Republic of the Philippines

Samar State University

College of Graduate Studies
Catbalogan City, Samar

Course Number : Practicum 2

Course Description : Problem Analysis/Decision Making
Term : S.Y. 2017-2018, 2nd Semester
Professor : GODOFREDO O. LABENDIA, D.M.
Student : MARY JANE A. ACEDILLO
_____________________________________________________________________________________

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The DepEd Division of Samar Office chose Spectramind Systems Technology, Inc. with their workforce
management system to launch an accurate fingerprint time and attendance system for government employees. This
sophisticated system will enable the government offices to accurately track employee time and attendance, prevent
time theft, and reduce government employee absenteeism problems.

INTRODUCTION

Biometric employee attendance systems have been used for more than two decades for managing time and
employee attendance in organizations. Biometrics based time management attendance systems with enhanced
features have been developed (Akinduyite, Adetunmbi, Olabode, & Ibidunmoye, 2013). Organizations are
increasingly operating in dynamic conditions. Human resources form a large part of the costs that organizations have
to incur. The use of biometric employee attendance systems is widespread and growing rapidly with many
organizations adopting them due to their ability of enhancing employee productivity. Biometric technology can help in
accurately tracking employee time and attendance, which can assist in preventing time theft by ensuring that
employees arrive at the work place on time and leave at the right time after duty (Ononiwu & Okorafor, 2012).

The biometric employee attendance system maintains the attendance time of workers such that those who
work extra hours are compensated through overtime pay. Effective management of employee attendance ensures
that employees in DepEd Division of Samar Office attend to their duties on time to deliver services to teaching and
non-teaching clients, which contributes to better operational performance.

At DepEd Division of Samar Office the operations may be adversely affected if some employees fail to report for
duty. Proper pay computation ensures that employees are paid what is due to them. When pay is computed
accurately it enhances the motivation of workers. Where manual systems of calculating pay are used, errors may
occur that lead to employees not being paid accurate salaries. In DepEd Division of Samar Office workers provide
essential services and where pay has errors it may lead to disputes that disrupt the operation performance of DepEd
Division of Samar Office.

I. IDENTIFICATION OF A PROBLEM

In the current government offices provision processes, institutions are making efforts to provide quality services
to an increasing number of clients with diverse backgrounds and requests while the resources at the disposal of the
institutions are scarce. The attendance management practices that are adopted by organizations can influence their
operational performance, which can be manifested in terms of employee punctuality, productivity and customer
satisfaction levels. Biometric employee attendance system provides an opportunity for DepEd Division of Samar
office to manage employee attendance, employee identification and payroll computation in ways that can influence
operational performance. The existing biometrics system used by the office has major issues which compromises the
integrity of the attendance datathat it would produce. These issues include incidents where the date skips a day,
short battery life which is important considering the hi occurence of blackouts in the area which results for the need to
resetting of the biometrics clock, which is sometime not in accordance with the real standard time (sometimes late,
sometimes advanced, depending on the one who adjusted the biometrics clock).

II. IDENTIFICATION OF DECISION CRITERIA

Biometric time and attendance system plays a critical role in employee management, payroll generation, monthly
attendance report generation. It has a crucial role in helping human resource officers to generate effective employee
report based on their performance. It can also help in payroll management and to predict the possible growth
strategies.

