Since 1941, 1st Franklin Financial Corporation has been committed to serving the financial needs of customers with the respect and personal service they deserve. With 274 offices in six states, 1st Franklin Financial Corporation provides personal loans for auto repairs, home improvements, or debt consolidation supplying consumers with the cash they need. The company also offers retail sales financing to help small businesses grow.

In 2012 the IT team at 1st Franklin Financial Corporation began looking for ways to improve the company’s paper-based, manual Human Resources (HR) processes for its 1100+ employees. The team wanted to automate HR activities ranging from routine personnel changes to annual reviews and raises – all of which were a real challenge due to approvals needed across the multitude of loan offices.

“We hire about 250 new employees each year due to expansion and normal attrition,” stated Mike Haynie, Executive Vice President of HR. “Our big motivator was to efficiently and securely circulate all the required documentation around a company that is really spread out over hundreds of locations,” he continued.

After reviewing several options, 1st Franklin Financial Corporation selected the PMG platform and implementation services to automate all updates of employee records from complex to simple – including payroll and salary changes, training certifications, new titles, or even a change of address. The company wanted to leverage PMG’s powerful ability to integrate with any system including Active Directory (AD) and their payroll systems.

The team at 1st Franklin Financial Corporation felt that PMG offered a solid service catalog foundation that would support the immediate need for HR management and future needs as well. “PMG’s capabilities for graphically building forms and workflows blew away the other options that we considered,” said Cindy Mullin, Vice President of IT. “We’ve found it really easy to create forms,” she continued.

With PMG, 1st Franklin Financial Corporation has automated access management and identity management to speed up their employee onboarding. “Before we began using PMG’s service catalog, it was a totally manual process for IT to set up new user account,” stated Jason Davis, Technical Support Manager. “Now we have AD and the New Hire service linked and automated via PMG.” During the initial project, 1st Franklin Financial Corporation worked closely with PMG’s implementation services team. “PMG’s responsiveness has been awesome,” commented Davis.

Now with PMG, 1st Franklin Financial Corporation has streamlined the New Hire process and gained visibility of each stage in the onboarding process. The New Hire information can be submitted, approved and processed all in the same day, and it’s done accurately, so new hires can quickly become productive.

Along with faster onboarding, the company also enjoys a greatly streamline process for making and tracking employee updates. Daily Personnel Action Reports detail all changes made to employee records for that day, from changes in title to address changes.

“Using PMG provides us with a huge advantage because now we are aware of delays in the process and we can identify the step in the workflow where the issue has occurred,” continued Haynie.

1st Franklin Financial Corporation also plans to expand their usage of PMG beyond HR into other areas of the enterprise such as vendor management. Another future application will automate portions of the internal branch audit process, replacing the current complex manual flow that involves several individuals, various forms, reviews and approvals, across multiple locations.

Ultimately, the company hopes to replace their internal web resource page with PMG. “We believe PMG can provide a one-stop portal for all employees to access the information, services and resources they need,” concluded Davis.

Since 1941, 1st Franklin Financial Corporation has been committed to serving the financial needs of customers with the respect and personal service they deserve. They operate through 284 branch loan offices throughout Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee, and are headquartered in Toccoa, Georgia. They also offer retail sales financing to local businesses. For more information, visit www.1ffc.com.