Cal Poly Ponoma Foundation Installs Kronos Software to Reduce Paper Usage, Collect Employment Data

Townsend also says the Kronos software boosted the data base’s security, and minimized the man power it previously took to work the old system.

“Our main concern was to make sure we had adequate security,” he says. “We’ve added the company to make sure the security they were providing around this confidential information was as high quality as it could be [and] we reduced staff by half – from around 10 people to four. A part of the benefit of that efficiency is disseminating some of the functions that we used to have to do in the central office out to operational groups on the campus.”

Plus, Townsend says the software is easier for the Cal Poly Ponoma Foundation’s HR office to operate, and grants employees better accessibility to their employment information.

Kronos’s software solution also enables campus employees to access their employment information more easily.

“People had a better understanding of the staffing and the processes which allowed them to provide better services to the end units, but at the same time build some real efficiencies to the functionality of the software,” he says. “At the forefront of that, the integrated workflow for distributed information has web-based access for all the staff so they can look at their time, look at their benefits, the automation of benefits delivery, the interaction with tax-company related things and the federal government, etc.”

Miller says Kronos’s HR software helped the organization cut its paper usage by 95 percent, and hopes to go completely paperless within the next two to three years.

“We still have about five percent use with paper, and that’s kind of the residual,” he says. “As a business, you can only spend so much time and energy to get rid of one piece of paper. That was a natural by-product of going to the Kronos system. It works very well and we’re very happy with it.”

Tips to Selecting a Software System for Your College

Pick a company that provides a good product and partnership

Townsend says colleges looking for a solution similar to Kronos’s HR software should pick a company that provides a good product and partnership.

He says doing so will help a college glide through the developmental phase smoothly, and obtain an organized system quickly.

“If they’re looking for a solution in HR payroll, the need to make sure the company that they work with has national history and provides services that meet the scale that they need,” he says. “One of the things that made us really successful was that we were able to work with our project management processes and [Kronos’s], and they had very good project managers that helped us through the developmental phase and eventually producing things.”