Experience - Software Design
There's a lot more to tell, and I could write another ten pages and still not tell the whole story. So I want to wrap this up with what I think is my most significant accomplishment.
One of my greatest skills is identifying a problem, and formulating and implementing a solution. It's like a game to me, really. And I had a problem. A bunch of problems, really, that all required a single solution. The existing payroll software was too slow. And it was restrictive in a lot of ways. Our insurance CRM was antequated. And we had a lot of cross over clients with both services, and updating two separate databases was far less than perfect. So we needed a single program that could run payroll quickly, with all of the features we needed, provide the sales staff with a proper CRM for sales tracking, and support the needs of our insurance staff for policy management. And as you might guess, this software did not exist.
So I made one.
Now, full transparency, I did not do the programming. As I hope you've figured out by now, I love to learn. And I looked at what it would take to learn how to do the coding to design such a program. But I didn't have 6 years to learn how to code before starting the design. So I found a developer. And together we created something that I think is pretty special.
I started with my understanding of how previous payroll software worked. And began a framework for that. Then had to figure out how to seamlessly introduce the needs of the team servicing insurance policies. I added that to the framework. Then came the CRM. Then there was the immediate needs regarding the new features we were after. And then I had to leave room for flexibility, as I knew that we would require more functionality as time went on, so it would have to support updates and changes.
So I became the architect for this program, and my developer began to build. Daily meetings were held to review functionality, aesthetics, ease of use, and a variety of other items. And after about 18 months, we had our first version, ORBIT 1.0. But this process was continuous, enventually leading to ORBIT 2.0 and beyond.
Describing the process would bore you to death, but here is a list of many of the functionalities that ware achieved with this program.
- Payroll processing at speeds like I have never experienced on any other platform
- Tax report filing, both paper and electronic forms, for federal and state taxes
- Basic payroll reporting, as well as the ability to produce a custom report
- Certified payroll reporting, both in hard copy and electronic filing to the DIR
- Online new hire onboarding, complete with eSignatures on all relevant documents
- NACHA file creation (yes, I know how to read a NACHA file line for line, character for character)
- EFTPS batch file creation (I can read these files too)
- Insurance carrier integration for workers' comp billing
- QuickBooks general ledger interface for desktop and online versions of QuickBooks
- Complete EDD EServices integration
- An integrated time and attendance system, that incorporated job punching functionality designed to support certified payroll and prevailing wage reporting
- And so much more...
In every piece of the development, especially with the 3rd party integration sections, I had to have a complete understanding of the technical specs, so that I could translate the technical portion to my developer. Not being a payroll person himself, I had to translate some of the technical specs back to what that meant on our platform, so that he could do the technical integration. Sound complicated? Hell yes it was. Ever try reading a text file designed to submit W2's to the Social Security Administration, and have to diagnose where an error in the text file is? Considering that each line was over 200 characters, and the file itself could be over 200 lines long for one company, it could be complex and tedious. But it worked. And it worked really well.
Did I solve the problems I set out to solve? A very emphatic YES. The completely integrated system worked even better than I envisioned. The payroll processing speed exceeded all of my expectations. I was able to scale the business up without needing to staff up. Employees were more efficient, and as a result, they were happier. And we implemented all kinds of features that I didn't even imagine at the beginning of the project, adding to our competitiveness.
I would have never guessed that Software Project Manager would be a realistic job function that I would have performed. But that's exactly what it was. And I did a pretty damn good job of it. And was rewarded with a fully functional custom platform. And I picked up a bunch of new skills along the way. And just remember, I was running a business all along.
So I'm not your average payroll guy. Nor your average retail manager. Much more than that. And I'm really just getting started.
