Case Study - Retirement Residences REIT

“With over 23,000 employees across 200 locations in Canada and the United States, our need for solid, end-user friendly reports with access to the Payroll and HR information database became crucial” said Retirement Residences REIT VP of Information Services, Dale Mills.

"Crystal Enterprise met our needs . . .

and APOS got us there more quickly."   

            . . . Dale Mills, VP of Information Services

Tools Used:

Crystal Enterprise 8.5, APOS DocAssist, APOS Processing Extensions RAD Kit

Background:

Retirement Residences REIT (RRR) is the largest provider of long-term care services to seniors in Canada. RRR owns or manages long-term and retirement facilities in over 200 locations—homes—across Canada and the United States. RRR is also in the process of constructing new long term care facilities which boast innovative design features. The Corporate HR, Financial and IT organizations for Retirement Residences REIT are located in Cambridge, while its executive organization is located in Toronto.

Business Challenges:

• The IT organization deploys up to 8000 internal and external monthly reports to over 400 managers

• Managers had to call Corporate Finance or Corporate Payroll/HR to get the information they needed

• Managers had different report scheduling needs

The IT organization faced a problem facing many IT organizations today: how to meet disparate and increasingly demanding managers’ needs without breaking already stressed resources and tight budgets. “We wanted to empower our managers with the information they needed. For example, an objective for HR was to be able to retrieve personnel information directly by the staff who needed that information, when they needed it—but only for information allowed by their security access. Our existing Seagate Info™ and ad-hoc web-based solution could not easily meet these needs. In fact, we identified three key needs: ease-of-use, access security, reliability.” said Dale Mills, VP of Information Services.

Solution:

• Migrate from Seagate Info to the more robust Crystal Enterprise platform

• Partner with APOS to implement a more secure web-based solution that met RRR needs across dispersed geographical locations

Results:
• The IT organization has improved technological services across the corporation without hiring more staff, because of fewer daily requests to deliver information

• More robust software, centralized administration and innovative tools like DocAssist all combine to simplify IT administrative tasks, freeing up more time for strategic initiatives

• Meaningful information can be readily shared among staff, leading to increased visibility and action Crystal Enterprise features such as good search capabilities, job scheduling, parameters, administration ease, and export to PDF and Excel, have helped the managers adapt to the new solution more quickly than expected. “Ease-of-use and improved security access have been outstanding with this solution,” voiced Ms Wilson. And “Sharing useful information has improved corporate-wide collaborative efforts,” said Mr. Mills. For example, locations across the country now compare metrics such as sick leave usage and absenteeism to set performance improvement objectives.

Why APOS?

“We had used APOS previously to help with Crystal Reports™, but were not sure if they had the skills to help us implement the web-based solution the way we wanted. They did. They delivered. And we are ecstatic with the results,” said Mr. Mills. “The APOS consultant was very good at setting up the security links for our applications and addressing all our concerns,” added Ms. Wilson.

To read the full Retirement Residences REIT Case Study or view others, click here.

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