Queensland Health

Introduction

The introduction of the new payroll system comprising of two interfacing systems SAP and Workbrain in Queensland Health (QH) has lead to some major issues which have resulted in financial loss to the system. The new payroll and rostering system is one of the projects in The Corporate Solutions Program, which went live on 14 March 2010, is managed by CorpTech (whose prime contactor was IBM). Earlier, QH had been using the LATTICE payroll and the ESP rostering systems since 1997, which needed to be replaced as it was recognized that it would not be supported by its supplier from July 2008.

The various reasons of the failure of this payroll system include complex award structures, vague governance structure for system implementation, inadequate documentation of business requirements at the commencement of the project, increased time taken to reach Go-Live status, absence of periodic review of the business needs, system and process testing prior to Go-Live had not identified a number of significant implementation risks, critical business readiness activities and practices were not fully developed, business continuity plans were not available for implementation to address any payroll issues as they emerged, key system performance reports for use by CorpTech were not available during the completion of the initial payroll processing, several changes to the payroll administration practices were introduced at the same time as the release of the SAP and WorkBrain systems. The audit declared that the failure of the project was due to the project governance, besides managing relationships with key stakeholders was not effective in ensuring roles and responsibilities were clearly articulated and in ensuring there was clear acco...

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...ect due to lack of supports, dissatisfaction of customer and employee, which has a negative impact on the effectiveness, efficiency, flexibility, and competitiveness of a business as a whole (Ho & Fung, 1994).

As a result of the failure of this project, there will be future costs, the total amount estimated to be $1,253.5 million, which is divided into parts. The first one is $416.6 million that is expected to be spent by the end of the financial year 2012 and the sum of $836.9 million is expected to be spent during FY 13 and FY17.1 The cost of the project is of an immediate nature, specifically when there is a continuous increase in the cost of healthcare services.

Moreover, the failure of the system affected the employees of Queensland Health. Many of them continued to get underpaid or overpaid for more than two years following the implementation of the system.