A major challenge this State Retirement Agency(SRS) faced was to be able to encourage the employers to use the new web based online system to report contributions.

Business Systems Analysis Services for a State Retirement Agency in the USA.

Client: State Retirement System

Company Overview: The State Retirement System (SRS), created in 1953, is a state agency providing retirement benefits, long-term disability benefits and other benefits to employees of the state, counties, municipalities, universities and community colleges, school districts and other political entities.

Business Need: A major challenge the SRS faced was to be able to encourage the employers (which constituted of 50% of the existing employers reporting their contributions to SRS) to use the web based online system which was going to replace their old system (dBASE) to which support was no longer going to be extended although the old system could still be used by the employer.

Solution: Online Contributions Reporting: Designed a web-based UI for those employer groups (who did not have their IT departments) which will enable them to maintain their employee’s data, report contributions and adjustments per pay period and also make payments via Automated Clearing House (ACH). The new system was designed such that the contribution files that were once produced at the employer’s end and sent to SRS on media such as Tape, Diskettes were eliminated by way of the new system generating this file internally based on the employee information that was provided by the employer.

The employer was also given the capability to maintain their employee information on the web through a secure site. The system was built so close to their existing dBASE system which would enable employers to ramp up easily. The agency also provided presentations at the employer conferences in order to encourage the employers and present to them the ease of use.

Benefits: Our goal to encourage all employers to ramp up in at least 1 year’s time was achieved and with a lot of appreciation of how easy it is for the employers to report their contributions in a timely manner avoiding late fees.

Other Business Process Improvements:
>Automation of Batch Processing: Designed a system that would process those files either uploaded by the employers or where the system created those files based on the data the employer submitted. There were three jobs set to trigger at a certain time in the evening to process the files from the point they were uploaded to updating the database.

> Automation of Late charge invoices: Designed a system for the agency in order to calculate late charges for those employers who were delinquent (did not pay within 14 days of the pay period). An online interface was built for the users such that every 30 days they could have the system generate invoices on a click of a button which were then mailed out.

> Automation of Service Purchase posting: Designed an interface for the users internally to be able to post Service Purchase Contributions as often as daily to the database such that the data will be most current as to who ever needs to look at it for any calculation such as New Retiree or Forfeiture or Disbursements.

Currently STAT9 Technologies is supporting this project from business systems analysis stand point. With this system in place the users will no longer have to wait once a month or once a fiscal year for the members account to be updated. And so far the calculations were an estimate but going forward the data will be most current almost on any given day so the calculations will be more accurate.