Overview

pBullard is a leading manufacturer of high-quality personal protective equipment including the design of the first hard hat in 1919 and the first fire helmet in 1930. Bullard has supplied carbide lamps and other mining equipment to gold and copper miners in the California Gold Rush; manufactured hard hats and designing air respirators for workers during the 1930s construction of the Golden Gate Bridge; and established ourselves as a recognized leader in fire safety products. Ours is a fifth-generation family-owned enterprise founded in 1898 by Edward Dickinson Bullard and currently led by CEO Wells Bullard, the great-great granddaughter of the founder./p

Supernova Award Category

Next Generation Customer Experience

The Problem

pWith a workforce of more than 290, in the past several years our company had relocated its manufacturing and corporate operations from San Francisco to Kentucky. We subsequently expanded our global market to Germany, Asia, Switzerland, Dubai, Columbia, and Brazil. With this growth came challenges: we had outgrown our previous solution and were losing the capacity to consistently and efficiently manage HR and payroll functions for a dispersed, diverse workforce./p pThe challenge in moving to a new HCM solution was that we were entering our busiest season in Q1 administering raises, profit-sharing, and preparing our annual report. Bullard Compensation and Benefits Manager Becky Allan doubted that any HCM solution could meet the deadline for a 3-month go-live deadline set by senior management./p p“I had been with the company for 19 years and have a strong IT background,” noted Allan. “Having done many implementations over the years, I was hesitant due to the amount of time and effort I had previously put into changing HCM solutions. I was used to taking on the responsibility of converting everything and was therefore expecting a huge workload at our busiest time.”/p p“Moreover,” said Allan, “I have had horrible experiences with support services with previous vendors. The data migration to our previous solution was probably the worst of my career.”/p

The Solution

pWe were seeking a global HCM solution to help simplify processes, manage people data, meet local compliance, and support our entire global workforce with one, centralized system. It was crucial that we reduce our go-live risk in order to realize greater savings and get to ROI faster./p pa name="_Hlk18341639" id="_Hlk18341639"Bullard signed with Ultimate in December 2018 and went live in January 2019. With UltiPro Launch, Bullard’s entire go-live process was housed on a modern, easy-to-navigate hub. The user experience was intuitive, personalized, and delivered extensive data and insights—requiring minimal effort from our team. /a/p pKey Features of UltiPro Launch included:/p ul liIntuitive project dashboard and guided setup/li liStreamlined data collection/li liAutomated data validation and balancing of payroll data/li liSide-by-side comparison of legacy system pay to UltiPro pay/li liMore efficient, streamlined onboarding tasks/li /ul p /p

The results

pBullard had a 3-month implementation time versus up to 6 months with previous solutions./p ul libBefore:  /bWe were not able to see data until the end of migration, so I had no way to balance anything out until I did the first payroll. /li libAfter:/b I had complete visibility throughout the data migration. If we tested files and saw any issues, the Ultimate team was on it and addressed the issue immediately. Our first payroll was on time and 100% correct./li /ul p /p ul libBefore:/b a name="_Hlk18342954" id="_Hlk18342954"The services team didn’t communicate well. We always had a different rep in a different time zone. We needed support that would be available based on our timeframe, not theirs./a/li libAfter:/b Your Implementation Team by far is the best. Our project manager was a consistent, ongoing point of contact. He delegated responsibilities and each person stayed on-task until their job was completed. I noticed the night before we were going live that our 3rd shift people at a manufacturing facility would not be able to get into the building. I called our rep at 9:30 on Sunday night and he immediately resolved the issue well in advance of those employees arriving on-site. /li /ul p /p ul libBefore:/b The previous services team made decisions about implementation and company set-up without our consultation, and then let us know after the fact. /li libAfter:/b We were involved every step of the way and services was able to roll-out customizations specific to our global locations./li /ul

Metrics

pCUSTOMER OUTCOMEb - Faster Time to Value:/b/p ul li33% faster time to value for deployment with 700 unique customers as of April 2019/li li4-month onboarding time for new customers from contract signing date to go-live date, down from 6 months the prior year/li li$1 M total annual savings for all implementing customers who no longer need to purchase exit files from their legacy vendor/li /ul p /p pCUSTOMER OUTCOME -b Improved Data Conversion:/b/p ul li80% reduction in time spent collecting and staging legacy data from 10 weeks in 2017 to 2 weeks in 2018/li li20% increase in overall data conversion efficiency from product and process changes/li /ul p /p pCUSTOMER OUTCOME -b Scalable for Customers of all Sizes and Complexities:/b/p ul li3.5 million employee records parsed in Launch/li li40,000 total files uploaded and parsed in Launch/li liScalable for customers of all sizes and complexities: implementing customers range from as small as 100 employees to as large as 300,000+ employees/li /ul p class="CxSpFirst" /p p class="CxSpLast"CUSTOMER OUTCOME -b Key Customer Satisfaction Metrics:/b/p ul li12% increase in CSAT scores from 57% in 2017 to 69% in 2018/li li16.6-point increase in NPS scores from -14.4 in 2017 to 2.2 in 2018/li /ul p /p pBUSINESS OUTCOME -bREDUCED DOWNSTREAM SUPPORT CASE VOLUME/b/p ul li24% reduction in downstream support case volume from 2018 to 2019 for newly-live customers. With higher-quality data conversion, customers have smoother implementations and don’t need to call support as often./li /ul

The Technology

pbUltiPro Launch: /bUltimate Software addressed the pain points inherent in the crucial step of onboarding to a new HCM solution by designing and building UltiPro Launch. Utilizing automation for customers, UltiPro Launch was designed and built from the ground-up, providing one, modern and easy-to-navigate platform for all product launch activities. Launch leverages technology to improve data integrity, accelerating time to live. /p

Disruptive Factor

pMoving to a new HCM vendor is probably the most important piece of the customer journey and therefore vital to seriously build a thorough process./p pUltimate's journey mapping exercise discovered these issues with traditional data conversion: /p ul li class="MsoBodyText"Data conversion starts fairly late in the process and doesn’t allow enough time to resolve all issues before going live./li li class="MsoBodyText"Customers don’t have visibility as data is “lifted and shifted” from legacy system to UltiPro. They can’t see their data in the solution early enough in the migration process./li li class="MsoBodyText"Customers spend a lot of time gathering data from their legacy system and cleaning up poor quality data./li /ul p class="MsoBodyText" /p pInstead, our multi-year initiative designed and built Launch from the ground up resulted in a completely unique approach to data migration: /p p /p ul liA “data first” approach was taken to migration as a service, moving data conversion further up in the migration process and thus allowing customers enough time to resolve all issues before going live and giving Ultimate an opportunity to configure a customer’s system using their data./li li class="MsoBodyText"Levering automation to provide an agile Launch process to promote greater visibility, open collaboration, continuous improvement, and reduction in time to go live./li li class="MsoBodyText"Significantly reducing a customer’s effort by utilizing automation to gather and parse data, increasing the quality of the data conversion process./li /ul

Shining Moment

pWith UltiPro Launch, Bullard was able to achieve a seamless, stress-free onboarding within a 3-month timeframe with 100% accuracy. They had visibility into the entire go-live process and Ultimate’s approach to data migration was a time savings for their organization. /p p /p