“BLS AG is a very diverse transportation company,” Horst Johner, head of HR & Transformation and member of the Executive Board at BLS, says. “In our core business of rail transport, we operate commuter and leisure lines and maintain a 420-kilometer-long railway network. Additionally, we incorporate bus operations, car shuttle train, shipping services, and freight transport under our umbrella.”
For many years, numerous SAP products have been in use as on-premise solutions at BLS. In HR, the company has made efforts to establish standards, but differences in the execution of core processes still remain.
“When I joined BLS in 2019, I was used to a completely different level of digitalization from previous employers,” Johner explains. “Some processes were still running in spreadsheets.”
As head of HR & Transformation, he is particularly concerned with the attractiveness of BLS as an employer: “New employees expect a certain degree of digitalization as well as state-of-the-art applications. And standard digitalization is, of course, also a matter of cost. Nevertheless, the standardization and digitization of our main HR processes were important goals to increase efficiency.”
Digital Transformation with SAP Standard Content Activation Service
To address these issues, BLS decided to implement SAP SuccessFactors HCM at the beginning of 2020.
Johner says: “We chose the SAP standard content activation service. Our requirement was that we could adopt at least 80% of the processes as a standard solution. SAP provided the framework and suggested best practices to quickly get up and running, with minor adjustments to tailor the configuration to our needs.”
Stefan Fuhrer, head of Management Services at BLS AG, is also pleased with the implementation process: “What really paid off was the introduction of SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central as the first module. This allowed us to migrate all master data from the on-premise SAP ERP Human Capital Management solution to SAP SuccessFactors solutions, which simplified the implementation and integration of all other modules and packages. By implementing SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, we were able to create a single data source for HR data to manage HR processes throughout the organization.”
“Most customers are used to the classic approach of ordering and implementing modules one by one,” Roland Christen, customer success partner at SAP Switzerland AG, says. “The SAP standard content activation service offers a different approach, as complete processes are introduced instead of individual modules. The customer can immediately gain added value.”
At the same time as the introduction of SAP SuccessFactors solutions, BLS also defined the roles and teams that should be responsible for the tasks in these processes. “Where possible, we aligned internal structures with the processes,” Johner says.
Process-Oriented Implementation of SAP SuccessFactors HCM
BLS now uses all modules of SAP SuccessFactors HCM. “We now have the ability to technically map the entire HR-related career of employees – from their application to, if necessary, leaving the company – in a system configured with best practices,” Johner explains. “The implementation of SAP SuccessFactors solutions has laid the foundation so that, after connecting to the other subsystems, we can now gradually reduce the administrative effort.”
Integrating the SAP SuccessFactors Document Management Core solution by OpenText has also worked well. Compared to other solutions, Johner sees the great advantage of SAP SuccessFactors Document Management Core in its deep integration with the individual SAP SuccessFactors solutions. “It was also important for us to have a solution that is able to comply with the established life cycles for individual documents and, if necessary, also delete them – a key compliance factor for us at BLS AG,” he says.
This is all the more important as SAP SuccessFactors Document Management Core is currently used at BLS as an employee dossier.
Johner appreciates the high level of transparency that the solution provides: “Each employee has self-service access to their own employee file. Controlled through role-based permissions, managers and HR staff also have access to the documents of defined employees. These documents can be uploaded via workflow. In addition, contracts can be automatically created and stored in the employee dossier after signing.”
Currently, only payroll, time management, and shared services are on premise. The next planned steps include integrating the planning tool – for the deployment of train personnel, for example – with time management and payroll. In addition, existing, rarely used subprocesses, such as a request for unpaid leave, will be integrated through an interface.
The project aligns with BLS’s overall strategy, which focuses on managing resources through more efficient processes via digitalization. “I believe that with the introduction of SAP SuccessFactors solutions, we have made a significant contribution to the company’s strategy,” Johner says.
Significant emphasis was placed on stakeholder management toward internal customers from the beginning. “We continuously informed and provided insights into the status of the project company-wide,” Johner explains. “Important internal customer groups have been represented on the project committee from the start and have been able to accompany the upcoming changes.”
Training opportunities for relevant user groups also played a great role. The system was positively received. “HR initially viewed the system with some skepticism because the processes and responsibilities have changed,” Johner says. “But now the benefits – such as having congruent data across the entire system and the disappearance of media breaks – are highly appreciated.”
“I also notice that our employees are increasingly thinking in end-to-end processes,” Johner says.
The Swiss business newspaper Handelszeitung, which ranks the most attractive employers in Switzerland every year, has ranked BLS as No. 1 in the Swiss railway industry in 2024. In the overall ranking, BLS AG is ranked 11th out of 250 companies.
“This confirms for us that our activities in HR and the modernization measures of recent years have clearly put us on the right track,” Johner says.
