Universal Studios Case Study

About them:
Universal Studios is an American entertainment company that focuses in film and television, it is owned by media conglomerate Comcast. Universal Studios is a part of “Hollywood’s Big Six,” meaning it is one of the six largest film studios in the US. For over 85 years, Universal Studios has provided one of a kind entertainment experiences to hundreds of millions of people throughout the world.

Project Overview:
Prior to our involvement, Universal Studios was handling the payment calculation of various hourly employee types (Union, Non-Union Non-Exempt) manually. Considering these employees spanned over 100 variations of union contracts, the pay calculation for over 10,000 people was very difficult and time-consuming. Universal Studios created an initiative to automate the payment process as much as possible. The automation project included the creation of several time entry mechanisms (IVR, Card Swipe, Web Portal) and the collection of circumstantial information regarding union contracts (6th consecutive day, 6 of 7 work day, forced call, minimum call, etc.). The new system requirements included:

Ability to process more than 10,000 NUNE and union NBC Universal employees throughout the country
Cover over 100 union contracts (IASTE, Local 174, AGVA, etc.)
Interfaces to SAP, PeopleSoft, VISTA, GE payroll (CPARS) and Oracle OHR
Time collection via IVR, punch clocks and web clocks
Web interface for clocking and reporting
Various Payroll Administration functions
Full Sarbanes-Oxley compliant audit capabilities

Project Tasks:

Perform business analysis by holding information gathering meetings with the Payroll, Human Resources, Legal and Union Representatives departments
Hold meetings with vendors and design/review RFPs
Create specification documents
Design software and database architecture
Manage the development, testing and deployment of the new system
Code all of the different payment conditions based off union type
Design accurate and efficient testing system in order to support the testing validation of results
Migrate Payroll Administrator Application from PowerBuilder to VB.NET
Design and develop a time clock application for the Intermec time clocks
Design and develop various interface applications to transfer data from the old system to SAP, PeopleSoft, VISTA, GE payroll (CSPARS) and Oracle OHR
Develop account authentication routines to ensure valid numbers get passed to these systems
Design and implement the new security model which included password encryption, aging and rules
Design a new application structure to support CA226 legal requirements (meal penalty, reporting of payment amounts, etc.)
Work with various auditing entities to obtain Sarbanes-Oxley compliance certificates

Technologies: VB.Net, ASP.NET, Visual Basic, Visual Studio 2005, Oracle, HTML, VBScript, XML, Powerbuilder, Visual C++, Oracle Triggers and Stored Procedures, PL/SQL, Shell scripts, SQL, Erwin, MS Project