This is what ABB Vice President HR, Mr. P.C. Rajiv had to say about mySAP HR implementation.
India, Bangalore —
THE CLIENT
Name
ABB Ltd.
Industry
Power and Automation Technologies
SAP Products deployed
mySAP HR
There is a new café that is creating waves within ABB India. “Help yourselves,” it heartily invites employees. However, this is no culinary destination. This is Café HR: “Complete Access For Employees”, ABB’s new Employee Self Service solution implemented as a part of mySAP HR – a solution that is helping the HR function emerge from the jumble of transactional work to add true value to the company.
Says ABB Vice President HR, Mr. P.C. Rajiv, “mySAP HR has minimised time taken from “decision” to “action.” Routine actions are now done at less than 30% of the time earlier used.”
COMPANY BACKGROUND
ABB is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve performance while lowering environmental impact.
SITUATION PRIOR TO IMPLEMENTATION
Prior to the implementation of mySAP HR, there were at least 6 separate platforms being maintained at separate locations for maintaining master data. The linkage to payroll was absent, and workflows for time management were not integrated to payroll.
MOTIVATION FOR CHANGE
The data on HR required constant updation and reconciliation. Such data management system was consistently error-prone. Under the erstwhile system, the HR function spent a large percenatge of time in administrative tasks rather than core HR issues, which could add significantly to strategic decisions and business growth.
REASONS FOR CHOOSING mySAP
ABB selected mySAP HR as it integrated with all other functions on a real time basis; introduced the latest versions to suit business needs and offered best practices support. It connected effectively to the FI module and helps in data capture for Personnel Cost Analysis.
Moreover, since the logistics & other modules were live in ABB India, its credibility was already established and the choice of mySAP HR was natural.
COMPONENTS OF mySAP IMPLEMENTED
The components of mySAP HR that were implemented at ABB included Payroll, Time Management, Personnel Administration, Organization Management, Employee Self Service, Compensation Management & Cost Planning, Training & Event Management, Career Planning and Successions Planning. The company is also planning to implement Performance Management shortly.
PROJECT TIMELINE
It took a total of 10 months to complete the project and implement all the above components.
BENEFITS, IMPROVEMENTS, ACHIEVED GOALS
Among the main benefits witnessed with the implementation of mySAP HR are:
– Speed in transactional work
– Robust and standard processes across locations
– Systems discipline in all HR actions
– Accuracy, speed and convenience through Employee Self Service: a win-win for employees as well as the HR department
– Manager’s Desktop leading to real time information available to managers for decision making
– Informed decisions based on data available on the wire
The data management system was inefficient and prone to error prior to the implementation of mySAP. The problem has been clearly identified and some handy reports with the help of mySAP have improved the system significantly.
According to P.C. Rajiv, “Its been a great learning experience as mySAP takes you through all the activities of HR very minutely and allows an organization to relook at all their processes and in many cases the policies. It has brought in systems thinking & orientation besides making the HR team more professional in dealing with HR related data.”
There has been an unintended benefit as well. Those who were early critics of SAP or ERP systems have revised their opinions. “I believe that in every organization, SAP-HR modules need to be implemented first, before the other modules, in order to break the resistance to changeover to SAP. This is a very effective Change Management Tool!” says Rajiv.
