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Case Study
With Unanet + Paylocity, Prevailance Reaps the Rewards of an ERP Referral and Payroll Integration
Sometimes the business referrals that prove most valuable come from unexpected sources, as Mike Schroeder discovered a couple years ago when he was shopping for a new HR and payroll system for Prevailance, the government contracting firm for which he serves as chief financial officer.
As Schroeder recalls, the referral arrived during a conversation with a contact at human capital management software company Paylocity. When the discussion turned to how much Prevailance, its decision-makers and its project teams could benefit from having seamless integration between payroll and other critical business systems, the Paylocity contact offered an unsolicited endorsement of a software solution that could help the firm fulfill its vision for a fully integrated digital infrastructure. The solution he suggested Schroeder consider: Unanet ERP GovCon, enterprise resource planning software that also happens to come with a prebuilt connector to enable quick, tight integration with Paylocity.
Prevailance
Prevailance (www.prevailance.com) is a service-disabled veteran-owned professional services firm whose primary clients are the U.S. Government, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the private sector. Based in Virginia Beach, Va., the firm offers a range of military trainingrelated services, including multinational integration, warfare skills training, command & intelligence, exercise, development control & support, and test & evaluation. Prevailance was founded in 2005 and has about 125 employees across the US.
The Challenges
The referral was timely, as Prevailance had been wrestling with a variety of frustrating, costly inefficiencies and information bottlenecks as a result of a heavy reliance on spreadsheets,
siloed systems and inattentive vendors:
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Payroll processes were time-intensive, error-prone, and overly complicated
“Little mistakes in a spreadsheet would ripple through the Prevailance universe, and they were really time-consuming to troubleshoot,” says Schroeder. As the firm would later discover, Paylocity simplifies payroll processing with automation.
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Teams that should have been collaborating around information weren’t
“Stovepipes between operations and finance were limiting information-share,” he says. Those stovepipes would soon disappear thanks to Unanet.
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Spreadsheets couldn’t keep up with a fast-scaling business.
"We are on track to grow to 200, 300, even 500 employees, and we knew spreadsheets couldn’t support that scale,” he explains. With Unanet, the firm would get a solution for that.
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Prevailance’s payroll provider wasn’t providing the support the firm needed.
“As one of their smaller clients,” he says, “we felt that we weren’t getting the service we
needed to grow.” With Paylocity, the firm would get an easy-to-use software platform with dedicated customer support.
At minimum, Prevailance needed a new payroll solution. Then came the referral that convinced Schroeder to think bigger. “The Paylocity team sold us on the customer service and quality software we’d be getting with Unanet ERP,” he recalls. “So we thought, ‘Why not look at an ERP [enterprise resource planning] system, too?’”
We liked the idea of integrating ERP and payroll, so we wouldn’t have to keep a separate set of books for HR and payroll, and we could minimize the number of human touches.
The Solution
During the process of evaluating potential ERP systems and providers, it didn’t take long for Schroeder and team to substantiate the referral from Paylocity. “Unanet came to the forefront pretty quickly,” he says. Among the deciding factors:
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A tight, ready-made integration between payroll and ERP
Prevailance took advantage of a prebuilt connector between Paylocity and Unanet ERP
GovCon that would simplify payroll processing and provide a bi-directional sync of employee information to save time and effort, remove redundancies and reduce errors. “We liked the idea of integrating ERP and payroll, so we wouldn’t have to keep two sets of books for HR and payroll, and we could minimize the number of human touches,” he explains. -
An implementation plan tailored specifically to Prevailance and supported by an expert, hands on team
“We had a GovCon focused team of people we could go to who understood exactly what we were talking about,” Schroeder recalls. “They were very accessible and kept us on task.”
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Extensive automations with Unanet ERP GovCon and Paylocity would eliminate time-sucking, error-prone manual processes in payroll, journal entries and more.
As a solution purpose-built for government contractors, Unanet ERP GovCon maps directly to the firm’s compliance needs (Service Contract Act, etc.).
Instead of dealing with errors from manual data entry, we’re thinking more about the company writ large.
Keys to Success
Prevailance turned a potentially turbulent ERP and payroll implementation into a straightforward, smooth process by:
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Prioritizing integration and automation in their technology investments.
Nowadays, the best-run businesses have built a silo-free, fully integrated digital
infrastructure across which data and insight flow freely to inspire collaboration, fuel innovation and in the process, banish mind-numbing, redundant manual work. In this case, Prevailance took advantage of Unanet Connect, a library of best-in-class applications with pre-built connectors that give firms the building blocks for a fully digital ecosystem. -
Envisioning the end game
Prior to implementation, Prevailance brought together people from accounting, finance, operations, HR and other teams touched by the ERP and payroll system implementation to collaboratively develop and document a vision for how they wanted their company to run with those new systems in place.
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Providing itself with some runway by running systems in parallel
Even after implementing Paylocity and Unanet, according to Schroeder, the firm maintained parallel processes in QuickBooks, redundancy that gave the firm peace of mind and a safety net during the transition.
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Encouraging people to be handson and explore the systems.
To get the most from a software investment, you want people to become proficient and self-sufficient with the tools and capabilities they have at hand. Leaders within Prevailance motivated people to explore the new systems and showed them where to find support resources to get their questions answered.
We have the systems in place to ensure people enjoy what they do and have a better quality of life as our employees.
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Running payroll takes 15 MINUTES INSTEAD OF SEVERAL DAYS.
By taking advantage of the automations within Paylocity and Unanet ERP GovCon, people in the finance and accounting departments now have MORE TIME FOR HIGHER-VALUE WORK. “Instead of dealing with errors from manual data entry, we’re thinking more about the company writ large,” Schroeder says. -
The firm got a new business and tech ally
Rather than a vendor that disappears after implementation, Prevailance has a long-term, service-focused partner in Unanet. -
No more dealing with an unresponsive, expensive payroll outsource
Now payroll is automated and completed on time with no errors. -
Closing books takes ONE DAY INSTEAD OF THREE
With journal entries now a “slick and efficient,” largely automated process, the firm’s controller is closing the books without having to chase down information or fix frequent errors. -
Employees are enjoying a higher quality work experience
Now people at Prevailance are working smarter, not harder. “We have the systems in place,” Schroeder says, “to ensure people enjoy what they do and have a better quality of life as our employees.” -
Execs are making better decisions for the firm and its people
“They have all the data,” he says, “right there in dashboards, to ask the right questions and make more informed decisions.”
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