RFP #2024-02 Question Responses_DC .pdf

Preproposal Conference Questions and Answers

RFP #2024-02: Human Resource Management Software

1. Are there any plans to replace the finance system as well as the HR suite?

Answer: Yes, at some point in the future; timeline is likely 3-4 years.

2. Are you looking for an all-in-one solution?

Answer: Yes.

3. Have there been any HR suite demos in preparation for this project?

Answer: No.

4. Can you discuss personal pain points with the current solution?

Answer: The system is tedious to manage and requires HR team members to be directly involved in things that should be automated. For example:

• The timekeeping and payroll feature cannot calculate overtime properly because

VCSB pay periods are semi-monthly rather than biweekly.

• The applicant tracking system and core HRMS in GP are not connected, which leads to more work to set up employee profiles and manage position vacancies among other workflow complications. These systems were linked in the past, but the connection disrupted workflows in other ways, such as importing the wrong information into the HRMS and impacting employee direct deposits.

• The timecard system does not validate employee entries or flag entries for additional review, so an employee can over-draft their PTO accrual, enter a holiday on a non-observed day, or enter time outside of their normal schedule with no system messages to alert them to a potential mistake.

• The system requires very tedious timing of steps due to inherit limitations, such as having to wait to activate new hires until after the prior period payroll has finished or the payroll process will try to pay them (if salaried) even though their hire date is after the pay period ended. As a result, new hires are given a placeholder start date and set as inactive, then activated with the correct hire date after payroll has been processed. Then the new employees have to go into the timecard, if hourly non-exempt, to enter their time back to their start date because their timecards have not yet been set up.

5. What is the total user size of employees accessing the application?

Answer: 200 (two hundred) – 225 (two hundred twenty-five) employees, could grow to

275 (two hundred seventy-five) employees.

6. What integration will be needed apart from Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics? Are there any other existing systems that this new system will need to interface with?

Answer: VCSB does have other systems that we would like to pull information from.

Milner, a cloud-based host where documents are stored. And Relias, the new training software. Any new HRMS solution would need to have the ability to integrate with other software solutions, such as future general ledger software, with relative ease.

7. Are there any compliance or security considerations that need to ne addressed when transferring training data between the system and the external learning management system?

8. Could you elaborate on the process for creating budget projections? How the budget projection is currently tracked and managed.

Answer: The personnel budget is calculated per position, with all benefits taken into consideration. Vacant positions are budgeted based on a target starting salary

(approximately mid-point for the range) and place-holder benefit elections. Then, VCSB applies a reduction to the budget that takes into consideration the anticipated vacancy rate per department. For instance, if a department runs at a 15% vacancy rate, the personnel budget would be developed with a 10% vacancy rate projection. Positions are also allocated according to workload and funding source, so position costs can be broken up over several reporting units/departments and may be adjusted over the course of the fiscal year. The ability to manage fixed and floating allocations will be an essential feature for budgeting and payroll processing in order to satisfy VCSB’s reporting/regulatory requirements.

9. Is the workflow related to approval fixed? Do you need to interface any mechanism to change the workflow yourself or can it be hard coded into the application itself?

Answer: Both. Many workflows have fixed contact points from start to finish; however, it is not uncommon for a workflow to be modified whether for the sake of expediency

(less common) or necessity, such as a typical contact being out of the office for an extended period (more common). Ideally, the next HRMS will allow for fixed workflows while also providing flexibility to adjust on the fly as needed.

10. Does user access login need to validate any SSO like active directory or will users be created in the application itself?

Answer: Yes. VCSB uses Active Directory at this time.

11. Does “location” mean department?

Answer: The system should be able to control access based on the users’ roles and locations as determined by the HR department. It means limiting access to specific features and data depending on users’ roles within the organization and where they are accessing the system from. For example, an employee who has both a primary and a secondary position, where the secondary position is a direct support professional at a residential group home, should only be able to clock in and out of the secondary role at the approved group home location (validated by IP address information currently).

12. Is this project part of the VCSB Capital Improvement Plan?

13. Referring to “The system should be able to develop and print identification badges. The system should allow for the design of these badges, including adding relevant information such as names, photos, job title. Once designed the system should facilitate the printing of these badges enabling the organization to issue them efficiently for security and identification purposes.” Is there any specific hardware used?

Answer: VCSB currently uses Assure ID to develop and print ID badges. In a perfect world, this would be able to integrate in some way with a new HRMS, but VCSB is not concerned about what type of ID software/hardware is utilized. It should also be noted that this feature is a “nice to have,” not an absolute requirement.

14. If this is a phased roll-out, what is your desired sequence of deployments?

Answer: VCSB is open to the input of the technical professionals assisting in the implementation; however, it would be expected that timekeeping and payroll would be the last step of implementation because of the importance of getting that set up properly before launching.

15. Please talk about on-site vs. virtual training.

Answer: VCSB would prefer in-person training during implementation but would expect on-going training to most likely be virtual, whether live or on-demand.

16. What is the expectation in regard to post live support?

Answer: At a minimum, a responsive customer support team paired with on-demand, self-guided training options.

17. Do we also need to set up a support help desk ticket portal?

Answer: VCSB will likely not require a vendor to develop a new customer support solution like this if one does not already exist, but it would likely detract from the proposal’s standing if adequate on-going support isn’t otherwise included.

18. Any expectation for the go-live delivery date?

Answer: Per the proposal, VCSB anticipates a go-live date of October 1, 2024 but recognizes that external factors may impact that target.

19. Are you aware of any business rules or processes in place that is unique for VCSB?

Compared to other CSBs?

Answer: VCSB may have a unique expression of a business rule, for instance, shift differentials or incentive payments, but is not aware of a truly unique business rule that is not in practice anywhere else.

20. Tax rules are different across states, does this application need to cover multiple states?

And does that impact taxation?

Answer: While the majority of employees live in the Commonwealth of Virginia, it is also true that employees occasionally come from West Virginia or work remotely in a different state of residence before transitioning to Virginia. The system will need to be able to easily manage state tax tables other than Virginia. And yes, where an employee lives will impact the taxes that VCSB and the employee must remit.