Interim county administrator Rena Rogers came before the board on November 12 with a request to end the Kronos payroll project and notify the vendor that the county is terminating the contract and service agreement.
The county has invested $12,314.40 so far, but by ending the contract now the county will avoid future payments for a system that the county can’t fully implement or use, Rogers said.
The goal of the project was to improve efficiency and reduce costs by creating an integrated payroll/HR system.
“My experience as a developer in the past is it is very difficult to try to integrate human resources (HR) and financial systems,” Rogers said, noting the project was initially supposed to be done in 120 days (August 2019) but the date was moved to January 1.
A consultant was brought in to assist implementing the system in an attempt to mitigate the risks, said Rogers, but three key figures to making this project work recently left the employment of the county.
Former county administrator Jeff Cadwell was spearheading the project, said Rogers, who also noted that Judy Hill, the county’s HR generalist who was the Kronos project manager and Cadwell have both recently left the county’s employment.
The final nail in the Kronos coffin was the resignation of the county’s sole payroll specialist, “which made this project impossible to complete in the near future,” Rogers said.
Without cancelling the contract it automatically renews and the county will have to pay for two parallel payroll processes. “We have to give 60 days notice to avoid the renewal fee,” said Rogers. “Our investment so far is $12,000 plus. Next year it will be $20,000 more and we’re not sure if the system will ever work for us.”
Braidy Powers told commissioners that he knows of other counties that have been paying double for years and not getting anywhere with the Kronos system.
“I’m really disappointed because I was excited about this,” said Commissioner Dave Mills.
Commissioner Doo-Kirk asked attorney Molly Hicken, “Is there any ability to get reimbursement?” Hicken replied that she didn’t think so, even though some of the fault could be traced to the company the county is doing business with.
After several minutes of discussion about potential solutions or ways to recoup the county’s money, Rogers said, “We just didn’t have the resources to do it.”
With that Mills made a motion to end the contract and stop work on the Kronos system. The motion was seconded and commissioners voted unanimously to end the contract.
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