Prison service streamlines HR systems

The Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) has integrated eight separate human resources (HR) systems are part of a £4m SAP software implementation and business change programme.

The first phase of the Compass project went live in April 2002 and the final phase went live this month.

The three-year programme was developed to streamline the service's use of information, says NIPS head of IT Ray Murray.

'Our IT strategy review showed the HR function was covered by disparate systems, both manual and technical, and large amount of paper were passing between the personnel, pay role and rostering functions.

'The plan was to integrate it all into one corporate system under the principle that information put in once and used many times,' said Murray.

The original business case for Compass predicted the programme would pay for itself within two years.

'The full benefit evaluation won't be done until the system is fully bedded in, but paper flows between the three functions have already been cut by more than 50 per cent so in terms of reducing bureaucracy it has achieved its targets already,' said Murray.

The key lesson learned from the project is the importance of change management.

'We probably underestimated the change management issues - we certainly had difficulties bringing people with us and convincing them that they didn't have to double check everything coming from another part of the organisation.

'A separate change manager should be appointed in corporate projects of this nature.

'The change manager should be included in the project management structure but should have a separate point of focus, to ensure that the business benefits are realised,' said Murray.

The SAP software was implemented by consultants Pecaso.