How Port of Anacortes Cut Payroll Costs by 70% While Simplifying HR

Industry

Public Sector

Challenge

The Port of Anacortes needed to streamline payroll and HR but faced high costs, confusing timesheets, and slow vendor support. Too much time was spent on administration, leaving less capacity for staff training and community priorities.

Results

By moving to PayNW’s cloud platform, the Port of Anacortes cut payroll and HR costs by 70% and empowered employees to manage their own timesheets. Productivity increased, training time decreased, and HR was able to focus on serving staff and the community.

www.portofanacortes.com/

70%

Annual Cost Savings

Issues With Timesheets

Productive Staff

Time

Saved on Staff Training

"I would recommend PayNW to other enterprises, whether public or private, looking for a secure, reliable, cost-effective workforce management solution combined with excellent customer service."

Lindsey Herrick

Human Resources Manager for Port of Anacortes

About Port of Anacortes

Port of Anacortes in Washington State is responsible for the operation and economic development of a major deep-water port, three marine terminals, the Cap Sante Marina, and the Anacortes Airport. In partnership with public agencies and private businesses, the Port develops and manages facilities and services that stimulate private job creation and commerce, while protecting the quality of life, needs, and desires of area residents.

The Challenge

Port of Anacortes was looking to streamline and simplify its HR and payroll process. They felt they were wasting a lot of time and money processing payroll and timesheets and wanted to save by giving all 60 employees a user friendly time-tracking solution.

“Our previous vendor was a large national company with so many different divisions for each function that if there was a glitch with a timesheet for payroll, I had to speak to up to three people on the phone at any one time to get my issue fixed, if ever. After five years of poor customer service, high pricing, too many account managers, and a lot of unjustified excuses as to why the software couldn’t do this or that, we decided it was high time to find a new solution that worked for us.”

-Lindsey Herrick, Human Resources Manager for Port of Anacortes

The decision was made to evaluate other vendors. At the top of Port of Anacortes’ selection criteria featured customer service excellence, closely followed by user-friendly, intuitive software that could meet the company’s unique needs for flexible time tracking for their staff.

“We seriously looked at other national vendors, but we didn’t want to fall into the same trap again, so we decided to search for providers that would meet our specific needs in one single solution, with one single point of contact.”

-Lindsey Herrick

The Solution

Port of Anacortes’ IT department started searching online for a new HR and payroll solution vendor and evaluating choices. They found PayNW and saw that the company not only offered a cloud-based solution, but was also local which was an added bonus.

“The implementation of the full suite of PayNW services, including HR, payroll, and time and attendance was pretty fast and straightforward. As a team, we discussed the best customization options for us and went live only two months later on January 1, 2014. As the only person responsible for HR and payroll for the company, I’ve never looked back since.”

-Lindsey Herrick

An additional benefit of working with PayNW and its cloud-based platform is that it gives Port of Anacortes the ability to grow at its own pace.

“We can get so much more mileage out of this solution, such as automating manual employee reviews or tracking training and certificates. I know I can call one contact at any time and I get a response within 24 hours. Unlike large national vendors, PayNW does not ask its customers to fit into their box, but rather the other way round.”

-Lindsey Herrick

The Results

Port of Anacortes saw the first positive results of the PayNW solution implementation immediately, including:

Significant cost-savings compared to the former national big-box vendor (70% per year)
Sharp increase in staff productivity
Virtually no more distress calls from employees regarding timesheets
Noticeable decrease in staff training time

“As a special-purpose municipality and public enterprise, it is important for us to be good stewards of public resources and PayNW has helped us become a better enterprise overall. We are much happier and more productive, spending less time on administration and more time on our community, from staff training to fixing marina docks. I would recommend PayNW to other enterprises, whether public or private, looking for a secure, reliable, cost-effective workforce management solution combined with excellent customer service.”

-Lindsey Herrick