Case Study: First American Extends Payroll to the Internet

First American Title Insurance Company operates through a network of more than 300 offices and 4,000 agents across the U.S. It also provides title services in Australia, the Bahamas, Canada, Guam, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the U. K., and the U. S. Virgin Islands. The company, which is headquartered in Santa Ana, California, has been in business for more than 100 years.

Challenge: Accurately Process Interim Payroll Checks

Although each of First American’s offices had a PC-based system that included data for employees at that location, payroll for First American’s 35,000+ employee workforce was processed on a UNIX system in its
corporate headquarters. Before a payroll could be produced, each office
had to upload its employee updates, timecards and manual checks to the central payroll system.

However, an office often had to produce a payroll check on short notice
and couldn’t wait for the regular payroll run. The offices, which didn’t
have quick access to the payroll calculation process, would estimate the taxes and deductions. This was both time-consuming and error-prone.

The central payroll system was written in COBOL and housed on a
UNIX system, while the office PCs used FoxPro. Other than the
regularly scheduled uploading and downloading of files, the two
systems had no connection.

Solution: WebCheck Processes Checks in Seconds

RBZ&A created WebCheck, an online application that allows the offices
to access the payroll calculation system on the central payroll system.

Now the local office can enter earnings and deductions. Calculation requests are placed in a “pipe” in the database, which the UNIX payroll computer constantly monitors for new requests. The system retrieves the request and passes the information to the payroll calculation program.

Deductions and taxes for the employee are calculated exactly as if it were a scheduled payroll run. The results are stored in the Oracle database and a message is sent via the “pipe” to the WebCheck application running in the browser on the user’s PC. When this message is received, the calculation results are retrieved from the database and presented to the user. The whole process, from request to results, takes only a few seconds.

In short, the WebCheck application has made life much easier for the
users at First American. Productivity has jumped at both the local offices and at central payroll. Incorrect deductions and taxes on manual checks have almost disappeared.

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