LBi Software

LBi Software Releases New Time & Attendance Tracking Application: At-Trac 4.0

2012-01-26T15:45:00.002-05:00

LBi Software announced today the next release of At-Trac, its Time & Attendance and Absence Management application – now available in the Cloud.

At-Trac is a complete web-enabled application that provides a comprehensive solution for entering and managing all of your attendance and time tracking needs. It has an easy to use intuitive drag and drop calendar interface and seamlessly integrates with your HR system of record, your billing system and payroll system.

At-Trac can now be delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS). Our SaaS option frees your IT staff from the burden of purchasing and maintaining expensive hardware and software. SaaS from LBi provides nightly backups, full firewall protection, 99.9% guaranteed uptime, a proven disaster recovery plan, and is offered with two options:

Dedicated Server Environment
Cloud Computing Environment

At-Trac’s features include:

E-mail notifications
Full approval workflow - employee requesting days off/entering hours, managers monitoring and approval
Business Intelligence Reporting
TimeSheet entry and approval work flow
Self-service data entry from anywhere there is an internet connection
Paperless entry of "time off" requests (vacation, sick, personal) and approvals/rejections with automatic notifications generated to employee and manager
The ability for employees to enter timesheets and "exception" times automatically, and managers to approve
The ability to set up default schedules
Daily, monthly and annual calendar views which allow managers to track accrued time off balances by individual or department, detect excessive absences or repeating patterns, and see time entered for employees
Highly dynamic user interface allows end-users to enter company-specific time off and accrual rules, no need for programmer modifications
Wide range of reporting capabilities, including absence tracking by individual/department and G/L liability
Wireless handheld integration
Biometric (Fingerprint ID) and bar code time entry clock options

About LBi Software

LBi Software creates software applications for Human Capital Management using the latest Web 2.0 and IVR/Speech Recognition technologies. LBi’s HCM products are turnkey web applications that integrate with enterprise HCM systems. Click here for more information on At-Trac.

HR Case Management Enhances Talent Management

2011-11-28T09:26:00.002-05:00

One of the hottest HCM business solutions today is Talent Management. At the 2011 HR Technology Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas Talent Management vendors outnumbered all other HCM vendor categories. Talent Management (TM) systems are designed to help companies manage the full life cycle of employees, from recruitment to onboarding to employee development to offboarding.

Unfortunately, what these powerful systems generally don’t do well is monitor individual employee satisfaction and general contentment during their tenure with the organization. Yes, the better systems manage performance and track employee growth; but what about confidential issues, employee disputes, embarrassing harassment situations, and other matters important to the employee but not on the radar of TM software?

Professionally and expeditiously managing these all-important events is in the dominion of the HR department, who may handle these cases very well individually while not necessarily recognizing potential patterns of employee issues. This is particularly true when specific HR representatives manage the help desk calls for specific locations. For instance, one company division or location prides itself on high employee retention while another similar facility struggles to keep the best workers. But what is the difference in these two similar business operations? They use the same talent management solution, the same HR system, and abide by the same HR policies. Additionally, management at the struggling location may not be able to pinpoint specific problems that are causing a higher degree of turnover.

So where does the answer lie? The answer can frequently be found in the history of employee interactions with HR personnel. However, without a system for collecting, archiving, retrieving and analyzing these interactions, it is virtually impossible to detect patterns of issues systemic within the organization that may lead to larger problems. Repeated questions about available Paid Time Off (PTO) days, dissatisfaction with company insurance plans, management disputes, work environment issues, and other potential red-flag cases cannot be uncovered by reviewing any individual employee record. Businesses need comprehensive HR Case Management software designed to filter through large databases of cases to recognize these patterns and understand the possible ramifications.

There are underlying common-themed personnel issues within an organization which can often directly suggest causes for more apparent concerns, such as employee retention problems, excess absences, or dips in productivity. Discovering those issues quickly and determining the potential consequences requires the right business solution – one that may not be found in even the best Talent Management systems. However, armed with the right information, management can put policies and procedures in place to mitigate problems before they become systemic. Automated Case Management Systems are designed to gather the right data points and provide exactly that type of powerful analysis.

When HR Help Desk / Case Management is incorporated into a comprehensive Talent Management strategy, the organization truly then provides the full lifecycle support for incoming employees, ultimately contributing to measurable performance gains. And the good news is the best Case Management systems, such as CaseManager from LBi Software, are designed to work seamlessly with both your HRIS software as well as the leading Talent Management applications.

In conclusion, for organizations planning to deploy end to end Talent Management systems, it would be prudent to evaluate the addition of an HR Help Desk / Case Management component to your solution map. Implementing an automated Case Management system will truly contribute to your project goals and add significant personnel performance benefits.

About CaseManager from LBi Software

CaseManager is help desk and case management software for Human Resource Management and Benefits Administration. It creates a knowledgebase on the fly and empowers employees with a Self Service Portal for asking and answering questions.

Keeping the Human Factor in Automated HR Helpdesk

2011-10-17T09:41:00.003-04:00

Providing employees with choices while keeping their confidentiality

Consider the evolution of terms referring to the traditional HR department. Initially there was the "Personnel Department", which simply referenced employees as people. Next came "Human Resources", further defining employees, albeit subtly, as business assets. The current term in vogue is "Human Capital Management", essentially redefining people as revenue and profit generating business assets.

