Education · Technology, Consulting
One HR, payroll and compliance system across five campuses of an education group
An education group ran onboarding, attendance and payroll differently at each of its five institutions, and salary runs often needed corrections. We rolled out HR, payroll and compliance modules linked to the campus biometric devices, which saved more than 50 hours of payroll work a month and gave error free salary processing across all five institutions.
50+Hours of payroll work saved each month5Institutions paying salaries without corrections- Client
- An education group running five schools and colleges in Gujarat
- Region
- India
- Sponsor
- Group HR head and chief accounts officer
- Duration
- 14 weeks to the first live payroll, with all five institutions on the system by week 18
Engagement model
O2E: Output Oriented Engagement
Each module was accepted against a checklist signed by the group HR head, and payroll was only accepted after two parallel salary runs matched the old process to the rupee.
How O2E worksThe team
- HR process consultant1
- Full stack engineer3
- Integration engineer1
- QA engineer (shared)1
The challenge
Where things stood
- Each campus kept its own staff files, so onboarding a new teacher meant collecting the same documents on paper and re-entering them in a spreadsheet at the group office.
- Attendance came from biometric machines of three different makes, exported by hand each month, and leave was tracked in registers kept by the principals' offices.
- Payroll was run by two people in accounts using spreadsheets, with teaching, non teaching and visiting faculty all paid on different rules.
- PF, ESI and professional tax records were prepared only when an inspection was due, which meant a scramble every time.
The approach
How we ran it
Weeks 1 to 3
Policy and data study
We collected the salary structures, leave rules and allowances from all five institutions, wrote down where they differed, and agreed with the HR head which differences were policy and which were habit.
Weeks 3 to 9
Core HR and attendance
We built the employee master, digital onboarding with document upload, and connectors that pull punches from each biometric device every night. Leave and claims moved to approval workflows on the phone.
Weeks 8 to 14
Payroll and parallel runs
Salary rules were set up per staff category and campus. We ran two months in parallel with the old spreadsheets and traced every difference until the totals matched.
Weeks 13 to 18
Compliance and rollout
We added PF, ESI and professional tax registers, an audit document store, and brought the remaining campuses live one by one, with a half day session for each principal's office.
What it looks like
Representative screens
Drawn to show the kind of system we delivered. Client screens and data stay private.
Leave request LR-2026-0784
- Employee
- Nirali Desai, EMP-0963
- Campus
- Primary School, Nadiad
- Leave type
- Earned leave
- Dates
- 14 Oct 2026 to 17 Oct 2026, 4 days
- Balance after
- 11 days
- Substitute
- Komal Rana, Class 4B
- Applied from the mobile app, 06 Oct
- Approved by principal, 07 Oct
- Group HR review
- Posted to October attendance
What we delivered
Modules and features
- Employee master shared by all five institutions, with campus and category level rules
- Digital onboarding with document checklist and upload from the phone
- Nightly attendance sync from three makes of biometric device
- Leave and expense claim approvals with principal and group HR levels
- Payroll engine with payslips on WhatsApp and email, and a journal export to Tally
- PF, ESI and professional tax registers with an audit ready document store
What changed
Outcomes
- 50+Hours of payroll work saved each month
- 5Institutions paying salaries without corrections
- Compliance documentation ready for audits at any time
- Leave and claims approved on the phone, with the paper registers retired
Figures as reported by the client.
Solutions
- HRMS and payrollHuman Resource Management and Payroll
- GRC and complianceGovernance, Risk and Compliance Management
Industry and platforms
Looking back
The parallel payroll runs added work for the accounts team, but they are the reason the first live salary went out without a correction, and we would insist on them again. The biometric side took longer than planned: one campus had a device so old that its export had no employee codes, and we spent two weeks on a workaround before the group simply replaced it. We would now check every attendance device in week one and price any replacement into the plan.
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