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February, 28th 2006
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APXAlarm Selects Sapien's HRMS and Talent Management Suite
Company will Deploy Sapien’s HRMS & HCM Platform to Improve Overall Management of their Workforce
Morristown NJ - February 28, 2006 – Sapien LLC, a provider of HRMS and Human Capital Management (HCM) software, today announced that APXAlarm, one of the Nation’s leading Home Security system providers, has selected Sapien’s HRMS and HCM solutions to be immediately deployed.
"We wanted a user-friendly, flexible, and integrated solution to manage our new Career Ascent Program. Over the years, we’ve listened to our management, corporate partners, and internal staff inquiries to provide enhanced training, skill development, and internal systems and processes to further extend our internal talent programs. “APX already provides an incredible work experience. With the addition of the Career Ascent Program we feel that this is a quantum step towards more fully developing our employee talents. We’ve selected Sapien’s HRMS and integrated HCM platform to track core employee & position information, development activities, provide APX management “line of sight” to employee goals and objectives and leverage a robust reporting suite," said Alex Dunn, VP of Operations at APX Alarm. "Sapien’s HCM solutions gave us the flexibility to adapt the software to meet our program and organizational needs for our 2,500 corporate and seasonal employees."
“We’ve been deeply impressed with the consultative and collaborative approach Sapien takes when engaging an opportunity. We were challenged with a short timeline and leveraged Sapien’s deep industry and solution management approach. They spent the requisite time to understand our business needs and tailored a solution that is not just a short-term solution but also one that adds long-term value,” said Mr. Dunn.
Sapien’s HCM Platform provides APX management the ability to identify top performers early, measure progress against goals and objectives while providing systematic alerts and notifications to oversight and mentoring personnel to monitor and promote those key organizational metrics.
“Sapien is pleased to help organizations like APXAlarm improve their overall talent development and performance management processes," said Ryan Tweedie, Managing Partner of Sapien. "Our on-demand software model allows our products to be tailored and rapidly deployed to meet the needs of APX and other complex organizations."
About ApxAlarm
ApxAlarm has provided thousands of households with greater peace of mind since 1999. Since its inception in 1999, ApxAlarm has succeeded in fulfilling its aspiration to provide security and peace of mind to approximately 80,000 households throughout the United States. ApxAlarm has increased its product line to offer a comprehensive selection of products to meet the needs of its extensive customer base.
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 September, 20th 2005
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Philips Electronics selects HRM Connect Executive to support global succession and career planning
Royal Philips Electronics is one of the world’s biggest electronics companies, and the largest in Europe, with 160,900 employees in over 60 countries and sales totalling Euro 30.3 billion in 2004.
Active with over 60 businesses, and with more than 115,000 registered patents, Philips is currently number one in the global markets for lighting, electric shavers and DVD recorders, as well as the number two in medical diagnostic imaging worldwide.
Managing global talent
Recognising that the organisation’s strength is its people, Philips has invested in HRM Connect Executive software to support talent management initiatives across the entire organisation.
Philips selected HRM Connect Executive after first evaluating several alternative products. The new system, which Philips has re branded “Talent Track” replaces its existing ExecuTRACK software, also from HRM Software.
Niko Veenstra, project manager of the Talent Track team at Philips explained, “Historically, Philips structure has developed based around product divisions that specifically serve their own customer base. Clearly with such diverse products this has resulted in organisational units that operate independently. Our ambition at Philips is to use our global talent pool for the benefit of the business as a whole, rather than keeping very talented people at divisional level.”
He continued, “HRM Connect Executive met all of our requirements to share talent globally. The way in which the system is set up allows for visibility of talent outside of each organisational unit. The tool was ideal for us.”
The system is used to track nearly seven thousand personnel who are key position holders, including executives deemed to be critical to the success of the Philips organisation. It also holds information on the ‘talent pipeline’ – those who have been identified as having the potential for leadership roles in the future.
Philips has 575 users across the company who are responsible for managing the data or have a role that requires them to read the information in the system. These are typically HR Managers and HR Assistants in a management development role.
User friendly system
With operations in Europe, North and South America and Asia, the web-native architecture of Talent Track is important to successful company-wide use. The software is installed and maintained in The Netherlands. Users across all product divisions and countries simply access the system via Philips’ intranet using a secure login. There’s no need to install or maintain local versions of the software, and the browser interface makes the system very easy to use.
