Supernova Award Category
The Problem
The company started out with an HR system that combined paper documents and a bureau solution. That meant that changes to employee records had to be made twice. In addition, there was little flexibility in running the HR operations: Data had to be ready by a fixed deadline every week in order to keep up with the service bureau’s schedule and to have employees paid on time. The company also shouldered the load of sorting and distributing paychecks, a process that took additional resources and time of the HR department.
Faced with these restrictions, the vice president of finance decided to look at taking the relevant HR processes in-house. At the same time, the company’s IT department was skeptical about relying on the cloud for HR processes, both from an availability and security perspective.
The combination of these factors led to Andrews Distributing deciding to look for an on- premises HCM solution.
The Solution
Andrews Distributing selected Kronos as Kronos committed to supporting Andrews Distributing with an on-premises solution.
Today Andrews uses Kronos Workforce Central 6.3, which includes HR Payroll, TimeKeeper, Leave and Accruals as well as mobile functionality used on smartphones and tablets. Given the logistical nature of the company, employees spend most of their system usage time with tablets on the road. The adoption of mobile was crucial, as the company realized that if users did not have mobile access to Kronos, they would spend time at their desks, and not in the field “selling beer” -an outcome Andrews Distributing wanted to avoid.
The company has started the implementation of Talent Management, given the great demand on the talent acquisition side of a fast-growing company, the company went live on talent acquisition in July 2014. The next milestone is implementation of Analytics.
The results
The company has experienced a number of significant benefits:
- Increased flexibility and agility – Andrews Distributing can now run HCM processes needed – rather than the service bureau’s schedule. If a business opportunity like a heat wave comes along and drivers work significant overtime, the company can relax time entry deadlines to accommodate schedules and workloads. The system autarchy has increased flexibility and agility of operations dramatically.
- More employees with same HR personnel - Recently, the company added more than 250 employees through an acquisition and was able to run payroll immediately on the new system for the new employees. It did not have to add resources to its HR department.
- Better data (and less paper)- Andrews Distributing was able to reduce work on manual forms by 80 percent. Employees now use the new Kronos solutions. Data entry is less error-prone, allowing a more efficient operation of HCM processes.
- Batch replaced by real time – The company now has all HR data up to date in its Kronos system and any changes are instantly available for processing.
- Going beyond HR system – Andrews Distributing is now able to automate adjacent processes to HR. For example, the company updates its security card system directly from onboarding and termination events, increasing physical security for the company.
Metrics
“Employees used to call us and we put the data into the system. Now the same employees are using the system themselves. ”
Carla Smith, Director of Human Resources, Andrews Distributing
Andrews Distributing is now benefitting from one integrated HCM system installed on site and controlled by the company directly. And with a highly mobile workforce, employees can now use the HR system on the road, which is key as they are on the road most of the time. Having the HCM system available at any time has led to a higher data quality, not only from a timeliness perspective but also from a validity perspective. The company now has an integrated HCM platform that combines talent acquisition with payroll.
The company has not formally estimated an ROI for the project, but the common understanding of the decision makers is that bringing an HCM system in house was the right move. The company wanted to have more control over its HCM processes. It put a premium on achieving this level of control, which it certainly has reached with the go-live on Kronos.
The Technology
Kronos Workforce Central 6.3, including HR Payroll, TimeKeeper, Leave, Accruals
Disruptive Factor
While moving to the cloud is increasingly popular, Andrews evaluated their company's needs and decided the best solution for their HR purposes was to buck the cloud trend and move their HR solution on premises. The Andrews Distributing experience demonstrates that better control by the employer (bringing HCM processes back in house, avoiding the dependency on the schedule and data requirements of an external service bureau) better serves employees.
Shining Moment
This implementation was a lot of work for Andrews Distributing. Learning from the initial implementation, Andrews has instated a clear responsibility assignment matrix, or RACI matrix, enabling efficient upgrades to their system.