Unfortunately, though this transition of terms more accurately describes the role of employees in organizations today, it also tends to take the "personal" out of "personnel". HR software business solutions have the potential to further reduce the close interaction between employees and HR staff. Just as interactive voice response systems virtually eliminate the need for customer contact with live support agents, so can automated HR support systems.

Automated HR Help Desk solutions are designed to minimize direct 1:1 personal contact with HR, which is both good and bad.

Good – saves money, time, and frees up HR for other tasks.
Bad – less personal contact with HR, potentially risking employee satisfaction issues.

However, solutions like LBi’s CaseManager include a feature that allows employees to request their case resolution via phone, in person, email, etc., which provides the ability to create cases online but receive a response in person or other preferred level of contact. CaseManager also includes features that allow cases to be marked confidential and have them routed to specific representatives trained to handle special cases. Providing the ability to discretely submit a potentially embarrassing case such as a manager dispute or harassment accusation specifically to authorized senior HR personnel, and have the resolution process equally as discrete, truly supports the "Human Factor" in automated systems.

In organizations lacking an automated Help Desk system, employees are generally forced to make initial contact with one or more HR representatives whom ultimately may need to escalate their case to senior or properly trained personnel. This added level of contact risks employee privacy. Sometimes, just physically walking into the HR office can raise unwanted questions and curiosity among company staff.

In many help desk cases, such as simple PTO requests or tuition reimbursement questions, automated systems will speed responses to the employee, thereby saving valuable HR personnel time. Less unnecessary burden on the HR staff again supports the "Human Factor".

The bottom line is the best automated systems provide employees with the greatest personal choice in selecting their preferred method of contact with HR, ultimately increasing employee satisfaction while providing the confidential interaction with HR that they deserve. From HR’s point of view, valuable administrative staff time is freed up to manage more strategic tasks. Not only is the "Human Factor" alive and well in the best Automated Help Desk solutions, it is the primary purpose for deploying such business systems. Systems such as CaseManager increase employee satisfaction and improve overall HR operations, ultimately driving improved performance within the whole organization.

About CaseManager from LBi Software

CaseManager is a complete, browser-based web application providing a comprehensive software solution for managing and tracking HR, Payroll and Benefits calls and issues.

Analyzing HR Helpdesk Traffic to Identify Corporate Policy Needs

2011-08-10T11:46:00.002-04:00

Identifying potential critical HR issues to effectively manage your workforce

The corporate HR function has gone through many changes with the adoption of new technologies and ERP software solutions. The influx of high tech solutions has created a virtual HR environment and has enabled companies to build databases of company and employee data. While data mining is new to the HR environment, the practice of data mining has been successfully employed in more traditional corporate areas for trending business activities and fine tuning business processes. With the adoption of Automated HR Helpdesk solutions, the opportunity to fine tune the HR function through data mining and the analysis of helpdesk data has arrived.

HR Helpdesk Overview
The Automated HR helpdesk solutions available in the marketplace, like CaseManager from LBi Software, extend the access and reach of HR by utilizing existing technologies to create a virtual HR environment. Employees can enter the system through the corporate portal and perform a variety of tasks including:

Searching HR guides
Reviewing common problem databases
Submitting questions and problems to HR
Checking status on open questions
Checking on resolved issues

Employee queries can be resolved by a generalist or routed to a specialist as required. The employee also has the option of searching within the helpdesk databases for answers and similar situations raised by other employees. The HR helpdesk software is fully integrated to the HR systems, and utilizes corporate systems such as e-mail and voice systems to communicate in a secure environment.

CaseManager from LBi will also perform automatic escalations of unresolved cases and will maintain a complete case history for each employee.

Data Analysis of Helpdesk Traffic
Data Mining is relatively new in the data analysis field but is readily gaining acceptance in the world of business analytics. It allows for the analysis of data to extract patterns from a larger set of data. With data mining techniques we can go beyond the tracking of policy and guideline concerns and search for patterns showing repeated issues with specific employees or managers. Companies can find patterns that would not have become apparent in a manual system.

Confusing Policies
Analysis of the accumulated data from the HR helpdesk activity can help to highlight trends and patterns where employees experience difficulty in understanding policies or in understanding how benefits are applied. Armed with this new information, the company can then decide on how to address the issue, clarify the policies and avoid the confusion going forward.

These techniques combined with the helpdesk data can help assess the impact of new or modified company processes such as implementing Six Sigma or lean manufacturing disciplines. While employees may not report concerns to their line managers, there may be patterns in the data that can lead back to these changes. Stress felt by employees can be both a satisfaction issue and a retention problem for the company.

Harassment Concerns
According to the EEOC, there were over 32,000 reported incidents of workplace harassment which cost businesses $98,500,000 in settlement costs. Data Mining of helpdesk data can highlight potential issues, provide direction in seeking appropriate solutions, and assist in the timely response to these situations. Additionally, Data Mining can help evaluate corporate policies and their impact on specific employee demographics. For instance, are men complaining more than women about specific policies? Is there a prevalence of religious issues?

