Recently, we'll call this person "Sam", reached out to me with a question and I'd like to share the info with you.
-----------------
Hi Kronos Guy,
My company is currently implementing Kronos across all of their sites and are doing this "in-house". I have an interview on Monday for a position within the implementation team and have discovered your site whilst doing some Kronos research. I am currently working my way through your blog to prep myself on the job and learn more about implementation and wondered if you had any gems of info or guidance you can give me. From the description of the post and conversations I have had, I believe my role would be to gather the employee information from HR on the variety of different contracts that may exist within one depot, input these onto the system, test, train and launch. I don't think I will be handling some of the more techie stuff that your blog has mentioned.
If you can give me any guidance on further likely problems to encounter from the scenario outlined, I would be really grateful as this post could possibly have a career changing potential.
Many thanks
Sam
----------------------------------------
Hi Sam,
Sounds like you are going to be working on the entire process of implementation and to answer that question would take a LOT of typing. So if you don't mind I'm going to focus on what I consider the most important part of any implementation or upgrade project, the analysis/discovery. It's quite common that this part is hurried, ill considered, done pro forma, ignored, buried, fraught with error, misunderstood, or just badly built and not communicated. The result is a less than optimal system that is an expense rather than providing a return on the Kronos WFC investment. I suggest the following five things things you want to be sure you understand and do in this role:
-
Take time to interview more than one person in a department and talk with EVERY department. Often we find that the same policy is implemented differently by different users. Jeff Millard talks a bit more about this in his blog Farming Out Payroll Fundamentals.
-
Look for the workarounds people use right now in their current system to find potential future problems. There is often conflict between policy and implementation. Again, pay is affected.
-
Chat with people on the 'fringe' of the project. One often finds employees that work on different systems that feed the timekeeping, HR or Payroll systems that will have really valuable advice on how to improve they way the processes work. We call this "Strategic Reconciliation" and it's a MAJOR contributing factor to wild success in a Kronos Implementation or Upgrade project.
-
Get buy in from everyone. Make certain everyone knows what's in the Discovery documentation and that they understand the ramifications of their choices. For example, "Once we choose the Labor Levels, well, we'd better be right cause they ain't never changing in the future!" This can cause a group to decide they need to think a bit more.
-
Realize your limitations. Understand when, although your project might seem to be running well, you find yourself on a train going off a cliff. For example, tied to #1 above, "People can't explain on a whiteboard what they pay for a particular group." This becomes risk factor #1. You can't build that. Don't allow it to move forward just because you have a deadline. Get some outside help.
You'll find that if this is REALLY WELL DONE, that the rest of the project is a breeze. I'll get flack from the techies on this, but Kronos Workforce Central is not that hard to build/configure. It's knowing just what to configure and getting everyone trained really well that matters most!
Bryan
Are you preparing for an implementation or upgrade?
Learn the secrets from an IT Director and CIO about the most important things to not miss when upgrading or implementing Kronos.
Download the Workforce Management Implementation Strategy White Paper.
Comments