WESTON, Fla. --(Business Wire)-- Ultimate Software (Nasdaq:ULTI), a leading provider of end-to-end strategic human resources, payroll, and talent management solutions, announced today that Sawyer Realty Holdings LLC has met its objective of improving human capital management processes since going "live" on Ultimate Software's UltiPro, delivered through software-as-a-service (SaaS), in April 2006.

Sawyer Realty Holdings is a privately held real estate acquisition and management firm that was using a payroll service bureau before UltiPro. With apartment communities in numerous states and a dispersed workforce operating in multiple time zones, Sawyer's HR team was challenged. Critical HR processes weren't centralized or streamlined and the solution lacked integrated HR/payroll reporting, so the team could not function as effectively as possible. Sawyer selected UltiPro for its recruitment-to-retirement feature-set and has since accomplished the following objectives:

-- Automated critical HR processes such as training management and talent acquisition that had been handled previously with paper forms, spreadsheets, and e-mails -- saving time and money

-- Enhanced data integrity and business intelligence reporting capabilities

-- Improved planning and budgeting

Bob Arnold, systems analyst for Sawyer, worked with his human resources department to roll out UltiPro's recruitment, manager self-service, employee self-service, and training management functionality, dramatically reducing the time and expense associated with managing these processes manually. Supervisors can access details about their teams from anywhere, at any time, and Sawyer's entire workforce can log on to the UltiPro portal to see their personal benefits, payroll, and human resources information, including open positions and training schedules.

"Because employees and managers can access and maintain information on their own, they can serve themselves when they need something, allowing our HR/payroll team to remain lean and to focus on more strategic projects like talent management," said Arnold. "By automating paper-intensive processes like training enrollment and moving to a near-paperless environment in HR, we are also handling tasks more quickly and efficiently. This is good for everyone, as well as our natural resources."

Using built-in workflow for approvals, employees can access information about and enroll in training courses. Once a course is completed, the training course history is stored in each employee's record without additional data entry. This is important to Sawyer because certifications and training that are often required, such as those associated with Fair Housing Practices, Maintenance, and Multifamily Housing, were difficult to track companywide before UltiPro. Now Sawyer uses UltiPro to house that data so the real estate holding company can analyze it and provide career-pathing for its employees and suggest certifications and training for high performers who want to advance.

Through UltiPro's self-service, the real estate firm has also been able to deliver more and better information to company leaders for decision making. Before UltiPro, data related to employees was tracked in a variety of locations, making comprehensive workforce reporting difficult, if not impossible. UltiPro includes hundreds of standard and customizable reports to help organizations like Sawyer analyze metrics by company, department, or state. UltiPro's integration makes information on all areas of human capital management available across the board without time-consuming reconciliation of data between different systems.

"Our data integrity has improved because of UltiPro," said Arnold. "One of our goals with UltiPro was to give HR the ability to extract the reports it needs for compliance and employee reporting and also give executives the specific types of reports they need to support company objectives. UltiPro has been instrumental in these achievements."

One primary goal of Sawyer's executives is budgeting and planning. Because Ultimate Software makes it possible for Sawyer to merge employee data with operational records that are also stored in the real estate company's data warehouse, Sawyer can generate reports to help answer questions like, "Is there a correlation between the most profitable communities and their training?" or "How much should we budget for each community, factoring in manpower and the costs to operate each facility?"

"UltiPro gives us tremendous flexibility and power," said Arnold. "Overall the solution has added value across the organization, while the SaaS model has eliminated any technical burden that might otherwise keep our IT team from tackling core projects. We are very pleased."

"Companies that use UltiPro's SaaS model do not have to expend IT resources to support an end-to-end system that can elevate HR with the functionality and services they need under one umbrella," said Greg Swick, chief sales officer for Ultimate Software. "Sawyer Realty Holdings has done a great job of leveraging SaaS to get up and running on UltiPro's comprehensive features quickly to accomplish key business objectives."

About Ultimate Software

A leading provider of end-to-end strategic human resources, payroll, and talent management solutions, Ultimate Software markets its award-winning UltiPro products as on-demand services through its software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering, Intersourcing, and as licensed software. Based in Weston, FL, the Company employs 850 professionals who are focused on developing the highest quality products and services. In 2008, Ultimate Software was the first HR/payroll SaaS provider to be audited and awarded the ISO/IEC 27001:2005 Certification for security management, and its development team was named the #1 "Best Product Development Team" in the nation by the American Business Awards. Ultimate Software's internal technology team won a first-place award for its management of Intersourcing from the American Business Awards in 2007, and its customer service team won two first-place awards in national competitions for service excellence in 2006. Ultimate Software was ranked the #1 best medium-sized company to work for in America by the Great Place to Work(R) Institute in June 2008. Ultimate Software has more than 1,600 customers representing diverse industries, including such organizations as The Container Store, Elizabeth Arden, Major League Baseball, The New York Yankees Baseball Team, Nintendo of America, Ruth's Chris Steak House, and Sony BMG Entertainment. More information on Ultimate Software's products and services can be found at www.ultimatesoftware.com.

UltiPro and Intersourcing are registered trademarks of The Ultimate Software Group, Inc. All other trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owners.

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