It’s been exactly one year since we switched off Novopay Online, following the successful roll-out of the EdPay online payroll portal to all state primary and secondary schools in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Education Payroll Limited (EPL) – Rārangi Utu ā-Mātauranga Chief Executive Arlene White says EdPay has been a real success, working closely with our customers to ensure that the system is designed with schools, for schools.
“Today we celebrate one year of EdPay as the main tool for submitting school payroll instructions. EdPay has made payroll tasks easier and reduced manual effort. It is a step-change in the way schools’ pay is processed and schools have welcomed the move from clunky forms-based Novopay to a faster, simpler and more accurate online system,” she says.
“Our customer satisfaction survey for the September 2022 year shows 92% of customers are satisfied with EdPay (8% neutral and 1% dissatisfied).* This compares with Novopay Online, which had a 75% satisfaction rating (21% neutral and 5% dissatisfied) in its final quarter of use (September 2021). We are delighted with EdPay’s customer satisfaction results and are working to further improve and enhance our flagship product,” says Ms White.
EPL developed the EdPay portal over several years. EdPay was first trialed with test or beta schools in March 2019, before being made available to all schools in October 2019. EPL is progressively retiring forms and adding new features to EdPay, working with beta schools who provided feedback, which allowed adjustments to be made before rolling changes out to all schools.
Gerry Kessell-Haak, Acting General Manager Service Development, says it’s the combination of people and technology that has allowed us to develop a system that meets both the complex requirements of the schools’ payroll and the needs of school payroll administrators and principals.
“Our agile delivery approach and use of cutting-edge technology has allowed us to take a test-and-learn approach – designing, testing, and rolling out new features and functions incrementally to develop a service that is tailored for schools. Last year EPL was one of five global winners of the Red Hat Innovator of the Year Award, in recognition of our innovative use of open source software foundations for EdPay, working with local partner Deloitte and global partner Red Hat,” he says.
EPL delivers the schools’ payroll accurately and on time every fortnight to 2,500 schools, paying 96,000 teachers and support staff a total of $6.3 billion each year. On average, EPL pays $242 million to school staff each pay fortnight and receives 11,000 payroll instructions from school administrators and principals, with the schools’ payroll one of the largest and most complex in Australasia.
“We are continuing to invest in and develop EdPay, increasing transactions that can be completed in EdPay in real time and adding new forms and features. We are also continuing to upgrade our remaining systems and technology to ensure that the payroll system continues to be future proof and sustainable in the long term,” says Mr Kessell-Haak.
*Note: due to rounding, individual percentages do not sum to 100.
20 October 2022