A mid-market manufacturing company had experienced significant growth, organically and through numerous acquisitions. As a result, company leadership recognized the need for a strategic initiative that would help them drive valuable improvements in the entire employment lifecycle, from recruiting and onboarding, to pay and benefits, to reporting, off-boarding and more. 

Key Challenges

• The company had a hands-on management style that necessitated greater system complexity to maintain existing approval structures and communications.
• As a manufacturing and distribution company, approximately two-thirds of their employees worked in plants or distribution centers spread across the U.S., Canada and China with varying levels of access to technology, technology proficiency, education and language skills.
• Staff at each location were comfortable with their own systems and documentation, but these systems were inefficient and time consuming, and management had minimal insight due to lack of timely, uniform data.
• Implementation of the new system would affect every individual in the organization in critical ways, including pay, benefits and sensitive employee data. The transition from the old system needed to happen seamlessly by the first payroll of the new year.
• The software vendor’s role included coordinating integrations with numerous benefits providers and the company’s internal system. The software vendor would support development and integration with a large team based entirely offsite.

Our Solution

Our consulting team worked with the company to map out HR processes and requirements, coordinate with all internal and external parties, hold the implementation vendor accountable, facilitate testing, and enable proactive change management efforts through communications and training.

1. Understand Business Needs – We met with functional subject-matter experts to understand current state business processes and identify challenges and opportunities that would drive requirements for the new system.
2. Document Processes and Requirements – Based on our knowledge of the business needs and available technology capabilities, we facilitated business process design workshops to envision and document the future state of the HR function and define clear requirements that would ensure the new system fulfilled its strategic objectives and delivered a return on investment.
3. Drive Accountability – Leveraging our project management experience and methodology, we established robust processes with supporting tools to effectively manage the project plan, risks and issues, resources, and status reporting to keep the project on track and hold the vendor accountable to meet planned milestones and commitments to our client.
4. Ensure Needs are Met – To validate that the new system met the client’s requirements, we defined a thorough testing plan and approach, along with detailed test scenarios, to help the client clearly identify defects and manage efficient resolution, which kept the project on track and enhanced go-live readiness.
5. Communicate Throughout – In addition to the technical requirements of the system, we recognized the importance of communicating requirements and progress with the business. We developed and followed a detailed communications plan throughout the implementation to keep everyone informed and morale high.
6. Manage the Change – Leveraging our thorough stakeholder analysis, we developed a comprehensive change management plan along with supporting communications, job aids and training programs that took the organization’s complex needs into account. This proactive change-management approach helped build awareness, excitement and readiness for launch in a way that was tailored to each of the unique stakeholder groups.
7. Provide Ongoing Support – With any major change comes unanticipated complications and challenges. We worked with the company to tackle post-implementation issues and ensure the system worked in a way that streamlined their tasks and improved performance.

The Results

The company rolled out their new HCM platform on time, on budget and with widespread success. After their issue-free go-live, the company gained a state-of-the-art system through which they can perform critical HR-related functions, ensuring enhanced security and access capabilities, and providing management with critical insights into the business. Senior management now has real-time visibility into people-related metrics and business drivers, which facilitates better, more informed decision making. In addition, now that filing and other time-consuming tasks are automated, errors are minimized and HR professionals can be more strategic by gathering insights, anticipating changing needs in the workforce and improving performance management.