Everyone’s different at SITA!
A payroll nightmare, or just another thing for the brains at ADP to solve?
If you have ever booked a ticket to fly to some far flung island for a holiday, or registered a parcel to be flown from Dallas to Delhi via Dublin, or just made a phone call to your local airport for flight information, the chances are that the communications infrastructure to support those transactions was supplied, managed and supported by SITA.
Since 1949 Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques, now commonly known as SITA, has been building the world's largest private international data and voice communications network to support the air transport industry. Today its members include 588 airlines and it supports all the major computer reservation systems, as well as airports, aerospace companies, airfreight organisations and governments in over 220 countries and territories. Whilst its head office is based in Geneva, SITA's UK business employs over 550 staff.
The UK employees all rely on one person, Saab Dosanjh, in the guise of payroll consultant, to manage a complex web of 5 payrolls that includes the payment schedules for 4 pension schemes. All this for the people who make sure that the communications system stays up so that the rest of us can go on holiday.
SITA's people work around the clock which means that Saab has to be extra diligent with shift rates and overtime payments as well as bonuses, pay amendments and salary reviews. The 5 payrolls are each aligned to the 5 entities owned within the UK arm of SITA's business, and each has its own P&L - making it even more important for Saab to get the numbers right, every time.
"We have always outsourced the payroll process, but before ADP all this complexity was a nightmare", says Saab. It wasn't that long ago that each pay run would have to be filled out on spreadsheets, with starters, leavers, one-off payments and all the other amendments required because, "everyone's got something different." This would then be sent to the service company for uploading into their system. The whole lot would come back a few days later, processed and ready for Saab to review the pay slips and associated reports and, provided everything was OK, commit the payroll and hope. "It was double entry, and something I would never want to go back to", says Saab as she quietly gets on with running the P11ds for each of her divisions.
These days, Saab is supported by ADP freedom, and with that comes all the power, knowledge and back-up that the world's number one payroll and HR administration services company can provide to SITA. "That's the real comfort zone. To know that the brains are right behind me and that ADP's people know exactly how to do it. It stops my job being terrifying in the way that it used to be"
Outsourcing to a managed service like ADP freedom means that Saab has all the control and feel of running the payroll in-house, but with the power and expertise of ADP to make sure it always works. "It is like having Big Brother watching you sometimes. I'll input something onto the system and the next minute I'll get a phone call asking if I really meant to do that!" she laughs.
Direct input has been the major change for the day to day running of SITA's UK payroll needs, but it is all the expert calculations and pay forwarding happening back at ADP's HQ in Chertsey that gives SITA a strategic advantage. "We run four pension schemes. Money purchase, final salary and group schemes, and one employee who has chosen a stakeholder scheme. All these schemes require different payment rates and schedules to the different providers at different points in the year. ADP looks after those payments while other people within SITA need different report files from me," explains Saab.
But it isn't as easy as that. "We have a general ledger file format that is specific to us, so ADP had to develop a special reporting procedure, and now when I need uploads for my reporting I just hit one button and it's done." Saab goes on to explain that because it isn't just her that uses the reporting files, ADP has had to figure out a way of making all her different data sources work in a way that gives SITA the greatest flexibility. ADP freedom was designed with this sort of knitting in mind, and knowing that most companies don't always have off the shelf standardised formatting, the ADP freedom team is quite used to making the service fit the customer.
ADP freedom went live at SITA in the heaviest month possible. Saab remembers, "We chose to do it on a new tax year, which is also the time for bonuses, salary reviews, and dozens of other variables making it a mad time of year to try something this big. We ran some limited parallel procedures and everything looked fine."
Since going live ADP freedom simply gets on with the job, leaving Saab the time and confidence to get on with her other work as SITA's HR Consultant. "Lots of people wonder how I get it all done, but I'm not really doing this all on my own. In the end we are a partnership and that is the only way you can make something like payroll work."
The future holds some very exciting developments. SITA's global ambition is to roll out self-service across its HR and personnel systems and this will mean ADP's further integration into the UK's business.
Is Saab confident it will happen? "Of course. In the end it's the people. The ADP freedom system is really cool, but what makes it exceptional is that every time I speak to someone they know what to do. I don't have any worries about ADP because everything is always done bang on time".