Employee Satisfaction
Employee satisfaction can be gauged from data in helpdesk surveys and through data patterns revealed in the analysis. A good helpdesk solution will provide for employee surveys to gauge the effectiveness of the helpdesk and the HR process.

Summary & Conclusion
Helpdesk solutions, like CaseManager from LBi Software, extend the reach and accessibility of the HR department. Additionally, the data accumulated and stored can be used as a basis for highlighting potential problems and concerns. Analyzing the data and the trending of employees’ queries and concerns can highlight corporate policies that are confusing, complex or poorly written.

Reviewing the volume of queries by area and drilling down into specific issues can help identify potential problems and address these issues to reduce the traffic into the HR helpdesk. Issues that are identified can then be reviewed by management and may be addressed with a clarifying memo, additional training or other actions as required.

With time and experience in leveraging the available data, correlating information from the various HR systems with other critical Key Performance Indicators (i.e. corporate revenue/profitability performance, customer satisfaction, employee retention and turnover), becomes a viable possibility.

In the end, there is a true relationship between performance in every discrete area of any organization, from Finance to HR to Manufacturing to Sales, etc. Employee performance in any one business unit may ultimately impact performance in every other department. A comprehensive HR Help Desk solution with intelligent analytics capability will help identify potential critical issues in each department and become the centerpiece of a total solution to effectively managing your workforce.

About CaseManager from LBi Software

CaseManager is a complete, browser-based web application providing a comprehensive software solution for managing and tracking HR, Payroll and Benefits calls and issues.

An Introduction to Location Based Services

2011-05-23T12:31:00.001-04:00

Location Based Services can be a huge benefit to employers

Going on a business trip or traveling to a foreign city used to mean that you would arrive at the remote destination and be at the mercy of a taxi driver, or a hotel concierge, on finding a place to dine. You couldn’t be sure of the quality of the food, again relying only on the advice of a single person. Today, you can quickly take out your cell phone, bring up an app like Urban Spoon, and find all restaurants in your given area, even specifying parameters, like “Free Wi-Fi”, in your search. You can then choose from a few restaurants, and settle on one that was reviewed favorably by others. Having a device that can share your location with applications has changed the way we approach everyday situations in today’s world. This specific technology is known as Location Based Services (LBS).

A Location Based Service is defined as an information, entertainment or commercial service which makes use of the geographic position of a person, usually obtained by a mobile device. With the rise in use of smartphones, cellphones and tablets, the exact location of a person is more readily available. This allows for new services to be built that specifically target people in a particular location.

TECHNOLOGY
The location piece of LBS is achieved by handheld devices that can pinpoint the whereabouts of the person using the phone. This can be done by GPS, assisted GPS, GSM localization, cell tower triangulation or IP tracking. These vary in precision, but they all offer, at a minimum, the general location of the person in question.

POSSIBLE USES
Location Based Services have many possible uses, as seen in the above example of finding a restaurant. At the personal level:

Help find social events going on in a given city
Help find a specific service, like an ATM or a bank
Provide turn by turn navigation
Help locate friends, or other people with common interests
Alerts and notifications for events such as traffic jams, road closings, etc.
Services based on proximity, such as EZPass

At a business/corporate level:

Ability to send targeted ads to people in an area
Ability to track resources (e.g., make sure an employee is on a particular route)
Ability to distribute resources (e.g., make sure taxis in a location are spread efficiently)

At a government / law enforcement level:

Locate missing person, property
Send notifications, emergency messages, to people in a certain area

PRIVACY CONCERNS
The drawback of this technology is loss of personal privacy. Your location, and sometimes identity, can be tracked at any given moment throughout the day. A major smartphone manufacturer was recently found to have been storing a history of users’ locations on their devices for up to a year. While it is unclear what this information could be used for, the fact it was retained is itself alarming. Companies that provide these Location Based Services should warn the customers up front that their location information will be gathered and how that information will be used.

CONCLUSION
As Location Based Services continue to transform and grow, you, as a consumer or business owner, need to keep pace with the changes. Weighing the positives of LBS, such as ability to reach a targeted audience, or the ability to obtain information about your surroundings quickly, versus the negatives of LBS, such as privacy concerns or an overload of information, will help you come to a decision regarding this technology. The decision will not be “if” you are going to use LBS in your everyday life, but more “how” and “how much” you will use it.

About LBi Software
LBi Software creates software applications for Human Capital Management using the latest Web 2.0 and IVR/Speech Recognition technologies. LBi's HCM products are turnkey web applications that integrate with enterprise HCM systems.

Simplicity in GUI Design

2011-03-03T12:26:00.000-05:00

We’ve all been there. You load up your favorite website, your vendor’s new e-commerce portal, or that fancy new application your company purchased for three years’ worth of your salary. At first glance, you are impressed; it has a modern, sleek look, flashy graphics, perhaps an animated home page. You think to yourself, “Wow, the software really has all the bells and whistles!”

Then you start to use it. You can’t find the “New” button. Oh wait, there it is, buried in between the scrolling news ticker and the search box. You click it. You wait five seconds. The screen finally loads. What next? What does this field mean? How do I submit my request? Where do I…?

