information in your justification.