Major League Baseball Selects Ultimate Software's Intersourcing Over Traditional Outsourcing
Major League Baseball selected Ultimate Software's hosted model, Intersourcing, as a cost-effective, easy-to-use method to streamline and integrate the baseball organization's payroll and workforce management processes without requiring its IT department to commit resources to the project. With Intersourcing, companies don't need to invest in additional hardware or redirect IT resources from existing projects. Ultimate Software purchases the necessary equipment and manages the technological support for the solution, including backups, version oversight, and upgrades.
"Intersourcing gives us the best elements of UltiPro as an in-house solution-flexibility, control, and perfect synchronization of HR and payroll information -- and the best of outsourcing because Ultimate Software handles the IT responsibilities for us. We have a sophisticated IT group, but we didn't want to burden them with additional responsibilities," said Jonathon Mariner, who serves as executive vice president and chief financial officer for Major League Baseball, Office of the Commissioner.
Before UltiPro, Major League Baseball had been using a traditional outsourcing service bureau for its payroll processing and a separate system for its human resources management. The service bureau did not offer the control or flexibility the organization wanted, and the HR solution that was part of an ERP system was cumbersome and difficult to use. In addition, lack of tight integration between the two systems resulted in time-consuming duplicate data entry in the HR and payroll departments.
Although Mariner had used UltiPro with prior employers and was admittedly partial to it, he wanted management from HR and payroll to come to their own conclusions during the search process. After careful evaluation, Mariner noted, UltiPro was judged to be "hands down the best solution" by both departments.
"In my role as a financial officer, I am concerned about efficiencies, compliance and control over our processes. Payroll should be a seamless, routine process, and my previous experiences with UltiPro have given me consistent, dependable operations. As an added bonus, Intersourcing, the hosted model of UltiPro, is very cost effective."
Mariner set an aggressive implementation date of January 1, 2004, to go live. The initial kickoff meeting for implementation was October 27, 2003, and Major League Baseball was live by the target date.
"The implementation went extremely well in spite of a very, very tight implementation window and the holiday season. As was typical in my previous experiences, the Ultimate Software team rose to the occasion and made it happen," said Mariner.
About Ultimate Software
Ultimate Software, a leading provider of Web-based payroll and workforce
management solutions, markets award-winning UltiPro as licensed software, as a
hosted application through Intersourcing, and as a co-branded offering to
Business Service Providers (BSPs) under the "Powered by UltiPro" brand. The
Company employs 430 professionals who are united in their commitment to
developing trendsetting solutions and delivering quality service. Ultimate
Software has 1,000 customers representing diverse industries, including such
organizations as Benihana Restaurants, The Container Store, Elizabeth Arden,
The Florida Marlins Baseball Team, The New York Yankees Baseball Team, Omni
Hotels, Ruth's Chris Steak House, and SkyWest Airlines. More information on
Ultimate Software's products and services can be found at
www.ultimatesoftware.com.