You get the picture. The designers of that expensive software surely spent a fortune on graphic artists, but clearly dismissed what is likely the most important factor in the success of any application intended for regular, day to day use: GUI (Graphical User Interface) usability.

The GUI of a successful application must, first and foremost, be intuitive and easy to use. It can have all the fancy graphics and latest technologies, but if it doesn’t let the user accomplish their tasks quickly and naturally, it will never gain acceptance.

The GUIs of most thriving applications will have many features in common. They will be intuitive. They will be tailored to the workflow of the users. They will be quick and responsive to user input. They will be neat, clean, and generally uncluttered. Most importantly, they will inspire confidence in the users that they are doing things correctly, because the application guides them through the workflow in an obvious and expected way.

At LBi, when we begin designing a new application, the first thing we ask ourselves is “How can we help the user accomplish their goals as easily as possible?” We then design a system based around the answer to that key question. The user interface will be simple and require little to no training. The menus and page structure will be based on the desired workflow so that users can complete their work correctly and quickly. The major navigation controls will be prominently displayed in logical locations. Navigation between screens or pages within the application will be quick.

This is not to say the application will not look good, or will be based on antiquated technologies – just that these things will not come at the expense of usability.

It all boils down to function versus glitz. Salesmen and advertisements will promote impressive graphics and new-fangled technologies. Satisfied users will speak of simplicity and usefulness. When designing your system’s GUI, which side are you on?

Cloud Computing and LBi Software

2011-01-24T11:39:00.006-05:00

Cloud Computing is a general term used for delivering hosted services over the Internet. What’s different about Cloud service as compared to traditional hosting is that it is sold on demand, typically by the minute or the hour; it is elastic -- a user can have as much or as little of a service as they want at any given time; and the service is fully managed by the provider. A Cloud can be private or public. A public Cloud sells services to anyone on the Internet. A private (virtual private) Cloud is a proprietary network or a data center that supplies hosted services to a limited number of people. When a service provider uses public Cloud resources to create their private Cloud, the result is called a virtual private Cloud. Whatever type used, the goal of Cloud computing is to provide easy, scalable access to computing resources and IT services.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a collection of various hosted network services. LBi uses two of the services offered - Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3).

EC2 is a web service that provides resizable computing capacity in the Cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers. LBi uses EC2 to host all of its websites, as well as several applications. EC2 allows you to run virtual servers (called instances) in the Cloud. You can run as many servers as you want and Amazon invoices based on hours of use and bandwidth. LBi has also used EC2 to load test versions of its products. For example, CaseManager was installed on one instance and a load testing program was run on another instance. The benefit of using EC2 is that it provides more bandwidth and processing power than running the test in LBi’s offices. An additional benefit of hosting something in the Cloud is that the website/data is now stored out of the office in a backed-up/redundant environment. This helps to prevent the catastrophic loss of data from something such as a fire in the company’s data center.

In addition to EC2, LBi also utilizes S3. This service is essentially a virtual hard drive in the sky. S3 is used to back up our EC2 databases every 3 hours, and files are backed up from S3 back to LBi as an additional safeguard.

Almost two years ago, we began all our hosting through EC2. This was done after a successful, issue-free, year long test using EC2 to host our corporate and Appraisal Application sites. By using these services, we can be sure our sites are secure, resilient and reliable. We can also ensure that they provide us with the ability to scale our applications to any size business, small or massive. LBi also uses cloud computing for demonstrating our applications. Using cloud computing, the application is available for prospects to evaluate at their convenience.

LBi also utilizes EC2 to deliver its SaaS (Software as a Service) Cloud option. As of 2010, LBi Software began to deliver its CaseManager and At-Trac products as SaaS. LBi Software offers two SaaS hosting options: 1. Dedicated Server Environment (hosted on a physical dedicated server) and 2. Cloud Computing Environment (utilizing Amazons EC2).

Sites LBi is hosting on EC2

Site/Application	Description	URL
Appraisal Application	Appraisal application that LBi developed for a local real estate appraisal company	N/A
Dutch Property Management	LBi designed and hosts Dutch Property Management’s corporate site	www.dutchpropertymanagement.com
CaseManager	CaseManager is LBi’s HR help desk product. LBi hosts its SaaS Cloud offering of CaseManager on EC2	N/A
At-Trac	At-Trac is LBi’s time and attendance product. LBi hosts its SaaS Cloud offering of At-Trac on EC2
LBi Software Corporate Site	LBi’s corporate brochureware site including a download portal for downloading patches and demos	www.LBiSoftware.com
LBi Technical Support	Website for LBi’s PC and Network support offering	www.lbitechsupport.com
Richard Security	LBi designed and hosts Richard Security’s Corporate Site	www.richardsecurity.com
Suntec Forest Homeowners Website	LBi designed and hosts Suntec Forest Homeowners bulletin board site	www.suntecforestcondo.com

In order to safeguard our clients’ material LBi has a process of maintaining redundant backups. The disaster recovery server for all these sites is located at LBi. The database for each site is real-time replicated from EC2 to LBi’s Disaster Recovery server. The Disaster Recovery server is in turn backed up every night. In addition, the entire hosted site is backed up every three hours (increased to 1 hour for critical apps) from EC2 to S3. This process insures that no data is ever lost.

