CIS 321 Case Study Employee Benefits System (EBS)

EBS Case Introduction

In this section you will learn the background information that will prepare you to understand and
complete each of the milestones of this case study. This information includes a history of the
business, a description of the businesss current facilities, and the descriptions of the problems
that triggered the project.

General Company Information
The Conover Insurance Company, Inc. serves nearly 10 million customers nationwide,
offering a variety of products and financial services, such as pension funds, annuities,
automobile insurance, homeowner insurance, and life insurance products. More than 800
companies entrust Conover Insurance Company to manage their life insurance and other
financial funds. Conover Insurance Company employs more than 4,100 people and
reported 2002 revenue of more than $40 million.

The Human Resources Department has become top priority in improvements for the
coming year. The projects objective was to significantly decrease processing time and
increase the functionality in our current employee information benefits and services. In
order to meet the new technology improvement addressing our current Human Resource
processing, other departments, systems and/or business will be impacted, from with our
company and outside of our company.

Note: See the organization charts at the end of this document for more details.

Case Background
Information Systems (IS) headquartered in Orlando, Florida, employs approximately
4,100 employees throughout the United States. IS provides leading edge technologies,
distributed computing, mainframe, micro, communication, and consulting services to its
parent company Corporation, headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, as well as to external
customers including the U.S. government. In addition, IS is responsible for the
development and support of all the internal systems that support their day-to-day business
processes and operations.


IS currently operates in five sites across the nation and they are as follows:

CIS 321 Case Study Employee Benefits System (EBS)

Sunnyvale
CA
Orlando
FL
Denver
CO
Marietta
GA
Valley Forge
PA
Sunnyvale, CA - 725 employees
Denver, CO - 770 employees
Valley Forge, PA - 1,056 employees
Marietta, GA - 171 employees
Orlando, FL - 1,475 employees


Each site is responsible for servicing and supporting the customers in its region as well as
its internal employees. IS has experienced a 15 percent increase in employees over the
past two years, and long-range projections show that trend continuing for the next three
years.
CIS 321 Case Study Employee Benefits System (EBS)


Organization Structure
The Conover Insurance Company contains the following departments on the organization
chart below. Each department is structured based on the five site discussed in the Case
Background section.




Conover Insurance Company (CIC)
CIC
Life Insurance Human Resources Sales & Marketing
Auto & Home
Insurance
Information
Systems
Payroll
Health Care
Services
Corporate
Management
New Product
Research &
Development


CIS 321 Case Study Employee Benefits System (EBS)





Information Systems
Joe Turner
President
Jane Crawley
Vice President
Sunnyvale
Operations
Deborah Sellars
Vice President
Orlando
Operations
Bill Henry
Vice President
Marietta
Operations
John Jones
Vice President
Denver
Operations
Robert Smith
Vice President
Valley Forge
Operations
Jack Mills
Vice President
Human
Resources
Peter Crane
Vice President
Business
Operations
Lori Simms
Vice President
Customer
Relations
Frank Biaz
Vice President
New Business
Development
Sharon Jennings
Administrative
Assistant




Human Resources
Jack Mills
Vice President
Paul Jenson
Director
Sunnyvale
Human
Resources
Gloria Peters
Director
Orlando
Human
Resources
Eva Jones
Director
Marietta
Human
Resources
Danny Smith
Director
Denver
Human
Resources
John Cole
Director
Valley Forge
Human
Resources
Jennifer Fiskus
Manager
Compensation
Don Harris
Manager
Benefits
Dotty Jones
Manager
Employee
Relations
June Lang
Manager
Staffing
Dorothy Miller
Administrative
Assistant

CIS 321 Case Study Employee Benefits System (EBS)


The Problem

Due to the tremendous growth the company has experienced in recent years, it has
recognized that to ensure the continued success of servicing internal as well as external
customers, it needed to develop a strategic plan and vision for the use and modernization
of its computing resources. The challenges of creating centralized systems across all five
IS sites to support business practices that are common if not identical across the sites
further emphasize the need.


