A Case in point...

"...the process of aligning and standardising all human resource processes – from staffing, training and development, performance management, talent management, reward and recognition, through to e-learning – will culminate in an integrated human resource systems environment early in 2009. This will give managers immediate access to a ‘single view’ of all essential employee information, and improved contractor management.”

The above-mentioned is a statement in the annual report of one of the clients that we have worked with over a period of 3 years. For me, this statement reflects the end-result of an exciting journey with this client company - it is a confirmation of the objectives that we had agreed to, to align all components or layers of their Human Capital Architecture.

It was not an easy journey. Often finding ourselves caught between their IT and the HR teams, we had to work hard to guide both teams from pointing fingers at each other for the weak position HR was finding itself in the company. This after a major HR transformation project on the back of a company-wide Business Improvement Project that saw a new HR service delivery model and channels - following the Ulrich thinking  - was put into operation. 

The company also boasted a new HR Shared Services Centre (with Finance), 4 Centres of Expertise (CoE's), and Business Partner teams or HR Operations Teams at the operating companies (the ratio was a team of 4 for every 1,000 employees).

The above-mentioned HR transformation was comprehensive as a number of strategically aligned key performance areas, each with a set of key performance indicators and specific metrics, were designed. Business was made intimately aware of, and participated in consultation sessions on the HR transformation plans. Business and HR also negotiated and discussed specific Service Level Commitments (SLC) for each of the new service delivery structures - the transactional services from the Shared Services Centre, the strategic, research, policy and consulting services from the Centres of Expertise (CoE's), as well as the strategic business partner services and consulting services from the on-site HR operations teams.

The HR teams were redeployed and appointed into their various new roles with specific performance management targets, supported by new skills training and change management assistance. 

With regard to HR information systems, the IS function (IT) has initiated a number of SAP HR modular implementations since 1999, and a number of other type of information systems were also in operation.

The first sign that all was not as well as thought to be, came in the form of a serious and persistent lack of managment information that the HR organisation needed to operate according to its new mandate and service delivery structures. The HR customer groups and HR teams themselves did not enjoy access to validated HR information that could be trusted to reflect the current reality in any of the HR process areas. Endless discussions were held with the IS (IT) function to solve this HR management information crisis, and as the Business Improvement Programme saw the centralisation of Business Analysts back to the Head Office, the local operations did not have any capactity left to derive meaningful management information from any of the HR systems avaialable.

When we introduced the HR and IS teams to the concept of Human Capital Architecture and its underlying thinking, it was immediately embraced  by both parties as a "safe" initiative that could address most issues pertaining to the lack of valid HR management information. A Human Capital Architecture Assessment across the extended business followed, the results of which confirmed the lack of close alignment and deep integration between the layers of their HC Architecture, such as between the HR policies, business rules, system rules and the SAP HCM system.

Furthermore, it was discovered that there were poorly designed HR business processes and that those processes were not integrated with the SAP HCM system. On the application layer, it was discovered that the company had had a number of disparate systems running for HR, some were custom developed to support activities such as performance appraisal, etc. Furthermore it became evident that SAP was not their single source of data for the HR organisation, that there were a lot of duplicate data, and that there were evidence of hurtful practices and behaviours around using the SAP HR system.

The results of the assessment confirmed that all the good strategic and structural work that the company invested into with regard to the transformation and re-positioning of the HR organisation, was seriously undermined by the lack of integration in their current Human Capital Architecture. The customer groups of HR were adamant that HR service delivery was a dissappointment, mainly as a result of the acute lack of the consistency and reliability of HR data and information.

Over a period of 3 financial years, we worked with the HR teams at this client company to systematically change all the issues raised by the audit and to assist the client in achieving the end result of providing the HR customer groups with an integrated view and information of integrity across the People Value Chain.