Today, firms require hosting companies to have generator backup, redundant ISPs and in many cases co-locations. When a site is down there is a potential loss of revenue. Through the use of Cloud Computing, smaller companies such as LBi Software can offer its customers this type of premium hosting at a lower cost. For example, one weekend this past July an air conditioner malfunctioned, spiking the temperature in LBi’s Corporate Server room. Technicians had to bring down the servers in the room for six hours. Since all hosting was in the cloud there was no disruption of service to any of LBi’s clients.

The Benefits of Extract, Transform and Load (ETL)

2010-11-15T15:08:00.002-05:00

The value of enterprise business intelligence is greatly enhanced when information from various sources is combined in a meaningful way.

What is ETL?
ETL, or Extract, Transform and Load, eases the combination of heterogeneous sources into a unified central repository. Usually this repository is a data warehouse or mart which will support enterprise business intelligence.

Extract – read data from multiple source systems into a single format. This process extracts the data from each native system and saves it to one target location. That source data may be any number of database formats, flat files, or document repositories. Usually, the goal is to extract the entire unmodified source system data, though certain checks and filters may be performed here to ensure the data meets an expected layout or to selectively remove data (e.g. potentially confidential information).

Transform – in this step, the data from the various systems is made consistent and linked. Some of the key operations here are:

Standardization – data is mapped to a consistent set of lookup values (e.g. US, USA, United States and blank/null – all mapped to the standard ISO country code)
Cleansing – perform validity checks and either remove or modify problem data
Surrogate keys – new key values applied to similar data from different source systems prevent key collisions in the future and provide a cross reference across these systems
Transposing – organizes data to optimize reporting. Many source systems are optimized for transactional performance but the warehouse will be primarily used for reporting. Often this involves denormalizing and re-organizing into a dimensional model.

Load – the transformed data is now written out to a warehouse/mart. The load process will usually preserve prior data. In some instances existing warehouse data is never removed, just marked as inactive. This provides full auditing and supports historical reporting.

ETL Tools
There are a number of commercial and open source ETL tools available to assist in any ETL process. Some of the prominent ones are:

Business Objects Data Integrator
Informatica PowerCenter
IBM InfoSphere DataStage
Oracle Warehouse Builder / Data Integrator
Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services
Pentaho Data Integration (Open Source)
Jasper ETL (Open Source)

These tools provide a number of functions to facilitate the ETL workflow. The variety of source data types are handled automatically. A transformation engine makes it easy to create reusable scripts to handle the data mapping. Scheduling and error handling are also built in.

It is particularly advantageous to use an ETL tool in the following situations:

When there are many source systems to be integrated
When source systems are in different formats
When this process needs to be run repeatedly (e.g. daily, hourly, real time)
To take advantage of pre-built warehouses/marts. Many of these exist for popular platforms such as PeopleSoft, SAP, JD Edwards.

There are also times where the overhead and cost of setting up an ETL tool might not make sense. In these situations some combination of stored procedures, custom coding and off the shelf packages may make more sense. Scenarios of this type include:

One time conversion of data
A limited number of source systems that share key identifiers

Sample Workflow
As illustrated here, a typical ETL workflow will move the data through a few distinct phases. This allows each phase to be better defined and eases troubleshooting.

Source > Extract > Stage – this phase extracts all the appropriate data from each source system. The extract copies only data that has changed in the source system since its last run. The stage library contains all source information in a similar structure to how it appears in the source systems. All extracted information will remain in stage until it is successfully processed by the transform.

Stage > Transform > Warehouse – the data from stage is transformed into a warehouse. In this example this step includes some of the base transformations as well as the load of data into a single warehouse. In this phase, surrogate keys are added where needed, lookup value mappings are applied and related information from multiple source systems is combined into a single structure. Any errors encountered here are reported and the problem data remains in stage until corrected. No information is removed from the warehouse and all data there is tagged with effective, update and end timestamps.

Warehouse > Load > Mart – the current effective date from the warehouse is loaded to the mart to support analysis. While this is the final load of the process, this step also includes a transform of the data to an optimized dimensional form for reporting and analysis.

Business intelligence in the enterprise is greatly enhanced by unified data. ETL can be an important tool when combining heterogeneous sources into one cohesive central repository.

Easing the Pain of the Year End Project

2010-11-03T09:36:00.002-04:00

The Year End process can be a complicated, highly visible one. LBi has created guidelines to smoothly manage this daunting process.

In a company’s Human Resources and Payroll area, there are a number of particularly time consuming processes that occur at the end of each year. These Year End processes are critical and can include:

Imputed Income calculations
Deferred Income processing
Applying tax updates
End of year bonuses
Merit increases
First payroll of the new year
W2s and 1099s
State Filings

Typically a team is created to manage the process. LBi has managed this process for several clients and has come up with a project methodology that helps the process run smoothly.

