Supernova Award Category

The Problem

For over 100 years Jersey Telecom was a government department providing fixed line telecommunications to Jersey’s 100,000 residents and corporate clients (incumbent operator with no other choice for consumers ). In 2003 JT was spun off as 100% States of Jersey owned asset, and was directed by an independent (non political) Board, and managed by an operational executive committee. Privatization came at the same time as deregulation, new competitors, and the explosion of mobile.

JT could not hope to compete or even survive in this disruption, they had to completely transform themselves, and that meant growing and diversifying  their way out and above the competition. They embarked on an ambitious growth strategy not simply limited to the Channel Islands. This has meant rapid expansion of a workforce both at their Jersey HQ and around the world, and it certainly hasn’t finished.

The existing HR systems were old, unsupported and creaking and only supported the historic Jersey workforce. All the new jurisdictions worked off spreadsheets and basic bureau payroll, so HR MI and user experience was all over the place (in Richard’s words!). JT needed a modern HCM system that would unite their employees under the JT brand and enable them to deliver on their objective that every employee would have the same self-service and user experience, without needing to use IT directly but also to use mobile.

The Solution

JT had a heavily modified HR.net system, this customisation meant that they were unable to keep up to date, and their acquisitions had their own systems, many just spreadsheets and had not been integrated. More recently there was only one person who could support their HR.net System. How can a company with £150m turnover and a single engineer supporting an out-dated, inefficient HR system, transform itself?

The technology was moving fast and although JT looked at new ways to support their HR, each time it was either too expensive or no references to look at. JT took the risky but considered path of staying with HR.net whilst continuing through independent consultants to look at emerging products.

Oracle HCM Cloud was the first product to offer what was needed and came in within budget as well. This gave JT the confidence to deliver on their objectives. 

JT selected Certus as their implementation partner based on references, experience and cost.

The results

Transforming JT Global by empowering their biggest asset, their People, with Oracle HCM Cloud

JT is an excellent example of midmarket organisations being able to take advantage of enterprise grade HCM systems, to give them a better user experience, more transparency, less opportunity for error and reduced cost of operation. The electronic workflow of performance management is key to running a business that is not only transforming itself from public sector with no competitors to a growing organisation in a competitive and expanding market; their people are the reason for JT’s success.

Through the HR system super users who had supported the HCM deployment,  Richard Summerfield Group HR Director of JT was quickly  able to utilise a much improved  reporting from the system to enable JT board to make timely Business decisions as they continue on their great journey.

Richard is passionate about growing a global company based locally, he shares his success story ‘Hiring Locally – Acting Globally’ – he has a challenge to deliver high quality employment to the States of Jersey who own JT but deliver services around the world. This has its own challenges but his vision supported by his HCM systems allow this. Those working globally have the same support they are a truly integrated successful company.

Metrics

This section is caveated in that the deployment is very recent, with the release of Core HCM, Talent & Performance, and Time & Labour over a 3 month period from March – May 2015.

Notwithstanding this, a few notable improvements  are immediately observable :

The global jurisdictions outside of Jersey have all given feedback on how pleased they are to be having the same quality of HR systemEveryone loves it being a cloud-base, Internet  mobile productThe useage of the Oracle system is much more ‘immediate’ due to email integration….holidays get immediately approved, paperwork for pay increases is generated faster, all due to email driving the alerts for sign off.JT  has changed a 40 year old working practice of booking holidays in hours and has successfully moved to the half day / full day optionOnline performance management has already reduced paperwork

JT are in the process of a merger with Bharti Airtel, one of the biggest global Telco’s owned by the multimillionaire Sunil Mittal. Airtel’s merger team are very impressed that JT are so ‘future thinking’ by having the Oracle solution in place 

The Technology

Oracle HCM Cloud (Core HR, Time & Labour, Talent & Performance). Next generation of HCM systems providing comprehensive solutions to the new dimensions of the HR function. Traditional functionality of HR and Payroll systems are still very much required, but the insatiable demands of an ever changing business, regardless of size, looks to its corporate HR function for intelligent insight into the what, where and how of its people.   

Disruptive Factor

JT wanted to take the opportunity of using an emerging technology that would grow with them. Oracle HCM fitted that bill and introduces new functionality every few months. Despite their modest size this did not faze JT and they happily took up the challenge, including being the first organisation in the world to go live with Oracle Time & Labor. Richard reports that his peer group of global HR directors are all impressed that JT have edged out with the cloud, and this has changed some of their concerns and perceptions that had left them hanging in to older systems.

As the question asks, there were some challenges !!!!

The data migration process was not perfect, but then when is one ever perfect ?! We ended up double keying on both systems (Oracle, and the legacy HR.Net) for over a month until the bugs were fixed, and in the end loaded up all the data from scratch, which ended up being a more predictable outcome. There were a few other challenges but these are only a handful of manageable disrupters, and in the whole, the project has been very successful with continuous rollout of more functionality and it has brought the workforce together for the first time on a common people platform,which is certainly helping levels of staff engagement and relationship building across the company -  This is further  enabling JT to be disruptive in the market, nimble but with an ever increasing reach.

Shining Moment

JT went live within 5 months finding the system so intuitive for self-service, they offered one hour drop-in sessions and short YouTube videos. Less than 10% used attended sessions, unheard of, people expected at least 1 day, and found it so refreshing it simply was not needed. Richard is quoted as saying ‘If your staff can use Social Media they can use Oracle HR’, as testament to its intuitive functionality and modern ‘look and feel’