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Non-Profit Organizations Use UltiPro to Manage Employee-Related Reporting Demands and Increase Efficiencies
[August 08, 2016]

Non-Profit Organizations Use UltiPro to Manage Employee-Related Reporting Demands and Increase Efficiencies


Ultimate Software (Nasdaq: ULTI), a leading provider of human capital management (HCM) solutions in the cloud, announced today that three non-profit organizations-VersAbility Resources, the Science Museum of Minnesota, and Anderson Center for Autism-are using Ultimate's comprehensive HCM system, UltiPro, to manage challenging reporting requirements, create more efficient HR and payroll operations, and keep administrative costs low.

VersAbility Resources has a proud history of more than 60 years of service to people with disabilities and their families. The organization's activities include forming partnerships with regional businesses and the federal government to create jobs. VersAbility's complicated payroll includes employees who work in a number of states, many of whom are subject to the requirements of union contracts, government contracts, or both. The organization went live on UltiPro in August 2009.

"VersAbility's national workforce adds complexity to our already data-intensive reporting," said John Coffren, chief human resources officer at VersAbility. "Before UltiPro, our HR team struggled with the OSHA 300 form, manually completing the paperwork for each employee location. Now, we are able to sort by location and achieve total government compliance with the click of a button. We can finish in five minutes what used to take us 50 hours."

As a federal government contractor affiliated with the AbilityOne program, VersAbility is required to complete voluminous reports, such as the Employee Reporting System (ERS) and the Quarterly Employment Report (QER). According to Coffren, UltiPro is able to not only populate the necessary reports almost instantly, but also to provide VersAbility management with previously inaccessible information about the organization's employees. This level of automation has also proven critical to VersAbility's efforts to tackle reporting for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).

"UltiPro is indispensable for helping us manage ACA compliance," said Coffren. "With our nationwide employment programs and the multitude of employment contracts that apply to our team, we could never stay on top of benefits eligibility or to quickly identify instances of mismatching employee information like we do with UltiPro. Having one report that measures the 30-hour threshold on a 12-month period is amazing."

The Science Museum of Minnesota has its own workforce complexities with permanent employees and temporary staff supporting dynamic programs that include a computer education center, summer camp and classes, and the building and leasing or selling of exhibits. More than one million people engage with the museum each year through personal visits, school trips, museum-produced exhibitions installed at institutions across the country, and Omnitheater films. The museum sought a new HCM solution to overcome its previous system's module-compatibility problems, reliability issues, and limited data storage space, going live with UltiPro in January 2016.

"We must be able to respond to the special reporting requirements of each of our funding entities, including federal, state, and local government, as well as privae foundations and individual donors," said Juliette Francis, vice president of human resources for the Science Museum of Minnesota. "Our previous solution made it prohibitively expensive to keep electronic data long term, so we had to purge our data on an annual basis and rely on spreadsheets and hard copies to complete multi-year reports. We are excited to use UltiPro to house all our data electronically, and as a result, create faster reports with fewer resources that provide greater detail and insight."



The museum's employee recordkeeping is complicated by the way the organization scales up for certain projects. According to Francis, UltiPro will enable the museum to maintain the profiles of temporary staff in their database, saving time and money.

"Previously, we would have to recreate the employee records for the hundreds of individuals who periodically support a specific exhibit or project," said Francis. "UltiPro can save us the costs related to onboarding and offboarding our temporary staff, as well as the expenses involved in managing our fluctuating payroll. With UltiPro, our payroll administrator can focus on strategic tasks beyond general processing."


In addition to improved reporting, Ultimate's non-profit customers also report increased efficiencies and cost reductions as a result of switching to UltiPro. For example, Staatsburg, New York-based Anderson Center for Autism has been able to increase efficiency of its payroll team and also bring overtime costs for the organization down with UltiPro.

Anderson Center for Autism operates a school and residential campus comprising 19 facilities, as well as more than 20 adult houses and three day-habilitation programs, called LifeLong LearningSM Centers. A long-time customer, Anderson transitioned to cloud-based UltiPro in 2012, and has since completely automated its payroll, a process that once required every employee to submit weekly paper documents to the payroll department for manual verification and entry.

According to Gregg Paulk, director of information technologies at Anderson, UltiPro has cut paperwork by 95%, and the organization's headcount has grown 60% without any increase in the number of staff used to support payroll and administration. Furthermore, improved visibility into overtime costs has helped the organization correct staffing levels and bring overall costs down.

"Training is essential for our highly-regulated organization," said Paulk. "UltiPro has enabled Anderson to increase the amount of time staff spends on training and certifications by 30%."

"We take great pride in helping people who are in the business of serving the community," said Chris Phenicie, chief sales officer, mid-market/strategic, at Ultimate. "We are pleased that VersAbility, the Science Museum of Minnesota, and Anderson Center are leveraging our tools to respond quickly to detailed information requests and to streamline their HR operations, and that these savings are translating into greater community service."

About Ultimate Software

Ultimate is a leading provider of cloud-based human capital management (HCM) solutions, with approximately 30 million people records in the cloud. Ultimate's award-winning UltiPro delivers HR, payroll, talent, and time and labor management solutions that connect people with the information they need to work more effectively. Founded in 1990, the company is headquartered in Weston, Florida, and employs more than 3,300 professionals. In 2016, Fortune ranked Ultimate #1 on its list of 10 Best Large Workplaces in Technology and #15 on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list, Ultimate's fifth consecutive year to be ranked in the top 25. Ultimate was also ranked #8 on Forbes magazine's list of the 100 Most Innovative Growth Companies and ranked #1 in customer satisfaction in G2 (News - Alert) Crowd's Summer 2016 Core HR Software Grid report, based on user reviews. In 2015, Ultimate was named among InformationWeek's Elite 100, honoring innovation in business technology, and recognized as a "Leader" in Nucleus Research's HCM Technology Value Matrix. Ultimate has more than 3,400 customers with employees in 160 countries, including Bloomin' Brands, Culligan International, Feeding America, Major League Baseball, Pep Boys, SUBWAY, Texas Roadhouse, and Yamaha (News - Alert) Corporation of America. More information on Ultimate's products and services for people management can be found at www.ultimatesoftware.com.

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

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