The Client

Education Personnel Management (EPM) provides personnel services, consultancy and training to a large number of Primary, Secondary, Academies, Special, Foundation, Aided and Community schools. EPM has been a private company since 1 April 1993 and was formerly the Education Personnel Unit of Cambridgeshire Local Education Authority in the UK.

EPM has extensive expertise, experience and understanding of personnel issues in schools and can help schools achieve the high level of staff management expertise necessary to achieve a successful school.

EPM provides these services to hundreds of schools across the UK, ensuring tens of thousands of education sector employees are paid timely and accurately every month.

The Need

For some time now EPM have actively promoted a culture of embracing change. EPM staff are encouraged to “work smarter, not harder”; a philosophy that EPM looks to share with their schools. EPM has always taken pride in providing a timely, accurate and efficient service, but are constantly looking to improve it.

In June 2007 EPM asked all customers to complete a questionnaire about their working practices with EPM. The purpose of the questionnaire was to gain a better understanding of how their services were being used and to see how they could be improved.

The results showed that many schools want work more efficiently and recognise the potential for streamlining. EPM saw clearly that they could work with schools to improve current working practices.

The existing ways of working also meant that EPM staff were spending too much time ‘administrating’ the paperwork rather than using their knowledge and expertise to add value to the schools.

The Solution

EPM concluded that these working practices could be greatly improved with the use of the internet, and an exciting e-business strategy was born. The strategy was to facilitate EPM’s services over the internet via a secure portal enabling the schools to maintain and view their information in EPM’s back office systems (Microsoft Dynamics –NAV).

The portal is a secure, confidential web site that will only be accessed by the Head teacher and authorised staff. To use the site, schools are required to follow a quick and simple registration process to ensure that only authorised users have access.

All data viewed or entered through the portal is securely exchanged with Microsoft Dynamics – NAV as XML.

Key Features

• Flexibility to access from anywhere via the secure login
• Ability to submit details of New employees and their contracts
• Ability to view specific Employee Details/Contracts and amend as necessary whenever needed
• All changes are routed to a Work Tray at EPM
• Ability to view submitted data and track progress of transactions
• Ability to download data flexibly for reporting purposes
• Highly auditable and secure service
• Submit overtime for staff
• Submit expenses for payroll
• Confirm Absence due to Sickness & Holiday
• Review Payroll Schedules & Runs
• View Employees Payslips & P60
• And much more

Eventually employees will be able to review their own employment details and interact directly.

Benefits

The EPM Portal provides benefits across the board.

Strategically EPM will be able to grow their business without a huge growth in headcount and increase operational margins and efficiency.

Operationally EPM will:

• eliminate fax/post re-keying of school data
• reduce direct communication with schools for queries, etc.
• reduce filing
• release PA time for increased client management
• support mobile workforce through web access
• reduce pressure of deadlines

This ultimately will enable staff to focus on providing added value to the schools utilising their knowledge and expertise to the schools benefit.

The schools will also benefit by having :

• greater visibility of their information by the school (remove)
• 24x7 access to that data
• greater accuracy of information
• readily available access to statutory required information
• technology that will enable easier integration with other bodies, e.g. LEA