PDS Provides HR Solution to Alaska USA Federal Credit Union
for Over 20 Years

Alaska USA Federal Credit Union is a member-owned, not-for-profit cooperative with 275,000 members worldwide and 1,127 employees in its parent company and four subsidiaries. It offers a wide range of financial services at its 35 Alaska branches, 14 Seattle-area branches and two Oak Harbor branches.

Challenges
In 1985, Alaska USA was processing all of its HR, payroll and benefits information manually. It needed a better way to organize and manage its data and turned to PDS for an integrated Human Resource Management System (HRMS).

“PDS has grown with us over the 20 years," said Kate Hogland, personnel systems administrator at Alaska USA. "Its HRMS has gone from a standalone product to a fully-integrated, web-based solution that PDS continues to enhance."

PDS’ Vista HRMS
Twenty years later, Alaska USA is still relying on PDS’ HR, payroll and benefits solution to handle these mission-critical processes.

“PDS has grown with us over the 20 years,” said Kate Hogland, personnel systems administrator at Alaska USA. “Its HRMS has gone from a standalone product to a fully integrated, web-based solution that PDS continues to enhance. We primarily use the Vista graphical user interface and have recently started using some of its web features. We also now have numerous other systems throughout the organization, such as our websites, Intranet and internal directories, that are all tied into Vista.”

The Vista Payroll application has eliminated the need for Alaska USA to print hard copy pay stubs. “We have been able to customize our time entry application and fully automate the process. Vista automatically calculates taxes and generates reports, providing a significant time savings for us,” added Hogland.

Alaska USA uses the Vista HR component to streamline its employee information. Vista is tied into the credit union’s intranet, which hosts an Employee Service Center. Via this integration, employees have easy access to all their demographic, payroll and benefit information.

Vista is also tied to the organization’s website. The career opportunities listed on the site, for example, are pulled from an internal database in Vista, enabling data to be entered only once.

The Vista benefits administration system manages all the credit union’s benefit-related information and processes, from automating enrollment and annual benefits statements to leave accrual processing and generating reports for management.

“We are able to update information on the fly,” said Hogland. “And, because we are able to electronically manage information per employee, employee groups or position, we save a significant amount of time.”

“The query capability enables us to easily pull data from Vista and manipulate it,” added Hogland. “And, users are also able to easily create specialized reports in addition to using Vista’s pre-defined templates.”

Vista’s Value
“Vista is easily customizable for the MIS staff, system administrators and the end users,” said Hogland. “We have been able to modify the application to meet our specific business requirements over the two decades.”

“Although we have been using PDS’ solution for more than 20 years, we have a lot more to explore,” said Hogland. “There is a great deal of potential for us to automate even more processes with Vista as our needs grow.”