Over the summer months the project team and the HR department have been dedicated to User Acceptance Testing (UAT) with support from our vendor, MHR. This has involved members carrying out over 900 tests to ensure the functionality of the system has been built to our specific needs. The range of tests carried out was vast and covered key areas from security, term time fractions, pension bandings, absence notification workflows to testing out a myriad of management reports. System tests relating to external links, such as data transfers to HMRC and pension providers, will continue over the next two months.
This project is unique in that it brings together for the first time our HR and payroll data for more than 1,700 staff. The lifting, shifting and placement of approximately 1.5 million pieces of data across both legal entities (the Foundation and the Academy Trust) is a massive and unprecedented undertaking.
In October, we will complete the first of three parallel runs. The payrolls for the Foundation, the Academy Trust and our pensioners will continue to be run safely as normal through Sage, but in tandem behind the scenes, dummy payrolls will be run through iTrent in order to reconcile data in both systems. This process will be repeated in November and December. The hope is that following the parallel runs, the system will go live in January.
The next month will also see the team undertake further planning in areas such as staff communications, a clear timeline for rollout, delivery of onsite demonstrations and user support for post go live.