“Feedback from our users is that they like the system – the look and feel is user-friendly, it is easy to navigate and the interface straightforward to understand,” said Veenstra.
On implementation, the project team introduced some initial training of half a day and found this sufficient to get the users up and running. Some users have also requested simple manuals, preferring instructions in writing, which the project team have produced.
Secure access
Security was also an important feature in the selection process – any corporate system needs to have in place rigorous security capabilities. For Talent Track this is a particularly high priority, since the system holds very personal information about individuals who play an important role in the company.
“The information within Talent Track covers career prospects, development needs, strengths and weaknesses. This kind of sensitive personal data requires even more careful handling than someone’s birthday and address details, as well as being of strategic importance to the business.
The security within HRM Connect Executive is highly flexible. Security is an important issue, and we have gone to great lengths to get this right.” explained Veenstra.
Philips has taken advantage of HRM Connect Executive’s roles-based security model to control access to information. A login password is provided to identify each user, and based on this login, they are then assigned a limited set of records that they may either read or change on the system. This relates to the product division that they are responsible for and is dependent also on their level within the company, whether at the corporate, business or sub-business level.
Since the system is used globally, it was also important that the system could allow for country-specific legislative differences. For example, there are several fields that US users are not allowed to input or read. With HRM Connect Executive this requirement is easily accommodated.
Management Development and Planning
Philips uses Talent Track to support a range of talent management processes at a number of different levels within the business. At the corporate level it reviews the top of the organisation and looks at talent and growth potential, comparing this against the potential growth from the previous year.
At the divisional level Talent Track is used to actively manage competencies and skills and to identify possible next career steps. For example, the system is used to support Philips’ annual Management Development Review process.
“Talent Track is of paramount importance to Philips’ review process, because it allows us to record information about employees throughout the year; their job moves, their promotions and training,” explained Veenstra. “The manager prepares a short summary of the employee and what they need to develop. All the information is then consolidated into a report, that we can just create out of Talent Track at the single click of the button.”
Succession planning
At corporate level, Philips use Talent Track for succession planning, a crucial activity for the company. For most key positions the company has in place a succession plan for the next 5 to 10 years.
“Named individuals are primed for these positions - we have decided to do this because it not only helps us from an organisational point to groom someone for their next step, but also make them responsible for making that growth themselves,” said Veenstra.
They are not guaranteed the position, explained Veenstra, but need to show that they can grow towards that role – it becomes a joint effort between the company and the individual to develop the skills that are required for the next role.
Talent Track helps Philips to manage and make sense of the succession data, and provides Philips with a single view of information that supports an enterprise-wide approach to succession planning and career development.
Philips has a number of standard reports that enables them to look at the key positions and whether there are appropriate succession plans in place. This means, for example, Philips can easily identify potential issues, such as succession shortages or blockages, and take a proactive approach to addressing them.
Reporting function a winner
The advanced query and integrated Crystal reporting function is an important element to Philips. The company uses this functionality extensively. Not only to provide snapshot reports of departments and individuals but also to analyse how a particular population has changed over time.
With the system, a user can select a group of people, for example high potential employees, and then look at the dynamics of this group between specified dates. They can see who has entered or left the group and for what reason. Some might have moved to another product division, left the company, or even retired.
“The dynamics report allows us to do analysis – look at the numbers and also dig into the detail, so we can actually see who the people are that have left or entered the talent pool,” said Veenstra.
“This allows us to create some insight into how the dynamics of our talent pipeline changes over time and to change the management processes that we have in place, more specifically, be more on the ball in addressing development needs of our key people.”
Philips is very pleased with this functionality and believes it is one of the early adopters in applying this aspect of talent management.
“The searching and integrated Crystal reporting function is the big win of this tool – it puts data at fingertips. If data is in the system, you can get it out,” said Veenstra.
Improved data accuracy
Philips has also realised other business benefits since implementing Talent Track. It is easier to find the data required, and it takes less time. Data accuracy has also improved.
“Historically in the old ExecuTRACK system we had many free text fields which made reporting difficult. For example, we ended up with several hundred versions of product divisions, of which there are actually only five, plus two others to allow for overhead roles – they were all spelling errors, abbreviations, different ways of using old titles,” said Veenstra.
With HRM Connect Executive, drop down lists have replaced many free text fields, improving the accuracy of data input into the system - and the resulting reporting and analysis.
