Case study 1

HRIS Case Study - Global Legal Services Firm

The Client

Computer Patent Annuities (CPA) is a global firm based in London and Jersey providing
specialist outsourced legal services to international Legal practices and blue chip companies
around the world; leveraging the latest information technology. Employing circa 1000
professional, technical and customer services employees; across Europe, America, Asia and
the Pacific.

The Problem

We were contacted in 2007. Their HR service had grown ad hoc as the business grew. The
incumbent HR system was first installed some five years ago. It was a be-spoke system and
had been continuously modified over the years in an attempt to keep up with the growing
demands made upon it. It did some things very well, such as supporting absence
management; employee correspondence and employee self service, but was struggling to
meet the needs of an increasingly global organisation. The HR Director was particular
concerned about the ability of the systems to cope with the projected 100% increase in staff
numbers planned for the next two years. Cumbersome payroll processes that required
double entry of a great deal of data into different systems; the inability to handle multiple
terms and conditions of employment; and the lack of a fully functional e-Recruitment
application had already been identified as areas of concern.

The Requirements

• To identify the business and user needs for HRIS given the business plan provided;
• To assess the capabilities of the current system/provider to meet these needs;
• To review the market place for potential successor systems/providers
• To provide a report on the above findings
• To undertake a vendor selection exercise
• To provide a business case for replacing the existing system or upgrading the
existing system

Our Approach

We provided an overview of the HRIS enabled HR services that are available today and
explained the broad system alternatives – ERP and “Best of Breed”, as well as the “in-
house” and “hosted” methods for providing these.

We undertook in-depth structured stake-holder interviews with all the key HR players – local
country business partners and global functional leaders within the global HR team - to
establish:

• their requirements for HRIS functionality now and over the 5 year business planning
period;
• their views of the current HRIS functionality in order to establish the perceived
strengths and weaknesses of the current system;
 • the approach the company had adopted towards the development and evolution of
the current HR system

We undertook a comprehensive and in-depth interview with the CEO of the incumbent
system vendor to establish:

• the issues his organisation faced as a vendor working for the client
• his take on the functional and technical issues identified in our stake-holder
interviews
• the approach and price model they would adopt in the event of being commissioned
to up-grade the existing system.

We compared and contrasted the output from all these interviews and re-interviewed where
appropriate. We built a matrix of the functionality priorities and of the strengths and
weaknesses of the existing system and we built a business and user requirements checklist.
We also addressed a number of weaknesses in the client’s approach to the introduction and
enhancement of its existing HRIS. These related to stakeholder management; managing
change; a lack of collaboration between the HR and IT Departments; and weaknesses in the
client’s engagement with the vendor. All of these issues could, irrespective of the vendor or
system chosen, undermine any future HRIS project.

We reviewed the above with the client and agreed the broad parameters of the required
solution. At this stage in the exercise, based upon these parameters; the client’s business
plans; and our own market research, we recommended that the major ERP vendors should
not be considered as potential solutions. This recommendation was accepted by the client.

We prepared and issued an invitation to tender (ITT) to 19 potential vendors. Our ITT
included a self assessment questionnaire based upon the previously established business
and user requirements. 6 of the vendors responded to the ITT and based upon their self
assessment scores we invited 3 of the vendors plus the current incumbent to present their
solutions to the HR Director and his senior team. We worked with the senior HR team to
devise a number of scenarios to which the vendors would be asked to respond at their
presentations. One of the vendors dropped out at this stage.

The Differentiators

We assessed each of the presentations and identified that whilst all three vendors met the
core requirements to a greater or lesser extent, there were nevertheless a number of key
differentiating factors that we recommended the client consider before making their final
decision.

These were:

• Cost – one solution was significantly cheaper than the others. The incumbent
supplier was offering a free software upgrade that would address many of the
weaknesses of the existing system.
• Data migration – Not surprisingly only the incumbent could easily migrate all existing
data
• The advantage of a fully integrated global payroll service across all existing
geographies – only one other solution could provide this. Whilst very attractive, it
would be some years before all countries could transition to a new payroll. The
 current incumbent was however committed to the provision of a new payroll
interface that would enable the automatic transfer of all payroll data to all payroll
providers.
• The advantage of being able to undertake salary planning and the implementation of
salary review outcomes within the system – only the remaining system could do this.
This provider could not however match the others payroll offerings.

The Result

We considered these differentiators with the client to ensure they fully understood the
implications of adopting each of the solutions. We also made a number of recommendations
with regard to the management of any future implementation project. The client
subsequently decided that given the assurances they had now obtained from their existing
supplier, they would enter into a new contract with them to upgrade the existing solution.