WORKING THE NETWORK EMPLOYEE DATA MONITORED ONLINE.

Byline: Evan Pondel Staff Writer

WESTLAKE VILLAGE - Growing up in Nigeria, Chike Nwasike's perception of the word ``network'' was a small community where the marketplace was the equivalent of a computer's mainframe.

Now, as the president and chief executive officer of a software company, Nwasike's concept of a network has evolved, yet the fundamentals he learned in Africa still prevail.

``Always value the community, and try to make business function in a cost-effective, orderly manner,'' said Nwasike, who has guided Westlake Village-based Novantus Corp. for almost two years.

So far, his mantra has paid off. Novantus has signed a deal with the Riverside County Office of Education to build a program that will enable employees to monitor their health and welfare benefits through the Internet.

``It's much cheaper for employees to update their records and make note of life-changing events from a computer with Internet access, then to go through human resources,'' said Nwasike, whose name means

``strong child'' in Igbo, a native language of Nigeria.

As open enrollment begins Aug. 15 for employee health and welfare benefits at the RCOE, management is welcoming the upgrade in work flow. Bob Nunez, RCOE's assistant superintendent, said the new software has already reduced the onus of filling out forms.

``And the return on investment this application has provided is benefiting our organization,'' he said.

With human resource departments facing a deluge of paperwork these days, Novantus is attempting to ease the burden online. Quick to draw a distinction between a dot-com and Novantus' line of work, Nwasike said his company simply writes the programs that function online. ``And that means we're not an Internet company,'' he said.

But the company is still trying to use the Internet as a tool to capitalize on organizing payroll programs and employee benefits. PeopleSoft, a leading provider of software applications that address accounting and human resources management, is a pioneer in the industry. The publicly traded company grew substantially in the late 1990s, though weakness in the economy has weighed heavily on the stock in recent months.

Chike said while Novantus is no where near the size of PeopleSoft, the success of that company is certainly an aspiration. However, managing payrolls and employee benefits with a computer program isn't always glitch-free.

The city of Glendale spent more than $5 million to buy and implement accounting programs written by PeopleSoft - $3 million more than they originally budgeted. When city employees opted to implement PeopleSoft Financials and Payroll programs at a cost of $1.85 million several years ago, they thought the systems would make their lives easier.

But instead, it turned out to be a big frustration for city staff because of numerous bugs in the software, said Robert Franz, the city's director of finance.

The city installed the program in February 1999, yet in three years there have been more than 1,000 fixes and patches to rid the system of bugs.

Because of the defects, staffers at one point were unable to generate monthly financial reports on time and fell behind in paying vendors.

``Ideally, this wouldn't have happened if the software (were) easy to use,'' Franz said. ``Compared with what I see on the market today, we need programs that are easier to use for the accounting staff and the employees, too.''

Chike acknowledges that when dealing with payrolls and benefits it's easy for hiccups to arise. ``But there are right ways to do business and wrong ways to do business,'' he said. ``And the cost of implementing such programs is an area (where) we have an edge over the competition.''

Depending on the size of a business, Novantus charges anywhere from $5 to $10 a month per employee.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Chike Nwasike is president of Novantus Corp., a Westlake Village firm that writes software to organize its company payroll and employee benefits programs so that monitoring and updates can be done through the Internet.

(2 -- color) Software programmer Visalakshi Kashi works on a Novantus Corp.'s project Thursday at the Westlake Village office.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer