Suffolk New College

Suffolk New College currently has 4,000 students and applications to enrol at the college steadily increase year by year. In order to effectively meet the needs of the 650-plus staff within the organisation, the Payroll and Human Resources (HR) team at Suffolk New College, has been using Bond TeamSpirit from Bond International Software for the last 13 years – a comprehensive and fully accredited in-house HR and payroll system.   Suffolk New College have taken the opportunity to customise the system to fully meet their needs.  Whilst the College have not purchased all of the Modules that are available they have provided positive feedback regarding the increase they have realised in their reporting accuracy through the use of TeamSpirit's reporting functionality.

Business Improvement

Suffolk New College is an educational institution located in Ipswich, offering a wide range of vocational programmes and ‘A’ Levels.

Georgie Pemberton, Payroll & Information Senior Officer at the College comments, “Suffolk New College used to outsource the payroll function to a bureau service managed by Suffolk County Council. To process payroll this way, it required duplication of data entry onto the system and we found that this way of working was neither cost-effective nor flexible. Flexibility of reporting is essential for us due to the nature of the education industry and the many regulations which we need to follow as an institution, so, the previous time-consuming processes being untenable, we decided to implement a software package to remove much of the arduous leg work. Because of its innate flexibility, and the experience that Bond International Software has in the education sector, we chose Bond TeamSpirit.”

Georgie continues, “It is an enormous resource benefit to be able to design and create our own reports according to our particular needs at any given time.  Furthermore, we often receive last minute changes to the payroll and with Bond TeamSpirit we are able to re-run an individual’s details even after the monthly payroll has been completed, ensuring correct payments are made and less time is spent dealing with payroll queries throughout the next month.”

Compliance

Georgie adds, “As we are required by law to produce thorough and intricate reports on a monthly basis, it became excessively demanding to work via manual paper-based processes. Within the education industry, there are a number of areas which the institution is required to report on, including training, qualifications, ethnicity, disability, gender, age profiles of staff and departmental listings. Clearly accuracy and timeliness is essential, so the immediacy and data accessibility that Bond TeamSpirit provides have proved invaluable.”

Additionally, Suffolk New College Management Team requires quarterly reports on absence and staff turnover, as well as reports on budgets. In the case of absence, there used to be multiple systems where information was recorded, creating difficulties in data collation, and often revealing numerous inaccuracies. Georgie adds, “By having a sole central system we are able to enter data only once and it is replicated across all relevant departments. Absence may have a direct effect on an individual’s payroll and perhaps that of any other employee required to cover that absence. We are now able to spend less time on chasing information from individuals and administrative tasks and can concentrate more on developmental tasks within the College.”

On a yearly basis, Bond TeamSpirit will also help Suffolk New College to effectively and efficiently produce pension reports for the Local Government Pension Scheme and for Teachers’ Pensions and report on annual staffing returns. 

Integration

Georgie comments, “Alongside significant administrative savings on a day-to-day basis, we could see that there were other benefits that Bond TeamSpirit could provide us, and it made sense to combine the HR and Payroll departments into one, in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort. As both payroll and HR often worked from the same data – absence, hours worked and qualifications to name just a few parameters that have ramifications on both departments – we were able to integrate the two departments together, to provide a common database and a common system through which to operate, all through Bond TeamSpirit. Since completing this integration, we have saved vast amounts of time as data is entered only once for both functions and inaccuracies are reduced to a bare minimum.”

Overall, Suffolk New College has enjoyed substantial benefits from the implementation of Bond TeamSpirit. The College now has the ability to effectively manage all payroll and HR reporting activities from one central location, whilst ensuring full compliance with all the current and frequently-changing government reporting regulations. With the significant time savings that the software provides, the integrated HR and payroll departments have been able to focus on the needs of the staff and continue to develop and improve the services that the College provides to employees.

Back to case studies