London — 18 January, 2010 — Hitachi Consulting UK today announced that it has completed the delivery of a new fit-for-purpose payroll system for communications infrastructure and media services company, Arqiva. The new system standardises and streamlines the newly combined payroll operations system of Arqiva and the former National Grid Wireless (NGW), following the merger of the two companies in 2008. The best-of-breed payroll system will integrate with the existing financial and HR systems, and is built on Oracle R12 Payroll technology. The new system replaces previous legacy arrangements, and will support the company’s current operations as well as long-term business requirements.

Arqiva operates at the heart of the broadcast and mobile communications industry and is at the forefront of network solutions and services. The company provides much of the infrastructure behind television, radio and wireless communications in the UK and has a growing presence in Ireland, mainland Europe and the United States.

Janet Drummond, HR Director, Arqiva, commented, “I had worked with Hitachi Consulting UK in a previous role, so I was confident they had the required capability. They didn’t expect us to change our timelines and processes to fit in with them. We have 2,500 people on our payroll. We needed an extensible payroll platform that would integrate with our legacy payroll systems, as well as our HR and financial systems. It also needed to meet our statutory payroll requirements for fixed and variable payments, as well as providing robust reporting capabilities for internal and external audit requirements. This was a complete end-to-end solution including design, development, delivery, training, transition, hosting and managed services. To complete such a complex project in such aggressive timescales is credit to the skills and capability of the Hitachi Consulting experienced project managers and consultants and the breadth of experience they bring to the table.”

The Hitachi Consulting implementation for Arqiva was one of the first implementations of Oracle Payroll Release 12 in the UK. The solution required a rapid consolidation of two complex payroll systems. Payroll Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services were outsourced to, ICS Computing, a service that integrates into the Hitachi Consulting delivery model. A fundamental component of Arqiva’s Payroll solution was the provision of an ad-hoc reporting capability. Hitachi Consulting UK provided its own off-the-shelf product, designed exclusively for use with Oracle Payroll, which provides a reporting capability that is not part of Oracle’s standard toolset. Due to the complexity of Arqiva’s pension reporting requirements, which includes 12 legacy schemes, Hitachi Consulting UK also developed a custom pension reporting solution.

Hitachi Consulting UK provides Arqiva with hosting and support services, which include a named Service Delivery Manager who is responsible for managing all aspects of the contract and provides Arqiva with a single and consistent point of contact. Arqiva’s production and development systems are hosted on the Hitachi Consulting dedicated servers in their purpose built data centre in Manchester. The transition to hosting and support services was carefully managed through Hitachi Consulting’s Transition Methodology, designed to ensure a seamless takeover.

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