Case study

1: Write a systems analysis report about the U.S. Army pay system. What have been the problems with existing systems? What management, organization, and technology factors caused the problems? What was the impact of these problems? What are the objectives and information requirements of a new systems solution?

1.Problems in existing system: The existing pay system has dire problems of asymmetrical payments. The inability to keep up-to-date information is caused by an out-of-date system. This old system requires the manual input of updates, resulting in increasing chances of error occurrence.

2. Management, operation and technological problems: The problems in their management and operation are lacking a system that, automatically updates changes. It also lacks integration between the Personnel System and the Regional Level Application system to process the salaries, bonuses and benefits.

Moreover, the technologies are been in use since the Vietnam War. The old aged systems needed manual updates, increasing potential for error. The languages used to write the systems are dated back to 40 years making it unable to work at an acceptable level.

3. Impacts of the problems:
-Increasing possibility of system damage without proper documentation
-High degree of error due to constant need for manual updates
-Soldiers have to file correct tax returns due to lacking revise tax rates.
-Report of overpayment to 1,300 soldiers worth 1.5 millions.
-Demand for return of overpayment to families of the deceased, for error in active status

4. Objectives and information requirement of a new systems solution: The main objective is to have a flexible new system that will enable the personnel and regional system to integrate smoothly. The system also needed to automatically update the current deployment and redeployment status of the soldiers.

2: As part of your report, diagram the Forward Compatible Payroll business process for paying Army reservists. How should this process be improved?
Here is a very simplified visual of the patchwork they call payroll:


Several things can be done to streamline the system. First, the need for hard copy must be removed. A simple with wireless connectivity, or even a networked PDA should be sufficient for a commanding office to review orders, and submit an electronic signature. No more hard copies. Second, the requirement of having to upload any data should be eliminated with the development of the proper APIs to bypass the upload issue, the correct APIs and would automate this step. There are also three validation and data entry steps which could be reduced with the use of automation. Data exporting should be an automatic process requiring absolutely now human interaction. The goal should be tight system integration requiring little human interaction, except for auditing purposes.
3: Describe the role of end users and technical specialists in analyzing the problem and developing a solution.
To solve an IT problem, the end user and the technical specialist must work together. In this case, the targeted end user is the soldier needing to be paid. The specialists are more than just the system developers, the specialists are all of the people involved ion the process, from the person entering payroll details for a new soldier, to the person validating the final check is issued correctly. There are multiple intermediaries in between. In order to pull off a project of this type, a crack team of business analysts will need to work with all of the initial, intermediary and end users. Their daunting task is to gather the true requirements for the system, and then they will need to design a new system around these requirements without neglecting any users.
Summing up
• About the u.s army pay system
• DFAS’s pay system
• DMHRIS system
• Patchwork system or payroll system.
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