Dresser & Associates Engineers An Ideal Solution For GEI Consultants, Inc.

Integration Of Sage Abra And BST Enterprise Drives Efficiency

GEI Consultants, Inc. (GEI) provides a broad array of geotechnical, water resources, environmental and ecological science and engineering consulting services to clients worldwide. Employing more than 400 professionals across 19 locations, GEI has completed over 25,000 projects for government agencies, utilities and power companies, industrial and manufacturing companies, developers, institutional, and AEC partner firms throughout the United States, Canada and many other countries. The firm's projects include complex scientific and engineering engagements for buildings and facilities; water storage, conveyance and management; highways, bridges, tunnels, eco systems, and more.

Manual HR System Unmanageable

For years, GEI has successfully run its accounting, payroll, and project management operations using BST Enterprise™ from BST Global. The firm's HR tasks, however, lacked the benefits of automation. "We used dozens of spreadsheets to track our generous employee benefit packages and other HR-related information," recalls Judy Eburn, controller for GEI. "There was a lot of redundant data entry, lost time, and the potential for error."

Rapid growth and a distributed workforce were making this manual system unmanageable. At the same time, BST Global announced it was discontinuing its payroll module. "The timing was right for us to integrate payroll and HR, so we began looking for a full-featured Human Resource Management Solution (HRMS)," Eburn adds.

A Highly Recommended Partner

BST Global referred GEI to Dresser & Associates, a premier Sage Abra HRMS partner. Dresser & Associates has developed a link between BST Enterprise and Sage Abra HRMS. "Once we realized we could integrate our HR and payroll data with our business operations system, we didn't look further than Sage Abra," Eburn says.

The choice of a business partner to implement the solution was easy, Eburn says. "We began attending the Dresser & Associates user group meetings and talking to their team and to their clients. We were very impressed by their team's product knowledge and expertise in HR and payroll. And from their clients we heard only positive comments."

Dresser & Associates performed an initial transfer of the data from BST Enterprise to Sage Abra, allowing GEI to be productive from the start.

Employee Self Service Frees Staff Time

Dresser & Associates implemented the Abra Employee Self Service (ESS) module, and the feedback from employees at GEI is enthusiastic. "Our staff loves the ability to view and modify their own profiles," says Eburn. "And management loves it because it eliminates a tremendous burden on the HR staff. They no longer need to handle routine changes like address updates, or W-4 changes and as a result have seen a significant drop in call volume."

Business Intelligence, Delivered

Dresser & Associates is currently implementing KnowledgeSync, a business activity monitoring tool capable of drawing data from both the BST Enterprise and the Sage Abra databases. The goal is to provide the management team with up-to-the-minute business intelligence data regarding the entire operation - data they can use to make strategic business decisions. "KnowledgeSync has nearly limitless possibilities, and we're looking forward to taking advantage of it," says Eburn.

Saving Two Labor Days Per Pay Period

Before each pay cycle, GEI runs the utility that transfers employee time sheet data from BST Enterprise to Sage Abra Payroll. In return, new employee data is transferred from Sage Abra to BST Enterprise. "We now have an integrated solution for maintaining employee data," Eburn says. "And data in both systems is automatically kept in sync."

Eburn estimates that the integration between Sage Abra and BST Enterprise saves the payroll staff a full two days work each pay period. "With over 400 timesheets to enter manually, the time involved would have been significant. We would have had to hire additional staff just to handle this task," she says. "Plus, we've bypassed a potential source of data entry errors, because the data is only entered once, at the source."

The integration between Sage Abra and BST Enterprise has dramatically increased the efficiency and productivity of the HR and payroll teams. "The manual data entry and the redundancy is gone," says Eburn. "We now have time for more strategic tasks."

It Pays For Itself

"With BST Enterprise and Sage Abra, we have two powerful purpose-built tools that deliver the data that we need to run our business. There are so many positives. We are saving on staff salaries, eliminating redundancies and overhead, and have access to better, more timely data," says Eburn. "The solution has paid for itself many times over."

The caliber of support and services delivered by Dresser & Associates continually impress Eburn. "When we have questions, we know who to call," she says. "Dresser & Associates is a tremendous resource for us."

Read more customer testimonials, or contact Dresser & Associates to discuss how we can help meet your business' HR needs.