A successful attendance system depends upon various factors. Both the technical specification of the biometric
attendance machine and a web portal or background system to manage the attendance activities play an important
role in employee management.
1. Registration Time
The registration time required by fingerprint sensor plays a crucial role in having a sound attendance
management system. Less than three seconds of time is preferred one. A buyer of biometric time
attendance system should ensure that the device registers fingerprint quickly and with same swiftness
pushes data to a server.
2. Fingerprint Template Capacity
This is another most important thing we should consider while buying biometric time and attendance
management. Fingerprint template capacity denotes a number of punches which we can imprint at a time.
Any biometric attendance system that has more than 200 fingerprint template capacity should be preferred.
We should take into account the number of employees we have in particular building or store.
3. Battery Backup Time
In IT industry, on an average basis employees work for 9 hours of time. So HR managers must analyze the
requirement before buying biometric attendance system. There are two kinds biometric attendance devices
available. One which is to be connected with wire to a computer system and the other is wireless biometric
time and attendance system. Wireless system works on wi-fi and hence battery backup requirement
becomes the crucial deciding factor. Generally, we should prefer a biometric system which has a battery
backup of more than 6 hours.
4. Maintenance Cost
The market is flooded with low quality biometric time and attendance solutions. A high-quality biometric
solution will have a zero maintenance cost with a warranty period. So it is advisable that a customer should
buy only those biometric attendance machines that have a low maintenance cost. Now the best way to
ensure these things is by closely looking at the customer reviews and crosschecking if the biometric device
comes with a warranty period.
5. Web Portal Support
This is one of the most important criteria that we should check while buying any biometric time and
attendance systems. Web portal that can broadcast attendance report, payroll management, check in and
check out time of employees is of great advantage. A typical high-quality HR payroll management system
will come with these features. Some more features that we can look in fingerprint attendance system is the
availability of customized reports that we can access in real time. These reports will help us to check
employee attendance at the end of the month.
6. Payroll Management Dashboards
A customizable payroll management software for biometric attendance helps you to have a complete view of
progress achieved in attendance management. A simple and easy access to employee attendance data
often helps you to make correct decisions at the end of the month. This also helps in getting information
about top performing employees and thus allotting these resources to the most important projects. These
customized dashboards help in bringing transparency and efficiency in employee management
7. Wi-Fi Connectivity In Biometric Time And Attendance System
Wi-Fi connectivity has two advantages. First, it connects directly to the personal computer thus eliminating
the need of any physical medium. Second thing is that it becomes easy to operate and navigate the
biometric time attendance system. The ease in an operating system is very important for high-end
 organizations that prefer clutter free and easy solution. It is important to know that the internal wi-fi system
increases the cost of the overall solution but an organization must insist on wi-fi feature as it results in zero
maintenance and easy approach.

III. ALLOCATION OF WEIGHTS

We will now weight the different decision criterions to give them the correct priority.
Criteria Weights
1. Cost of Biometric System 15
2. Fingerprint Template Capacity 13
3. Web Portal Support 12
4. Maintenance Cost and Warranty 10
5. Battery Back-up Time 8
6. Payroll Management Dashboards 5
7. Wi-fi Connectivity 3

IV. DEVELOPMENT OF ALTERNATIVES

The fourth step in the decision-making process requires the decision maker to list viable alternatives that could
resolve the problem. In here, we identify four IT companies as possible choices.

I. COSMOTECH PHILIPPINES, INC. is a premier integrator in the field of Information Technology specializing
in System Solutions and Software Development and Customization. Clients from all kinds of industries
procure their company’s demands through us under the assurance that Cosmotech provides top-of-the line
system solutions with superior products and services.

II. SPECTRAMIND SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY INCORPORATED is a local company founded in 2004 by

Roger Te Un Son - an engineer whose interest in trading and IT equipments trails back to the early days of
PC revolution. Founder is also one of the founders of titanium technologies, a company that focuses on
serving the IT requirements of Filipino-Chinese companies.

III. MUSTARD SEED SYSTEMS CORPORATION started its operations in September 1999. The company was
set-up mainly to distribute and sell off-the-shelf accounting and point-of-sale software in the Philippines.
Given its inherent advantage of lower cost plus fast and easy implementation as compared to customized
systems, off-the-shelf accounting software became very popular among Small Medium Businesses (SMB) in
the Philippines, thus helping Mustard Seed grow its install base to approximately 2,000 corporations today.

IV. DIGITAL CCTV AND ELECTRONICS CORPORATION one of the Philippines' leading importer, distributor,
and installer of professional grade security equipment such as:
 Geovision ® GV Series digital surveillance systems
 Standalone DVR's,
 All kinds of CCTV and IP cameras
 Biometric and proximity time attendance readers
 Access control systems and magnetic locks
 Wireless ,wired, and GSM based burglar and perimeter alarm systems
 Evolis PVC ID card printers and accessories
 IP or GSM based remote control devices
 Other electronic gadgets and novelties
 V. ANALYSIS OF ALTERNATIVES

Once alternatives have been identified, we will now evaluate each one. In evaluating these alternatives we will
use the one of the Seven Management and Planning tools that will guide us in the decision making process, the so
called “Pioritization Matrix”.

