Trillium Lakelands Modernizes Their Finance and HR System to Empower Employees

The board knew they needed to address the inefficiencies of their legacy system. To provide staff and teachers with tools to simplify and speed up processes, they sought a modern technology solution. The goal was to eliminate redundant tasks and shift more focus to classroom success.

Meet Trillium Lakelands School Board 

With approximately 16,000 students, Trillium Lakelands has 41 elementary schools, seven secondary schools, and six alternate education and training centers. The board also offers a well-attended online learning program, accessible worldwide through its Virtual Learning Centre.

Choosing a finance, HR, and payroll system

Finding an integrated solution was a primary consideration for Tim Ellis, Superintendent of Business Services at Trillium Lakelands. He knew from experience that integrated systems make processes easier. With secure data sharing across systems, teams could effortlessly pass information from one department to another. For example, when a teacher enters an absence, it could be communicated to payroll without having to pass paper between departments.

“My history having seen different school boards within Ontario, I have seen integrated systems, and I’ve seen non-integrated systems,” says Ellis, “and by far, integrated systems make things work a lot easier … Because when systems talk to each other, it makes life a lot easier.”

Another important consideration was finding a solutions provider to partner with that can support the solution for a long time.

“You want to make sure that you’re going to invest in a product that’s going to be around for a while,” Ellis says.

Choosing Unified Operations™ Atrieve to simplify finance and HR

Trillium Lakelands reviewed multiple solutions, went through an extensive RFP process, and decided to move forward with Unified Operations™ Atrieve for finance, HR, and payroll. The board found that it quickly freed up teams’ bandwidth and allowed them to focus on tasks driving toward the strategic vision.

“By investing in this software, we can free up existing resources,” says Ellis. “We didn’t have any more dollars to spend, but we needed to make an investment so that we could use our existing assets in a more fast, efficient, effective manner and start hitting some of the things that we needed to do as opposed to continuing to work through our low-value tasks.”

Benefits of a modern finance, HR, and payroll system

An early benefit Ellis noticed was the reduction in touches required in processing a purchase order from procurement to payment.

“From the start of when you’re going to buy something to the point of time that we’ve paid for it, we had 78 touches … and it took two weeks to process expense reports,” says Ellis of their previous process. They reduced touchpoints by 27% using Atrieve as part of their integrated system. And now, they can process expense reports in as little as an hour.

“They’re so easy to process now because its employee-driven,” Ellis notes. “They put everything in on their own, and for accounting, they don’t touch paper really at all. It’s all electronic and it just expedites things with a lot less touches—a lot less time. You can have an expense claim approved within an hour of entering it.”

The school board also improved efficiency around petty cash management. When teachers have small expenses, the school’s secretary had to process them for reimbursement. With the Atrieve solution, Trillium Lakelands automated this process.

Ellis explains, “Now that we’ve gone online, either through employee expense or through the purchasing card, the secretary is not involved in that piece at all. So now we’ve liberated 20 to 40 hours for a secretary to help support the school in different ways. By just looking at automating a couple of processes that we’ve been able to do through Atrieve, we’re reducing the burden on various positions.”

Advice on modernizing finance, HR, and payroll with a new solution

It takes time, effort, and dedication to undertake a system change. However, A modern system is critical for the success of any school board. It enables the board to focus on the big-picture strategic vision without worrying about day-to-day activities. Ellis offers a few tips for his peers in education:

Review Processes

Business processes may not be evaluated often at many boards. However, it’s an area with many opportunities to save time, effort, and money.

Ellis says:

“As you map it out [the business process], and you start looking at the number of touches you’re going to do, you start to understand that you have a very convoluted process. When you start looking at how a software streamlines those processes, you understand that you’re going to release a lot of time or a lot of [data] entry or a lot of these little events that need to happen. You can expedite them, you can make them easier, you can streamline them.”

Understand the Benefits

The time and cost benefits of a modern finance and HR system are clear. However, it is important to understand what your school boards’ long-term goals are and then figure out how technology can help you get there.

Ellis says:

“You want to spend your money on talented people who can drive forward your strategic vision … your software should enable your team to drive toward that vision.”