Automating Payroll for California Charter schools
Delta Management Systems (DMS) offers comprehensive back-office support for charter schools in California and Nevada, covering budgeting, accounting, payroll, purchasing, compliance, and more. This project focused on designing and developing a portal to transform unstructured data into structured, compliance-driven insights for more efficient processing.
When we started our engagement, DMS expressed issues they were having with their data intake procedures. The goal was to understand what issues where occurring, so naturally we started with a 4-week discovery process to map the existing systems, workflows, and user journeys.
Product Designer
UX research
System/ workflow mapping
Wireframes
Visual Design
The system initially received unstructured data, allowing charter schools to submit payroll in various formats. This inconsistency led to significant time spent correcting errors and clarifying data through email, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars annually—both in direct expenses and lost productivity.
Our discovery revealed over 60 pain points in the areas of client experience, data intake, manual work methods, and standardization protocols. Over half of the pain points we recorded were in the area of client experience. DMS specialists were spending inordinate amounts of time combing through pdf's of submitted payroll documents in order to process employee changes, accounts payable, and employee payroll for over 100 charter schools. Email correspondence was the main method for client communication, accounting for countless hours of back and forth communication to resolve issues. I began designing a new system that could account for all the unstructured data coming in and provide users with easy to learn tools that would ultimately provide the structure needed to eliminate existing pain points.
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In order to streamline data intake and communication we designed a platform where both parties could manage payroll, communications, employee changes, and reports. With varied degrees of permissions, school administrators and employees could upload payroll with a pre-structured data template while still providing the ability to upload supporting documentation. This approach was designed to usher users through a new workflow paradigm while providing features to accommodate legacy methods of data intake.
Key goals
Using Balsamiq as a quick sketch tool, I was able mock up interactions and workflows for internal and external users
