Budget Group, Inc.
Compensation management Intranet established to manage the merit and incentive pay out process and provide managers with guidelines that help automate the process.

Budget Group, Inc. is one of the world's leading vehicle rental companies with revenues of $2.4 billion, and subsidiary companies that have two of the largest and most recognized brand names in the world: Budget Rent a Car and Ryder TRS. As one of the world's top three car and truck rental systems with a global presence in over three thousand locations in more than 120 countries, Budget strives to define the car rental industry through precedent-setting products and services. In order to do so, it also must have precedent-setting operational standards.

Many companies, no matter the size, have small compensation departments - usually consisting of less than half a dozen people. Budget is no exception. Approximately two years ago, Mike Nichols, vice president of compensation and HRIS, was primarily responsible for managing the department. Nichols and a colleague spent 10 hours a day - 80% of their time - from November through April managing this process in order to meet the annual deadline for raises and incentives. Nichols would then provide management with reports created in Excel by a coworker. Simultaneously, he was paying more than $600,000 a year in consultants' fees in order to perform the other functions for which his department was responsible. After a year on the job, Nichols realized the need to invest in a system that would alleviate the time spent on merit and incentive calculations. Recently joined by Vina Barista, manager of compensation, Nichols and Barista began evaluating systems that would automate the process.

They examined several large as well as specialized consulting firms and solutions from several large vendors before they chose Schindler Technology, a provider of Web-based business intelligence solutions, for the company's human resource domain expertise, ability to present data in a logical and compelling way and for the flexibility of the offering. Additional factors that led to the decision to work with Schindler Technology included the minimal training requirements in the area of human resources, short implementation time, ease-of-use and overall cost effectiveness.

Nichols and Barista enlisted the help of the director of information technology to work with Schindler Technology and the implementation was completed in six months time. Schindler Technology's Intranet-based application is integrated with Budget's IT infrastructure and a PeopleSoft application, and runs on an Oracle database. In order to protect the data integrity of the PeopleSoft system, access is limited. However, Schindler Technology was able to allow nearly 200 managers throughout the country to view the PeopleSoft data in "trees" so that they can see details about those people whom they manage. The screens provide information that enable manager's assess data integrity as well as provide compensation guidelines. The ability to view this data empowers the managers to make more informed decisions on merit and incentive payouts without feeling "policed" by HR. Additionally, they can view exception reports that help them see which employees received merit raises outside the suggested, standard guidelines so they can make decisions and adjustments accordingly. The reports are also shared in advance with other operations departments, such as finance so they can plan for budget increases. The managers found the system so useful, they asked for year-round access in order to have up-to-the-minute information about their employees. The system has even automated tracking of internal transfers. In the past, if a person transferred from one location to another within the company, it added significant manual complexity to the incentive process resulting in approximately 400 hours of additional calculations to move people from location to location and from one incentive plan to another. Through the use of Schindler Technology's application, Budget has re-allocated those 400 hours to other priorities.

After the successful launch of what Budget internally calls the "Compensation Dashboard", the company has one person spending approximately half of his or her day on the merit and incentive payouts and has cut its consulting expenditures to $100,000 a year by using internal resources on projects previously completed by consultants. Other departments within Budget are realizing ways the application can be tailored for use within the scope of their jobs and Budget has future plans to broaden the use for enhanced business intelligence and decision support across the company.

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