Pioritization Matrix is a tool that helps in prioritizing an option over others, given a set of decision making criteria.
Options and criteria are arranged in Row-Column format. Weightages are assigned to each criteria and user has to
rate each option on all the criteria. Based on the rankings, the option that has the highest rating collectively on all
criteria is chosen.

1. Rate from 1-10, least to greatest

Cost of Fingerprint Web Maintenance Battery Payroll

Wi-fi
Alternatives\ Criterias Biometric Template Portal Cost and Back-up Management
Connectivity
System Capacity Support Warranty Time Dashboards

Cosmotech Philippines, Inc. 9 9 8 8 5 10 10

Digital CCTV and Electronics
8 9 9 10 6 9 10
Corporation
Spectramind Systems Technology,
10 8 10 9 5 8 10
Inc.
Mustard Seed Systems Corporation 9 7 6 9 8 5 10

2. Weights multiply to the rate presented above.

Cost of Fingerprint Web Maintenance Battery Payroll

Wi-fi

TOTAL
Biometric Template Portal Cost and Back-up Management
Alternatives\ Criterias Connectivity
System Capacity Support Warranty Time Dashboards
15 13 12 10 8 5 3
Cosmotech Philippines, Inc. 135 117 96 80 40 50 30 548
Digital CCTV and Electronics
120 117 108 100 48 45 30 568
Corporation
Spectramind Systems Technology,
150 104 120 90 40 40 30 574
Inc.
Mustard Seed Systems
135 91 72 90 64 25 30 507
Corporation

VI. CONCLUSIONS

Institutions should invest more on technologies that ensure efficiency in operational performance. Operational
performance should be kept in mind as institutions upgrade their employee attendance management systems. In
order to differentiate themselves from other organizations, institutions like DepEd need to go out of their way to
deliberately listen to the needs of employees and customers to ensure that their operational performance is
enhanced. Every manhour lost, whether deliberately – thru time theft or time record manipulation; or due to technical
issues – incorrect time stamp or machine malfunction, plays a vital role to the success of any given company. In line
with this, reliable time keeping is of high importance and should be invested upon.

REFERENCES:

Akinduyite C.O, Adetunmbi A.O, Olabode O.O. & Ibidunmoye E.O, (2013) Fingerprintbased attendance management
system. Journal of Computer Sciences and Applications, 2013, 1(5), 100-105

Ononiwu G. C.& Okorafor, G. N (2012). Radio frequency identification based attendance system with automatic door
unit. Academic Research International, 2(2), March, 2012.
 • "DepEd Division of Samar needs to invest in Biometric Employee Attendance
Identification System"
of a Problem

• Cost of Biometric System

• Fingerprint Template Capacity
• Web Portal Support
• Maintenance Cost and Warranty
Identification
of Decision • Battery Back-up Time
Critera • Payroll Management Dashboards
• Wi-fi Connectivity

• Cost of Biometric System 15

• Fingerprint Template Capacity 13
• Web Portal Support 12
• Maintenance Cost and Warranty 10
Allocation of
Weights to • Battery Back-up Time 08
Criteria • Payroll Management Dashboards 05
• Wi-fi Connectivity 03

• Cosmotech Philippines, Inc.

• Digital CCTV and Electronics Corporation
Development • Spectramind Systems Technology, Inc.
of • Mustard Seed Systems Corporation
Alternatives

• Cosmotech Philippines, Inc. 548

• Digital CCTV and Electronics Corporation 568
• Spectramind Systems Technology, Inc. 574
Analysis of
Alternatives • Mustard Seed Systems Corporation 507

Selection/ • Spectramind Systems Technology, Inc.

Implementatio
n of an
Alternative

Evaluation of
Decision
Effectiveness