Dignity, one of the UK’s most trusted providers of Funeral Services and Prepaid Funeral Plans, serving over 750 local communities nationwide, has embarked on a new project with Symatrix, a Manchester-based Oracle HCM and ERP partner, to over-haul its holiday pay supplement process to deliver a more streamlined payroll service to employees.
Dignity’s holiday pay service had previously relied on manual and time-consuming processes which meant that payroll data contained inaccuracies, leading to a high number of queries from employees.
Symatrix stepped in to customise Dignity’s holiday pay process and to ensure the process of calculating supplements was fully automated and accurate. Since the implementation, the company has witnessed a marked reduction in staff queries about holiday supplement pay.
Prior to implementation was a comprehensive investigation, process review and design strategy by the Symatrix team before rigorous testing to ensure that its existing Oracle solution was fully optimised. Previously, the function relied on other solutions in addition to Oracle, such as Excel documents and plugins that frequently caused disruption to the payroll process in the event of downtime.
Symatrix explored both the untapped capabilities of Oracle Cloud to discover how they could benefit the organisation, alongside comprehensive research of holiday supplement rules to match the deployment with their regulatory requirements.
The two entities worked in close collaboration to devise a plan that kept changing legislation at front-of-mind. Symatrix helped Dignity devise payment processes to account for where holiday supplements were or weren’t needed and also considered the impact this had on pensions.
“We have many different elements of pay in our organisation and we have to ensure our entire payroll function, including our holiday pay supplement process, is error-free and compliant with evolving legislation. Symatrix not only explored how Oracle Cloud could be best applied to automate this process but even went the extra mile to work out how the implementation would be compliant with regulations,” said Sharon Hodgetts, Payroll Manager at Dignity.
Moving forward, in instances where Dignity needs any support regarding new legislation or rule changes about holiday supplements or payroll in general, the Symatrix team is easily reachable via a number of channels. Dignity has also worked with Symatrix recently to implement a statutory absence policy for staff, which went live in October 2022.
“We hold the distinction of being able to provide a fully managed payroll on the Oracle Cloud solution, so it was a natural progression to help Dignity gain additional value from its existing deployment. The organisation has streamlined its holiday pay supplement process and continues to benefit from our payroll expertise,” said Chris Brooks, Managing Director of Symatrix.
