Editor’s Note: As the leader in HCM technology consulting services, HRchitect has been working with the UltiPro system for more than a decade and was recently named the Ultimate Software Alliances Partner of the year. Working with dozens of Ultimate Software clients across North America, our UltiPro experience includes Project Management, Configuration, Process Analysis/Redesign, Training, Optimization, Reporting, Integration, Change Management, and Ongoing Support.
April 12, 2018
Ultimate Software, a leading provider of human capital management (HCM) solutions in the cloud, announced today that the Los Angeles Dodgers, a U.S. professional baseball team and a member club of Major League Baseball, is using UltiPro to help the organization achieve goals related to compliance, scaling growth, and workforce intelligence.
The Los Angeles Dodgers organization oversees approximately 1,200 seasonal gameday staff who work in areas such as ticket takers, ushers, security and merchandise sales and 375 full-time employees, including scouts in 27 states. With a fluctuating and traveling workforce, the organization must handle a number of HR and payroll challenges, including managing multi-jurisdiction tax withholdings for player salaries and its employees across the country, and scaling its workforce at various times throughout the year. The Dodgers sought an HCM solution that would deliver the same advanced HR technology it saw other MLB teams using with success. The organization selected UltiPro and went live in March 2016.
“Our industry is known for complicated HCM. For instance, when players live in one jurisdiction and travel into different local and state jurisdictions, payroll can get complicated and become a real headache,” said Eric Hernandez, vice president of finance for the Los Angeles Dodgers. “Prior to UltiPro, when our team visited an unfamiliar jurisdiction, our Payroll department was responsible for setting up a tax ID and filing with the right city, state, county, or tax authority. We’re not specialists in every jurisdiction, but Ultimate is. With UltiPro’s out-of-the-box features for managing compliance, the technology provides guidance on identifying the correct payroll tax rates—and applies any updates—so we no longer need to contract with a third-party tax service.”
According to Hernandez, UltiPro has not only simplified the team’s payroll and helped ease compliance, but it has also improved the seasonal hiring experience for everyone involved.
“Every year, we have to reactivate hundreds of part-time employees in our system,” said Hernandez. “Prior to UltiPro, these employees had to come into our facility, physically fill out paper documents, and update their information as necessary. With UltiPro’s functionality, the process will alleviate a lot of delays and inefficiencies. All our hires are able to submit their information online and make any adjustments directly in UltiPro. We can also securely deliver orientation documents to new hires for them to complete remotely, which makes the onboarding experience more convenient for them, and faster for us.”
Once employees are in UltiPro upon hiring, their information is immediately available for reporting and business intelligence. For ever-evolving organizations like the Dodgers, analytics are critical to decision making and forecasting.
“We have configured UltiPro to automatically distribute an overtime report to our department heads—something that we used to create and push out manually, and not always timely. Now, managers have an opportunity to take action on projected overtime, and save money for our organization,” said Hernandez. “UltiPro’s reporting capability also helps me personally with my responsibilities in finance, such as preparing year-end bonuses. With our previous system, I found it difficult to pull the necessary information and the data wasn’t always reliable. Now, it’s easy for me to access the information I need and to create the files we use to generate bonuses. I no longer need the expertise of our HR or Payroll departments to provide reports or other information, and I am confident I can produce the information quickly.”
“Ultimate is very proud to have many sports organizations as customers, and we understand their personal and organizational challenges,” said Chris Phenicie, chief sales officer, mid-market and strategic, at Ultimate. “The Dodgers are a great partner, and we are pleased that UltiPro is making life easier for their employees and the HR/Payroll team.”
To learn more about HRchitect and how we can help your organization with your Human Capital Management (HCM) technology needs, please request a consultation. As the leader in HCM Systems strategic consulting, we offer end-to-end HR technology consulting services focused around strategic planning, evaluation and selection, change management, implementation, project management and ongoing support of HCM systems of all types including Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, Learning Management, Workforce Management, Benefits, Core HR/Payroll, and more. Over the past two decades, working with thousands of clients of all sizes and industries across the globe, our knowledge of best practices continues to expand and our experience is vast and unsurpassed. We have expertise around all major HCM systems including ADP, Benefitfocus, Ceridian, IBM Kenexa, Oracle, Saba, SAP SuccessFactors, Taleo, Ultimate Software, WorkForce Software, and more. HRchitect is a name you can trust for all of your organization’s HCM technology-related consulting needs.