McDonald’s needed a system that would give them an overview of their entire spectrum of HCM activities and integrated with its SAP financial system. By using SAP HCM they’re now positioned to grow and enhance their operations for the next 20 years.

Vision

Enabling human resources

McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in South Africa in November 1995. Today, they operate over 200 restaurants across South Africa.

McDonald’s acquired a human resources system that did not include the whole spectrum of HCM activities and didn’t integrate easily with its SAP financial system.

A lack of integration and automation created multiple challenges. Many critical HCM processes were still manual, creating silos of information and the risk of information being lost.

Internal disciplines such as human resources often receive less attention, frequently remaining paper based and inefficient. There was a tendency to believe that automation and integration of diverse activities such as training, leave, time and talent management and payroll were difficult, if not impossible.

Transformation

Taking care of the most  valuable asset

McDonald’s is renowned for its training throughout the world. They have trained and employed over 10,000 South Africans at various levels, including franchisees, restaurant managers and crew.

A consultative approach was followed internally, ensuring that everyone agreed on what the company needed from the solution, what end users needed and what had to be done to make the implementation of the desired outcomes happen as smoothly as possible.

McDonald’s chose to implement SAP HCM. An initial seven-month project period was extended to nine months in order to accommodate the need for McDonald’s HR employees to do their usual work in addition to assisting with the migration of data into the new system and attending training sessions.

Results

Full visibility

For the first time, the company is able to do leave provisioning and employee relations and training have moved into a different league. McDonald’s believes they are now superbly positioned to grow and continue enhancing operations for the next 20 years, with all aspects of human capital management automated for 200 sites and 8,000 employees countrywide. In addition to the scalability the system has given McDonald’s in terms of fundamentals such as payroll, financials, and controlling, the company now has insight into and capabilities for real-time best practice management of disciplines such as employment equity, organisational position, talent, time, and leave management across the entire, diverse spectrum of its employees.

This article first appeared on www.dimensiondata.com