Published on the 10/07/2025 | Written by Heather Wright
SAP and UKG line up…
NZ Police are expecting cost reductions and significant improvements from a major upgrade of the systems for paying and rostering police – and helping ensure they get to crime scenes.
The organisation is preparing to go to market for phase one of its enterprise resource management system upgrade program which will see core systems moved to ‘resilient, modern, cloud-based alternatives’.
The new ERM will ensure police can continue to deliver reliable services to the public and avoid the potential of system failure.
The project was allocated funding in Budget 2025 for phase one and is preparing to go to market at the end of July seeking a supplier, or consortia, to deliver the ‘high priority’ project. Phase one includes replacing the human resources, payroll and workforce management systems, using SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and Employee Central Payroll and UKG Pro WFM (previously Kronos). UKG Pro Workforce Management includes scheduling and timekeeping, labour forecasting and analytics.
NZ Police says the initiative will ‘ensure police can continue to deliver reliable services to the public and avoid the potential of system failure’.
Police Minister Mark Mitchell says the ERM upgrade will enable a modern, reliable system that ensures the 10,000+ staff get paid on time, while delivering improved rostering and scheduling data to better inform frontline deployment decisions.
Budget 2025 saw $480 million in investment for NZ Police – much of it to remedy an under-funded increase to police numbers relating to the infrastructure, equipment and ‘other costs’ required by additional police, but mention was made of the ERM upgrade, though no specific figures were provided.
The project has been billed as an opportunity to improve NZ Police’s functional capability, while reducing the risk of non-compliance.
NZ Police says the new system is expected to reduce risk to police service delivery and compliance 50 percent by June 2029, while reducing admin costs by 30 percent and providing a 20 percent improvement in availability and quality of information – measured primarily by the volumes of corrections in payroll – in the same timeframe.
An earlier $56 million HR and payroll system upgrade – using SAP and Kronos (now UKG) – didn’t end well. In 2020 it saw PwC and subcontractor Zag facing off over deployment issues with the project, which kicked off in 2014 and was due to be delivered in 2014, suffering delays and running over budget, blowing out to $64 million-plus.
In May 2016, RNZ reported that delays in the delivery of the system were costing $2 million a month.
PwC and NZ Police settled their dispute over the project in 2018, but the PwC-Zag dispute, with PwC seeking damages against Zag for alleged breaches of contract, rumbled on far longer.
SAP ECC forms NZ Police’s core HR system, with Success Factors for recruitment, onboarding, learning and development. UKG Kronos is used for rostering and scheduling. (UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group) is the result of the merger of Kronos and Ultimate Software. The company’s workforce management is used by United States police departments in Oak Creek, Wisconsin and Florida’s Fort Myers. Southern Cross Healthcare and Cotton On are also among the client base.)
Together with SAP Finance and Concur, SAP ECC and the UKG system form part of the MyPolice workforce management system, which has previously been flagged as unreliable and at risk of failure.
It’s also been deemed ‘insufficient’ to meet operational needs and hindering improvements to policing service delivery.
The business case is expected to be approved by Cabinet by February 2026, with go live of workforce management, human resources and payroll applications by December 2027.
