What was the biggest difference you experienced during the build?
Our goal was to bring the system live before the December performance management season, but we only started in May. Most of the other vendors proposed something like a year to a year and a half, and HCG proposed a build within six months, which made the choice an easy one. Honestly, having that much less time for stabilization was a big risk on our side too, and we worried about it a lot. Even so, we trusted that if it was HCG they would have the know-how to match, and although we had only one chance to run payroll as a test, they opened in parallel beforehand and worked through the risk together with us, so we were able to finish within the deadline without trouble.
We are curious about what the assignment features actually changed in your day-to-day work.
The old system could not handle bulk assignments, so we had to process every person one by one. Now we can process a range of categories in bulk, by job and by job group. Once an assignment is made, other items such as payroll are set automatically, so the work carries on naturally without our staff having to check with each other or ask around. That has made the work faster, and above all the risk that comes from assignment information being missed has dropped noticeably.
| Before | After |
| Every person subject to an assignment handled manually, case by case | Bulk assignments by job · job group processed at once, lowering the risk of omissions |
| Requests from sales channel expense staff received in Excel and handled manually by the HR team | Profiles set for each staff member, giving direct access to their own area only |
| Heavy workload during the payroll calculation period | Lighter workload during the payroll calculation period |
| No channel for executives to check, and HR corrections had to go through IT | Real-time entry status · statistics available, with HR responding immediately |
| Collected on paper, then re-entered by hand | System data downloaded and put to use right away |
| Salary contracts written on paper · returned and stored separately, with completion hard to confirm | Salary contract process set up in the system, so completion can be confirmed at once |
On the performance management side, which part left the strongest impression?
We can see in real time how employees are entering things, and our speed in responding to correction requests has improved a great deal. In the past there was no window at all for executives to look at the state of performance management on their own, and now that they can check statistics and entry status, they seem to take much more interest in performance management itself. Among employees, too, there were many comments about being able to adjust the evaluation screen comfortably by dragging.
Finally, what advice would you give to someone about to take on a similar project?
You have to be as detailed as you possibly can in your requests at the planning stage. If you ask only in broad terms, each side understands it differently and you can end up with a completely different system. Convey as much detail as you can, down to the screen layout, and if that is difficult, it is better to draw a picture to get your intent across precisely. And because assignments are such a critical part of the system, you should test the assignment side as much as possible during development and stabilization, which later helps a great deal with stabilizing other areas such as payroll and attendance.
