Too Many Customizations = Overtly Complicated Maintenance

The Fire Services system had become overly complicated due to using a largely customized version of StarGarden that had been installed in the early 1990s. These complications led to issues in their organization:

• Users were frustrated with the complexities of the system
• The StarGarden system administrator was finding it more and more difficult to support the users
• The system was entirely dependent on one or two technical resources to keep it running and produce the weekly payroll
• Management was concerned about their dependency on key resources and feared an abrupt system failure and breakdown

• All of the complicated pay and benefit requirements were mapped out and reviewed in the system.

• The users were able to simultaneously test and learn the new payroll system that they had participated in customizing; their input was reviewed and changes made to accommodate internal procedures.

By upgrading to the latest release of the StarGarden product, Fire Services was able to:

• Reinstate support and have redundancy for their critical resources needed to execute the payrolls.

• Take advantage of regular updates as well as the functionality improvements that had occurred in the years since they originally installed the system.

• Include user input in the upgrade to make the system work better for them.

• Train their Internal users to be more efficient at using the system

• Relieve their management of their concern about having support redundancy for such a critical application