The first step in this methodology is the creation of a checklist. The Year End (YE) process begins by establishing task schedules and priorities. (Download a free sample of the Year End Checklist.) This enables the team to understand both the scope and the scheduling of events and is an essential first step in YE planning and project management. The checklist is used throughout the YE process to ensure that no critical steps are overlooked. After verification by the project stakeholders, the completed checklist is then used to build the Year End Calendar.

The YE Calendar of events expands the tasks in the checklist and incorporates dates and responsibilities. It is then used as a template for complete documentation.

The next step is to perform the required legal and regulatory changes as published by PeopleSoft or other HCM system, or requested by the company, to keep everything in compliance. These items are then added to the Checklist and Calendar.

The final step is to create a comprehensive inventory of all processes, customizations and ad-hoc reports. We identify all special queries required for “data cleanup” and balance adjustments. It is critical to include these ad-hoc reports and processes and productionalize them, as they are typically needed each year. We then assemble all the documentation and testing plans and results for SOX compliance and audit readiness.

There are four key steps in LBi’s Year End methodology:
1. Year End Checklist
2. Year End Calendar
3. Regulatory Updates
4. Inventory

By following these steps, the seemingly daunting Year End process becomes a manageable project.

LBi Software Webinar - CaseManager HR Help Desk

2010-09-20T15:38:00.002-04:00

LBi Software announces a webinar on CaseManager, our automated HR help desk and knowledgebase application. This webinar will take place on Monday October 12th at 2pm ET. During this session you will see a live demo of LBi Software's CaseManager. The demo will highlight a host of new features based on customer feedback, including:

Employee self-service help desk and knowledgebase
FAQs that can grow over time
An employee satisfaction survey tool
Manager Dashboard with improved analytics and reporting

The session will also show you the ROI from automating your HR Help Desk and rolling it out to employees as a self-service application.

If you'd like to find out more about CaseManager or haven't taken a look for while, then this is the webinar for you!

To register for the CaseManager webinar, click here.

If there's anything you'd like us to add, please let us know in the comments section and we will be sure to cover it in the webinar!

For more information on LBi Software, visit www.lbisoftware.com.

Achieving Browser Neutrality

2010-06-07T17:12:00.009-04:00

In today’s segmented browser market, achieving a unified look across platforms is as complicated as ever.

What does it mean to be "Browser Neutral"?

Browser Neutrality is the term used to describe a website or web application that looks and acts the same when viewed in any web browser.

Internet Explorer. Firefox. Chrome. Safari. Opera. With so many choices in the web browsers, the market has become segmented. No single web browser currently owns more than a 25% market share.

Source NETMARKETSHARE^SM
As a web developer, it is important to make sure your website or application is consistent regardless of the platform on which the user is viewing it. This poses a significant technical challenge.

Diagnosing Problems

How do we know if our webpage is going to look the way we want in all browsers? There is only one sure fire way to find out – testing, testing, testing!

Developers should test code across a number of different browsers fairly often during the development cycle. Waiting until development is done is often a huge mistake. Often a developer will work on web content, testing in only a single browser as they go. Then, when they have finished, they load up the website in a different browser only to find inconsistencies. At this point, fixing those problems can require reworking pieces of code that could have been done differently from the start had the differences been noticed sooner.

In this way, browser neutrality is similar to other programming problems such as software bugs and misunderstood requirements – early diagnosis is the key to saving time and effort later on.

We found problems! What now?

Although there is a set of standards that browsers attempt to adhere to, implementations often differ and sometimes there are quirks. This is particularly true when dealing with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). CSS is used to stylize a web page through the use of reusable "style classes". These classes contain a number of properties which describe how a particular element should look in the web browser. Occasionally, browsers will differ in their presentation of these properties. For example, there are often differences in padding and margin properties across different browsers.

But fear not. There are steps developers can take to assure that these differing implementations still present a unified user experience across all browsers. Options include using multiple style sheets to account for different browsers or using browser-specific tokens in style classes themselves to have certain properties target only a specific browser.

Who cares if it looks different!

Achieving browser neutrality is not a primary goal of every website or web application.

At development onset, it is important to set the expectations for the project. If a unified look, down to the pixel, is important, developers need to keep that in mind from the start and test often, particularly for pages with complex graphical details. Other times, minor differences in look and feel may not be an issue because all users will be using a specific browser (often the case in a corporate setting) or the function of the application, not the form, is the primary concern.

Statistics on Browser market share can be found at the following links:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2#
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-200904-201005

LBi Software Releases New Time and Attendance Tracking Application: At-Trac 3.0

2010-05-03T16:59:00.002-04:00

LBi Software announced today the next release of At-Trac, its Time and Attendance Tracking solution. The newest release includes several major software updates designed to deliver efficient time and attendance tracking management to an entire organization.

Building on the existing core of proven functionality, At-Trac 3.0 now uses the latest Web 2.0 technologies and features a web-based drag and drop interface. Using new technologies LBi Software was able to create At-Trac with an intuitive ergonomic user interface that requires little training. Managers can set up the interface with their HR system and easily configure their time and attendance rules.