If you have ever booked a ticket to fly to some far flung island for a holiday, or registered a parcel to be flown from Dallas to Delhi via Dublin, or just made a phone call to your local airport for flight information, the chances are that the communications infrastructure to support those transactions was supplied, managed and supported by SITA.
Since 1949 Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques, now commonly known as SITA, has been building the world's largest private international data and voice communications network to support the air transport industry. Today its members include 588 airlines and it supports all the major computer reservation systems, as well as airports, aerospace companies, airfreight organisations and governments in over 220 countries and territories. Whilst its head office is based in Geneva, SITA's UK business employs over 550 staff.
The UK employees all rely on one person, Saab Dosanjh, in the guise of payroll consultant, to manage a complex web of 5 payrolls that includes the payment schedules for 4 pension schemes. All this for the people who make sure that the communications system stays up so that the rest of us can go on holiday.
SITA's people work around the clock which means that Saab has to be extra diligent with shift rates and overtime payments as well as bonuses, pay amendments and salary reviews. The 5 payrolls are each aligned to the 5 entities owned within the UK arm of SITA's business, and each has its own P&L - making it even more important for Saab to get the numbers right, every time.
"We have always outsourced the payroll process, but before ADP all this complexity was a nightmare", says Saab. It wasn't that long ago that each pay run would have to be filled out on spreadsheets, with starters, leavers, one-off payments and all the other amendments required because, "everyone's got something different." This would then be sent to the service company for uploading into their system. The whole lot would come back a few days later, processed and ready for Saab to review the pay slips and associated reports and, provided everything was OK, commit the payroll and hope. "It was double entry, and something I would never want to go back to", says Saab as she quietly gets on with running the P11ds for each of her divisions.
These days, Saab is supported by ADP freedom, and with that comes all the power, knowledge and back-up that the world's number one payroll and HR administration services company can provide to SITA. "That's the real comfort zone. To know that the brains are right behind me and that ADP's people know exactly how to do it. It stops my job being terrifying in the way that it used to be"
Outsourcing to a managed service like ADP freedom means that Saab has all the control and feel of running the payroll in-house, but with the power and expertise of ADP to make sure it always works. "It is like having Big Brother watching you sometimes. I'll input something onto the system and the next minute I'll get a phone call asking if I really meant to do that!" she laughs.
Direct input has been the major change for the day to day running of SITA's UK payroll needs, but it is all the expert calculations and pay forwarding happening back at ADP's HQ in Chertsey that gives SITA a strategic advantage. "We run four pension schemes. Money purchase, final salary and group schemes, and one employee who has chosen a stakeholder scheme. All these schemes require different payment rates and schedules to the different providers at different points in the year. ADP looks after those payments while other people within SITA need different report files from me," explains Saab.
But it isn't as easy as that. "We have a general ledger file format that is specific to us, so ADP had to develop a special reporting procedure, and now when I need uploads for my reporting I just hit one button and it's done." Saab goes on to explain that because it isn't just her that uses the reporting files, ADP has had to figure out a way of making all her different data sources work in a way that gives SITA the greatest flexibility. ADP freedom was designed with this sort of knitting in mind, and knowing that most companies don't always have off the shelf standardised formatting, the ADP freedom team is quite used to making the service fit the customer.
ADP freedom went live at SITA in the heaviest month possible. Saab remembers, "We chose to do it on a new tax year, which is also the time for bonuses, salary reviews, and dozens of other variables making it a mad time of year to try something this big. We ran some limited parallel procedures and everything looked fine."
Since going live ADP freedom simply gets on with the job, leaving Saab the time and confidence to get on with her other work as SITA's HR Consultant. "Lots of people wonder how I get it all done, but I'm not really doing this all on my own. In the end we are a partnership and that is the only way you can make something like payroll work."
The future holds some very exciting developments. SITA's global ambition is to roll out self-service across its HR and personnel systems and this will mean ADP's further integration into the UK's business.
Is Saab confident it will happen? "Of course. In the end it's the people. The ADP freedom system is really cool, but what makes it exceptional is that every time I speak to someone they know what to do. I don't have any worries about ADP because everything is always done bang on time".
