Customer Success

Montgomery County, Maryland

Using SAS® to Manage Human Resources

People are the most valuable resource to government officials in Montgomery County, Maryland. Tracking individual information is critical to budgeting and planning by the county's Office of Human Resources, which has more than 9,000 positions and 12,000 employees in its mainframe payroll database.

Using SAS Human Capital Management, Montgomery County provides an effective human resources program to attract, develop, and retain a diverse, high-performing and well-qualified work force. To accomplish their mission, county officials must efficiently combine various sources of personnel data, such as information about salaries, EEOC and Affirmative Action compliance, recruitment and retention, compensation analysis, job classification studies, union negotiations and workforce planning. Their goal was to find a single place where core business data could be easily retrieved and analyzed for efficient administration and budget planning.

A System That Previously Didn't Work
The analytical tool they used to search through mainframe human resources information sources only allowed one query at a time. Trying to get answers to 20 or 30 questions was time-consuming and cumbersome. When answers couldn't be turned around in a 24-hour period, the need had often already passed.

With the county's IT department frequently overloaded with requests and decision-makers becoming frustrated by limited access to information, county administrators decided that they needed the business intelligence that would take the department's technology from its transactional database to an analytical model with data warehousing capabilities. Dollars needed to be tracked to determine budget allocations for job positions. Vacant positions needed to be monitored for savings. Actual expenditures needed to be consolidated from the isolated islands of information maintained on a mainframe system. Since data access was a primary concern, administrators wanted a system that would allow multiple users with varying technical skills to be able to make their own information requests on their PC. The goal was to get subject-specific, multidimensional HR analysis information into the hands of those who needed it, when they needed it, so county officials could make informed, proactive decisions.

Human-Resource Intensive
Not only was the old system difficult to use, but generating numerous reports was a resource-intensive process. Since the old system could not handle multiple query requests easily, there was great demand for customized reports from IT employees. Priority had to be given to requests mandated by law. Customized programs had to be written to answer complex requests when canned queries weren't available.

The county began looking for a system to meet its needs in 1999. The problem was that many vendors offered separate components of the human capital management system the county needed. Not wanting to work with multiple vendors, officials kept searching until they found SAS Human Capital Management, which enabled them to integrate a number of HR-related subjects into a single storage facility with a common, easy-to-use interface.

Montgomery County found SAS to be the most comprehensive and adaptable solution on the market for HR data warehousing needs. It encompasses a number of HR-related subjects, such as personnel, payroll and positions, that a true human resources management department needs under one roof to get the job done.

Enjoying a Giant Leap Forward
SAS has proved to be an excellent tool that can be used by internal HR analysts, but also by other departments that require personnel information for job-related tasks. Management and budget teams can now make decisions on real-time information rather than on rough ideas and intellect.

Holiday time, pay grade changes, overtime pay and collective bargaining with unions are among the issues that can be dealt with more effectively because the data is readily accessible. Employees also have the capability to use historical data to analyze trends and predict future personnel spending patterns, which before was not possible. For example, staffing officers can compare starting salaries for similar positions across the county to ensure fair and equitable compensation practices. The IT team is now able to undertake other support projects – such as adding budget and benefit information and designing new functionality for the warehouse – instead of continually writing query-specific programs and processing lengthy user requests.

IT used to run hundreds of reports daily and put them on the mainframe. Now, anyone who is authorized on the system can run reports any time they want. Users can format information and customize the display of information in a way that's most effective for them.

Partnering With a Thought Leader
To manage their HR needs, Montgomery County sought a technology partner that has a comprehensive vision for all parts of the county's business. SAS empowers its users. New information and new features are continuously being added to facilitate them, making it an incredible time-saver for the county's staff. For example, county officials enjoy the advantage of transporting their application via laptop. Outside contract negotiations can be performed "on the fly" making the analysis of labor proposals easily accessible.

The reason SAS Human Capital Management works is because it is an intuitive software package that provides the ability to analyze data using queries, reports, and multidimensional cubes. The flexibility allows users to adapt it to government standards, which are very different from commercial practices. The SAS implementation team helped achieve a winning partnership in offering valuable insights and ideas.