With At-Trac 3.0 Managers can:

Track time in a variety of ways: view accrued time off balances per individual and/or department, detect excessive absences or repeating patterns, and manage time entered for hourly employees more effectively
View all information from one location: the Manager’s Clipboard shows pending requests, the current day’s PTO (paid time off), and current balances - all filterable and sortable at the click of a button

Employees can:

Enter time through the company portal: time worked and requested days off can be entered into the At-Trac portal, which can be plugged into any corporate portal
Track time for billing: time can be entered for a specific project for interfacing to the corporate billing system
View their time: time and PTO balances can be viewed in calendar view or from their clipboard

Additional features of the new release include:

Role-based security
Integration with Outlook or Lotus Notes calendars
Email notifications and reminders
Employee HR info, history, time entry and paid time off info available to Managers and Administrators
Manager approval/denial of paid time off requests
Out of office designations
Enterprise-wide or department-wide alerts
Knowledgebase/wiki interface
Ad-hoc reporting
Mobile device functionality

"We’ve heard repeatedly that time and attendance tracking can be a complex, difficult, and labor-intensive process, especially for large organizations with thousands of employees spread over several different sites", says Richard Teed, President of LBi Software. "At-Trac 3.0 will provide you with simple and accurate tracking results, regardless of how many employees you have or where they are located."

About LBi Software
LBi Software creates software applications for Human Capital Management using the latest Web 2.0 and IVR/Speech Recognition technologies. LBi’s HCM products are turnkey web applications that integrate with enterprise HCM systems.

Additional information about At-Trac:
http://www.lbisoftware.com/attendancetracking.html

New and Improved LBi Software Headquarters

2010-03-01T14:57:00.006-05:00

LBi Software is pleased to announce that it has completed a renovation of its headquarters at 7600 Jericho Turnpike in Woodbury, NY. In addition, LBi has extended the lease for seven more years.

The renovations included:

New kitchens
A new media conference room
New Data Center with dedicated 24k BTU air conditioning unit and 3+ hour battery back up for all equipment
New carpeting, flooring, lighting, wall coverings and window dressings throughout the 8000 square feet of offices

Our employees are enjoying the newly updated and pristine work environment that also includes artwork and a photo wall of past and present LBi employees and clients. If you haven’t visited us in a while, stop by for a tour!

Cost Effective Web Application Load Testing

2009-11-27T20:08:00.002-05:00

How LBi Software successfully load tested its applications using open source tools

What is Load Testing?

Load testing is the process of putting demand on an application and measuring its response. It usually refers to modeling the expected usage of a software application by simulating multiple users logging on concurrently. As such, this testing is critical for multi-user systems, often ones built using a client/server model, such as web servers.

Load testing tools differ from regression testing tools. Load testing tools work at the procedure level. Regression testing tools are typically “record and playback” tools that work at the GUI object level. For example, a regression testing tool will simulate a mouse click on an “OK” button on the browser, but a load testing tool will send out the hypertext that the browser will send after the user clicks the “OK button”, and it will send out the hypertext for multiple users each having a unique login ID and password.

Load testing also differs from stress testing, which evaluates the extent to which a system keeps working when subjected to extreme work loads or when some of its hardware or software has been compromised. The primary goal of load testing is to define the maximum amount of work a system can handle without significant performance degradation.

Load testing can identify issues with record locking, concurrent transactions, synchronization issues and insufficient hardware. Through load testing, hardware requirements can be accurately determined.

Load Testing Tools

For enterprise level testing, there are packages such as Load Runner and WebKing that are available to support large systems. Parasoft’s WebKing is an automated testing solution for creating, executing and managing functional and regression test suites. WebKing can also perform load testing, leveraging the existing functional tests to perform the load tests. Load Runner is a performance and load testing product by Hewlett-Packard used for examining system behavior and performance, while generating actual load.

There are open source options with similar capabilities, such as JMeter and TestMaker. JMeter is an Apache Jakarta project that can be used as a load testing tool for analyzing and measuring the performance of a variety of services, with a focus on web applications. PushToTest’s TestMaker is a platform for test automation, service governance, and business service management. For Java developers, TestMaker is a framework for turning unit tests into functional tests, creating load and scalability tests, and creating service monitors automatically.

The tools mentioned above all require the tester to have dedicated servers. BrowserMob is another option available to testers who do not have access to a dedicated server. BrowserMob allows the user to define and schedule load tests over the Internet using 3^rd party servers and virtual users to send a stream of data to the tester’s site. Actual browsers are spawned, which makes this close to a real user experience.

LBi Software Experiences with Load Testing

For its Load Testing, LBi Software has had success with TestMaker, BrowserMob and JMeter.

TestMaker

LBi tested its standard web applications with this tool.
LBi created Selenium scripts for Functional Testing. TestMaker was able to use many of these same scripts for its Load Testing, making extra scripts unnecessary.
LBi took two approaches:

An environment within LBi’s network, with multiple testing nodes and one server. This was sufficient for small load tests.
For load tests that numbered into the thousands and tens of thousands, LBi utilized Cloud Computing, specifically Amazon Web Services (AWS). The various nodes were in the cloud, as well as the main server. The number of nodes and servers could easily be increased, as well as the computing power of the Cloud servers. (Please note: Mixing the cloud solution with a local network solution is possible, but be aware that your internet pipe may become a bottleneck due to bandwidth limitations.)

