Grain Valley Schools: Transforming Operations with Integrated Finance and HR Solution

Grain Valley Schools’ Winning Formula for Choosing an ERP System for Its Needs

It’s common for school districts to use separate data systems for their business and HR needs—one for managing financial day-to-day operations, and one to handle HR and talent management tasks. 

But those two systems should integrate and share relevant data. Otherwise, you can struggle with time-consuming and cumbersome workflows, outdated manual processes, and duplicated data entry.

Finding the right edtech products to integrate data and overcome these struggles can be challenging as well. Here’s how Missouri’s Grain Valley Schools was able to pinpoint its needs and find the right system to match. 

Step 1: Identifying Challenges to Current Operational Processes

The district needed to modernize its approach to finance and HR management. It started by reviewing outdated processes to determine what a new integrated system should accomplish.

After their initial research, the district realized that with stand-alone finance and HR systems, they were stuck with a lot of inefficiencies. Day-to-day operational tasks took too long, like receiving and processing payments, printing and mailing HR forms, and running reports for compliance requirements.

Aaron Hooper, Finance Director at Grain Valley Schools, worked with staff to determine the following goals of a new system:   

• Reduce burden of payroll and payment processing 
• Automate tasks to improve accuracy 
• Enable self-service HR requests 
• Develop flexibility to build and customize workflows 
• Aggregate data from across disparate system to give actionable insights

Hooper says getting team buy-in and starting the ball rolling was critical.

“The longer you wait, the more difficult it’s going to be,” he says. Hooper and his team communicated clearly with employees how new technology solutions would address pain points. Doing this ensured that all system users understood the “why” and “how” of new features and processes. Hooper and his team also welcomed feedback throughout implementation to maintain full buy-in and trust. 

Step 2: How to Choose an Integrated System for Specific Needs 

The district needed a single, modern ERP system that combined finance and HR management, and was designed specifically for K-12. There’s a surplus of ERP systems on the market built broadly to handle a wide range of industries, but not specific to the needs of primary and secondary education organizations. Hooper and his team knew they needed one that would meet Grain Valley Schools’ goals for facilities, schools, staff, and students. 

By choosing an integrated finance and HR system, they could simplify interfaces for staff across departments. Integrated data would also help them better secure their critical information and improve accuracy as everything would sync within the single edtech ecosystem.

The district chose PowerSchool eFinancePlus and PowerSchool Employee Records, part of the PowerSchool Educator Recruitment Cloud. Together, these products would give them a single, integrated ERP solution to modernize their finance and HR management approach. Most importantly, this interoperable software would help them address the pain points identified by Hooper’s team and Grain Valley employees. 

Step 3: How Grain Valley Saved Staff Time and Frustration

Automating payroll and payment processing with eFinancePlus saved countless hours and a ton of frustration for Grain Valley staff members. Now it’s easier to make sure new employees receive their first paycheck on time while reducing the potential for errors every pay period. With an integrated finance and HR system, employee information syncs instantly, eliminating delays that result when finance and HR teams must enter and verify employee data into separate systems.

Another considerable time and headache saver for Grain Valley was automating timesheet approvals with their modern payroll solution. Since employees at each school and building throughout the district can view and approve their timesheets online, there’s no need to mail them out for signatures as they did before.

To find out all of the benefits the integrated finance and HR system provided Grain Valley, watch the video or read the case study.