Successful integration and implementation
Talent Track is integrated with Philips’ HR system, ensuring that there is continuity across the data. Personal details are imported from the central HR repository, as well as organisational data
Talent Track is also integrated with Philips’ Lotus Notes e-mail system, which enables HRM Connect Executive’s inbuilt workflow engine to automatically trigger e-mail alerts. This helps employees to manage tasks more efficiently by letting them know when actions need to be undertaken.
As with all large implementations, the success of the project was the result of close collaboration between HRM and Philips. The two companies worked as a virtual team – with HRM based in London and the Philips IT and Corporate teams based across the Netherlands in Amsterdam and Eindhoven. Implementation to a fully live system took six months.
According to Veenstra: “The HRM team was very supportive in helping us to prepare for the launch of the system. HRM was very knowledgeable in getting the most from the product and helping to address our specific needs.”
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 August 2005
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KPN delivers enhanced management information with HRCharter
Integration with PeopleSoft® 8 streamlines organisation charting and management reporting at KPN
A market leader in several sectors of the Dutch telecom market, KPN offers telecommunications services to both consumers and businesses. Its core activities are telephony and data services through KPN’s fixed network in the Netherlands; mobile telecom services in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium; and data services in Europe.
With 18,300 staff across its 200 office locations in the Netherlands, KPN relies on IT systems to manage many of its business processes, including HR. As part of the company’s overall drive to streamline and automate many of its HR processes, KPN has invested in PeopleSoft 8 HRMS to provide its managers and staff with self-service HR applications.
Introducing HRCharter has further enhanced this e-initiative.
Saving time and money
Ad van Santvoort, Manager of HR Systems and Information Provision at KPN explains, “Prior to installing HRCharter, managers were producing charts in a variety of ways – using Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Not only was this time consuming, but the charts were very limited and could not be used for any management planning”.
After an initial demonstration, Ad van Santvoort was impressed with the flexibility that HRCharter offered, as well its ease of use.
“I liked it from the beginning and immediately thought it would be good for the managers. When looking at other products either the price was not right or the installation looked too complex,” commented Ad van Santvoort.
Adding value to PeopleSoft® 8 HRMS
An important factor for KPN in selecting HRCharter was its PeopleSoft-certified interface, which enables managers to dynamically generate organisation charts using data drawn from the PeopleSoft system.
“Now there is no need to waste time typing names into boxes or laying out charts. Our PeopleSoft system provides the data and HRCharter takes care of the rest, automatically formatting the information for printing or viewing.” comments Ad van Santvoort.
Virtually all of the information in the PeopleSoft database can be made available to HRCharter and displayed in a chart, giving companies like KPN enormous flexibility to use charts to support a wide range of HR management and planning activities. HRCharter’s conditional mapping and colour coding features can be used to graphically display and highlight key HR data, such as age or gender distribution, making it easy to assimilate the information.
Looking at HR data in a powerful new light
KPN has taken advantages of HRCharter’s reporting capabilities to create their own charts that assist with the monitoring of several key HR programmes, including training & development and absence management – a critical activity for any large organisation.
With HRCharter, managers at KPN can now easily view the number of days’ illness or absence that an employee has taken, and identify patterns and trends so they can work proactively with staff where appropriate. In addition, the system allows managers to see where people have accrued holiday, so they can encourage staff to take their holiday entitlement within an appropriate time frame. This is important to KPN from an individual employee health perspective, as well as to ensure that there are enough staff available to provide cover at any time.
HRCharter is also being used to allow managers to support the review of the skills and competencies of their people, so that they can identify development needs. Ad van Santvoort explains, “Before, if a manager wanted information about the qualifications or training of staff in their department, this information had to be compiled manually. HRCharter gives them this information in a spilt second, and in a way that they find easy to use for analysis”.
Being able to quickly visualise personnel information graphically and share it across the organisation has improved communication throughout the company. KPN also plans to use the information to provide top level information of staff for departmental and organisational changes.
A popular solution
Since being installed, HRCharter has seen rapid take up, with around 1,400 managers using the system across KPN. “We are proud of our e-HR applications and the way they have streamlined many routine business processes, saving time and increasing efficiencies. Feedback from managers has been very positive about the way that HRCharter is benefiting them and the business,” concludes Ad van Santvoort.
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