BrowserMob

Selenium scripts and the target URL were sent to the BrowserMob service. BrowserMob utilized the Selenium scripts to spawn multiple instances of browsers, running the load tests from each browser against the submitted URL.
If any errors were encountered, they were sent via email.
This was utilized as a load testing source, as well as a means to verify that results from other load testing tools were accurate.

JMeter

LBi used JMeter for AJAX-heavy web applications
Performed very well against these complex applications, giving accurate and consistent results on every run.
Uses a simple GUI to record Load Testing scripts. While it does not use Selenium scripts, the GUI is simple enough to easily record tests.
Can include both in-network and Cloud Computing options. LBi achieved similar results with both.

Web technologies have exposed more users to business applications. For example, a benefit enrollment application will be used company wide by 10,000 employees, all during a small period of time (open enrollment). LBi has found it’s essential to load test these web applications to ensure successful functionality with multiple users while accurately establishing hardware requirements. Load Testing is now an essential piece of the application project lifecycle.

Employee Self-Service in the Application Portfolio

2009-08-27T16:01:00.002-04:00

The technology explosion over the last decade brought us new and innovative ways to use the internet in our daily lives. The technological changes have conditioned people of all walks of life to the online environment as a resource for shopping, banking, job hunting and more. Online applications are now considered to be required for businesses to reach their customers and to support their employees.

Employee Self-Service (ESS) applications represent another step forward in the evolving internet-based services providing employees with access to information and company communications. Self-service programs can be executed over the Internet or a company's Intranet.

ESS Features

Browser-based and integrated to the company HR applications, ESS provides 24/7 access to employees regardless of where they are, through the Internet or the company Intranet. This access allows for the verification of personal data and the updating of data as changes occur in the employee’s personal and professional life. The end result is data with a higher degree of accuracy and data that is current. ESS portals can be used to access personal and contact information, view paychecks, enroll and change benefit selections and more. Additional links added to the ESS provide access to 401K providers and to company communications and handbooks.

ESS systems offer features that meet the needs of the business, employee and industry with many functions seemingly appearing in several products. Internet-based payroll solutions, for example, facilitate cost savings by allowing companies to reduce resources needed to support the payroll function. Following are some of the features supported on ESS Portals:

Personal Data and Payroll: Review and updates of personal information is one form of self-service which allows employees to view and edit their own personal information. Companies can give their employees permission to review and make changes to their personal data (name, address, etc.), W-4 elections, and voluntary deductions, as well as view their payroll stubs and W-2s. Changes are then reflected in the appropriate HCM systems and the employee database reflects more timely and accurate information. Payroll information can consist of a mix of current information and payroll history.

Benefit Enrollment: The employee maintains information on plan participation and keeps track of benefits plans, performs cost plan analysis, budgetary projections, and tracks/reviews outside carrier reports. Benefits Open Enrollment gives employees the ability to check available benefit plan information and make enrollment changes. The company can provide the benefits manual online to help the employee understand the benefit selection process and options.

Time and Attendance Tracking: Electronic time sheets can dramatically improve payroll efficiency by allowing employees to enter and track their own work hours, paid time off and sick time. This is especially useful for companies with multiple worksites, a widely distributed sales force, employees who telecommute, or contract workers on location at other companies. With Time and Attendance Tracking using ESS electronic time sheets, employees enter their hours and worksite (if applicable) according to company defined categories. Then, they forward the sheet electronically to their supervisor who can approve it online. Electronic time sheets can improve accuracy and reduce handling time by 50% to 75%.

ESS Benefits and Savings

ESS can save time and resources associated with updating and maintaining employee data and company materials for employees such as handbooks and benefit announcements. For example, updating the employee handbook online eliminates the printing and distribution costs associated with a hardcopy manual. On the employee side, the information can now be updated in a more timely manner without utilizing HR resources. This is a win/win for both the company and the employee as the data is more current and the employee has convenient access without going through the HR department.

Self-service has great potential to support the decision-making process by allowing employees to perform “what if” scenarios to test decisions before implementing them. Employees can be given access to tools to try out various strategies for insurance coverage, benefits contributions, and other financial planning, which eliminates the need to request the information from HR or payroll.

ESS Long-term Benefits

When properly implemented, ESS solutions provide a positive impact for employees and employers alike. Employees appreciate the convenience and ability to control personal data, which can ultimately affect performance and retention. Within the payroll department, self-service eliminates paper shuffling and removes tasks that can be handled more efficiently by others. Communications to employees can be done via the portal, eliminating printing and distribution of hardcopy announcements and manuals. Finally, storing information electronically is cheaper than filing paper documents in cabinets.

As the technology becomes more affordable and the number of self-service features increases, ESS solutions will find greater acceptance in the business world. Employees will become increasingly more comfortable with online systems to make changes, get information and manage their own data. Whatever system you chose to run your business, ESS can be integrated to provide timely data and services to your entire staff.

LBi Software specializes in providing custom applications for enterprise HCM systems.

Read about LBi’s Employee Self-Service Portal.