Ceridian

Case Study
Ceridian Solves the “Three Cs”
Actian Handles Complexity, Change and Compliance
“Actian allowed us to consolidate multiple vendors, multiple
solutions and multiple technologies all down to one solution,
one vendor and a consistent, repeatable, reliable solution for
our clients.”
– Sam Ashton, Vice President of Ta x Technology
Executive Summary
Business
–Multi-national company
that provides payroll and
HR services in 45 countries
Challenge
–Complexity, Change and
Compliance
Outcome
–Multiple data formats
–Fast implementation
–Reusable components
Scalable
–Low cost and easy to use
Ceridian is a multi-national company that provides payroll and HR services
in 45 countries and Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) in over 100
countries. This requires Ceridian Tax Division to deal with over 9000
federal, state, and local regulations that must be tracked and constantly
updated. To ensure timely and accurate payroll tax services to virtually any
business, Ceridian has formed alliances and strategic partnerships with
ERP providers like Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Ultimate Software.
Ceridian processes more than $163 billion in annual payroll tax liabilities for
their customers, including 80 percent of the Fortune 100 and 60 percent of
the Fortune 500 companies.
It needed a solution from a single provider that could handle bi-directional
data exchange between any format, especially the large number of payroll
engines in current use. Actian DataConnect was chosen based on the
requirements for adaptability, reliability, scalability, and ease-of-use, as well
as for having a very small and affordable footprint.
Highlights at a Glance
• Implementation times reduced from a year to a few weeks
• Handles any data format, both input and output
• Tested and proven scalable for high data volumes
• Improved customer experience
Challenge: Integrate the Integrations
Various clients were using multiple data sources including SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and
home-grown ERP systems. Multiple vendors had built and were supporting different payroll engine interfaces for Ceridian and its clients that were highly inconsistent, and often quite intrusive on the client’s
system. The challenge was the consolidation of all of those complex integrations into one small-footprint solution — owned and supported by Ceridian — with a goal of greater control over compliance
with thousands of constantly changing regulations.
Software Selection: Actian Solved the “Three Cs” and with a Small Footprint
Ceridian, as a multi-national, multi-development company that has grown by acquisition, has many ETL
tools in use across the various business groups. The Ceridian Small Business Division strongly recommended the Actian integration platform. Sam Ashton, VP of Tax Technology for Ceridian, said, “It was
easy to install, and they built a really slick little application around it. It helps them extract data for their
401K and benefits business and sharing information, and it worked out really well. So we saw a demo
of it. We talked with the developers that implemented it, and that really helped in our decision to also
look at Actian for our team.”
After analyzing and performing a proof-of-concept with all the in-house tools and several other tools
available in the market, Actian DataConnect came out on top based on adaptability, scalability, and
ease-of-use.
Ashton added, “The biggest thing that won us
over in our evaluation of all the tools was the ability
to take the integration services engine and to put
that on the client as a very small footprint, as opposed to big intrusive types of tools like some
of the other ones we looked at.”
Payroll Engines
SAP
JDEdwards
Ceridian
Oracle
XML
Data Integrator
e
Operations
PeopleSoft
home grown
ERP's
...
Solution: In-House Team Takes Control
Sam Ashton said, “We’ve built an integration or interface team inside Ceridian Tax Services using the
Actian tool. We build the solution, thus eliminating the need for third party vendors.”
Whenever a new client needs integration to a new payroll engine, Ceridian’s interface team—working
with a single selected vendor who provides functional and technical expertise in all the payroll elements, as well as available test platforms—can build maps and run a series of test files in only a few
weeks.
Ashton states, “We have a pretty complex XML file format that we use for our products. Actian was able
to very quickly take some of our test files and throw it into the XML. And it went very well. Some of the
other tools that we looked at would have taken weeks to try and get that done. We were able to do it in
a matter of hours and days.”
“So, right there we saw the power of the tool. Our back-office XML format is always the target, so
we’ve instantly got half the project done as soon as we move onto a new payroll engine.”
Actian Data Profiler provided the other necessary ingredient, data analysis. Sam Ashton said, “We
get bad data, everybody gets bad data. So, how do you deal with it? Well, now the process of dealing
with it is baked right into the application.”
Ashton added, “We can elaborate the business rules to be able to make that a better customer
experience.”
Benefits
Handle Any Data Format: This one technology provides connectivity to the majority of name brand
applications, such as SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, as well as XML and Web service APIs.
And newly encountered payroll engine interfaces can be added rapidly.
Fast Implementation: Ceridian and its selected vendor can provide clients extensive payroll technical
expertise that they can call on as needed, and test platforms to verify new maps and processes for the
individual payroll engines. This cuts new payroll engine interface creation time from as much as a
year down to a few weeks.
Reusable Components: The target XML format is consistent and Actian allows that part of the map
to be reused. So, instantly, half of all new maps are already done.
Scalable: Even if the business doubles in size, the same integration infrastructure will still work fine.
Testing has proven that the system can handle very high data volumes.
Low Cost and Easy to Use: As Ashton put it, “The cost was unbelievable compared to some of the
other ones. And I didn’t need an army of developers to implement it.”
Conclusion
Now, Ceridian Tax Services has one solution based on one technology, that’s repeatable, consistent,
adaptable and scalable, and can handle any format and multiple platforms.
When asked to compare the situation before and after Actian, Ashton said, “If I were to go back in the
old world and go to a third party-vendor and say, ‘Here, build me this interface,’ it would have taken
probably months, if not a year, to get something. With the new tool, we’re able to take that engine and
actually have our tax filing service run a few test files in a short period of time, very short. I mean weeks.
“It’s night and day compared to what it used to be.”
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