In January 2003 a strategic plan to modernize the companys resources was presented to
executive management. This document included a plan to reengineer the current systems
to use state-of-the-art technology and provide a showcase of systems that eventually
could be delivered across the whole corporation.


The plan consisted of reengineering all systems related to Human Resources, which
included Employee Information, Time and Attendance, and Payroll. The first phase is the
development of the Employee Benefits System (EBS), a system that will house the
repository containing the employee master data, which is the foundation for providing a
common set of automated, integrated, platform-independent system solutions for Human
Resources. Several business processes/work flows, procedures and forms need to be
analyzed along with addressing new requirements.


The new employee benefits system should provide the capability for each employee to
maintain his or her own information regarding address and telephone number changes,
beneficiary changes, United Way deductions, and Savings Bond deductions. Current
practices now have each of these changes being processed by an extensive manual effort
in which Human Resource administrators fill out forms and input the data. This manual
effort often results in a time lag of several days between the time the employee submits
the forms and the online update. This delay caused several problems: employees were
unable to quickly locate other employees, company mailings were being sent to the
wrong addresses, payroll checks were unable to be delivered, paper-based company
telephone books were out of date almost as soon as they were printed, and United Way
and Savings Bonds contributions were less than ideal.


By providing the capability for an employee to update data themselves in real time, the
problems mentioned above can be reduced, if not eliminated.
CIS 321 Case Study Employee Benefits System (EBS)

The Objective

The new Employee Benefits System (EBS) should provide a single central repository of
employee information. The Staffing Department provides new employee profile
information and employee status changes. The Staffing Department needs staffing reports
on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. The employees provide employee profile
changes on selected information, as well as United Way and Savings Bonds contribution
activity. Although both are employee deductions, the Savings Bond option is part of the
employees retirement/investment plan information. We would like to offer other types
of contributions in the future, such as Hands on Atlanta, Aid Foundation, the Cancer
Research Society.
The EBS system should generate on request Employee Participation Reports for
management, and Savings Bonds and United Way Contribution reports for the Employee
Relations Department. The system must get the employees current salary from the
Payroll database in order to process contribution activity only, not the entire payroll
processing. Therefore, the employee contribution activity records (and/or any other
deductions) are sent to the Payroll System. In addition, some basic employee history
information on job performance, ratings, and departmental information will be collected
for this new EBS system. Finally, an employee telephone listing can be generated for any
employee who requests it. Some of the basic information on this report will consist of
Department, Job Description, Site, Room, Building and Company Mail Stop data (see
screen exhibit).

The new EBS systems must be able to handle additional benefits we would like to offer
our employees. As part of the retirement plan, employees can now sign up for the
investment plan (401K) and Company Stock Purchase Options and Saving Bond
deductions. In addition, the new EBS system will offer basic life insurance, and short-
term disability. Life insurance will be offered based on the one times the employees
annual salary, if the employee is new, and two times the employees annual salary, if the
employee has five years of service or more. For example, an employee with 7 years of
service, earning $25,000 annually can elect to buy $50,000 worth of life insurance. For
short-term disability, we need medical information/confirmation on pre-existing health
issues before we can determine the short-term disability approval or amount. Long-term
disability is not offered at this time.

We would also like new EBS system to know whether the employee has elected medical
coverage (health and dental), although the processing and maintenance of medical and
dental information isoutside of this new EBS system. The medical coverage information
will be sent to the Employee Health Care (EHC) System. If the employees do not elect
coverage with our company benefit package, they must have proof of basic medical
coverage some where. In addition to medical coverage selection information, the new
EBS system will be collecting basic spouse and dependent information to be sent to the
EHC system.

CIS 321 Case Study Employee Benefits System (EBS)

All employee benefit enrollments are the first of each year. If there is a change in marital
or dependent status during the year, the employee can update their benefit information
with proof of the status change, accordingly. If a new employee wants to purchase
automobile, home and/or renters insurance with our company, we want the new EBS to
submit a notice to the Auto & Home department to follow-up with that new employee
request for services.