Avis Prestige
Miles and Miles Ltd

Whilst the company has grown, its values remain constant with a total commitment to customer care and the appreciation of the fact that it’s the small touches that make a big difference.

• What payroll and HR system issues did your business have prior to working with CPS?

Our old payroll system, which covered around 90 employees at the time, was completely manual and very labour and time-intensive. During payroll week we needed two out of the three directors to always be in the office, which was restrictive and didn’t allow for business continuity if something happened to one of us. All of our HR processes were also manual.

• What were you looking for?

We needed an automated payroll service that would be user friendly for both employees and payroll processors. It needed to offer flexibility in terms of when and where payroll could be processed and reduce our dependence on having so many people being involved in the process. We were also in need of an intuitive and accurate HR system. They both had to save time without a massive hit on the P&L.

• How did you initially approach looking for a new system?
  

I contacted a number of suppliers to tender their services, including Nick at CPS. I had worked with him in a previous role and was very impressed with what he offered. I then made my proposal to the board to get the project approved – it was myself, the managing director and commercial director who made the final decision.

• What were the most important considerations when evaluating your options?

We were looking for a combination of an intuitive and user-friendly system, along with the ability for it to be tailored and delivered at the right cost. We wanted a provider who took the time to understand us as an individual business, rather than one who wanted to squeeze us into a generalised “one size fits all” system. It had to be flexible and work for our specific business needs.

• Why did you ultimately choose CPS? What made them stand out over and above the competition?

Essentially, because they delivered on all of the above and more! The system on offer was intuitive and simple to use. It could be tailored precisely to our specific needs and requirements while at the same time simplifying our processes.

• Were your initial expectations met?

Yes. In fact, I’d say they were exceeded. It took around 3 months to get up and running. The contracts were signed mid-April, with the parallel runs taking place in June and July. We were fully live in August.

CPS delivered a highly personalised service, including proactive and reactive programming. Nick and the team were extremely knowledgeable and diligent, and always on hand to answer any queries. They were really strong on pre-empting and fixing any issues we might otherwise have encountered in the testing and building phases. They worked above and beyond to accurately deliver a system tailored to our specific needs within the agreed timeframes. Ultimately, they delivered a very robust system that was tested to the nth degree to avoid any issues when running payroll, which is clearly incredibly sensitive and needs to be 100% accurate. It was a really seamless transition.

• Did you have any specific challenges that needed to be overcome?

Our starting point was rather challenging – nothing about our pre-CPS payroll was consistent!

We had a completely manual timesheet system coming in from 7 stations across the UK. Those timesheets are used to calculate total pay for some staff, but only overtime for others. They covered a four or five-week period, but salaries are based on a calendar month. There are different rates of overtime depending on location and time, various holiday and pension schemes, and varying hours being worked depending on role and location. Some employees are on rotas: others have ad hoc working patterns. Trying to find a constant against which all staff could be measured was impossible!

But CPS rose to the challenge. In fact, not only did they rise to the challenge, they exceeded our expectations by adding a bespoke timesheet module to their smartphone app that could handle all our highly variable and complex timesheet shift rules to perform the necessary pay calculations behind the scenes. All while being simple and straightforward to use from our employees’ perspective! Somehow they managed to write a bespoke program that accounted for pretty much every timesheet anomaly in the company.

• In what ways do you feel you’ve benefited from using the software?

I have confidence in being 100% compliant in all aspects of payroll, pensions, HR, data protection and other related areas. We’ve saved a huge amount of time that would otherwise have been lost to processing – at least three days a month if not more.

The software gives us real time information and data too; we don’t have to wait until the end of the month after payroll’s been processed to understand what our overtime or ad hoc costs will be. We now have HR records that are more secure and easily accessible and the software has given us much better visibility and management over HR issues like sickness, absence and holidays.

• Longer term, has it delivered what you’d hoped?

Yes, it’s delivered over and above all expectations -especially given all the issues we’ve recently faced with COVID-19. Claiming for furlough or COVID-19 related SSP has been incredibly straightforward and simple and, of course, it’s been straightforward to process everything remotely when necessary too.

• How have you found the ongoing support?

It’s been faultless. The ongoing support has been proactive: CPS has a knack of spotting things way before we do, then making us aware that an issue we might have faced has now been resolved so we won’t have to worry about it! They are fast to react where necessary – the system has been updated to accommodate all of the COVID-19 implications, and at the same time further improvements were made to benefit all our users.

• Is there anything you were particularly pleased with?

What I am most pleased with is the reaction from the stakeholders in the business who have to use the system. Accepting change can be hard but not only have all the users taken incredibly well to the system, they are constantly praising it too. That’s a real testament to the system created by CPS.

The app has been amazing. Not only does it accommodate all the various timesheet permutations and combinations, it also lets our employees easily do other things like viewing payslips and P60s and booking holidays. Our managers then use the main system to effortlessly authorise timesheets and approve or decline holidays. To create a system that does all that without complicating the process for the user is an incredible achievement.

Working with Nick was a breath of fresh air too. I really couldn’t recommend him or CPS more highly. From the get go it was clear he knew his system, and all the rules around payroll, pensions and HR compliance in great detail. He was extremely focused on understanding just how our business worked and how we processed things. He wanted to get a very in-depth understanding of who and what we were so he could write a program and create an app that suited our needs accordingly.

Throughout the whole process, I was always kept up to date with progress and timings and CPS over-delivered at every stage. Nothing was too much trouble – despite how complicated we have made things over the past 67 years!