Bureau Veritas used to manually process 1,300 payroll employees via spreadsheets. SD Worx helped them connect seven different payrolls, cleanse their HR data and integrate with SAP all in the same project.
Sally Alderman is the Payroll and Reward Manager at Bureau Veritas UK and has been with the company for 7 years.
Sally’s team look after payroll, benefits and tax at the world leading testing, inspection and certification company.
Bureau Veritas has seven UK payrolls that are managed with SD Worx as well as one with Ireland run through the Mauritius team.
Through a series of acquisitions, the business went from processing three to seven payrolls. More payrolls meant more potential for error on an amplified scale so it was crucial that these different data points became aligned and strengthened to provide better security, boosted efficiency and smoother integration within the business.
The team previously used an older version of SD Worx payroll that was “functional” but as the teams and ambitions have since grown, it became clear that they needed further control and integration options.
Bureau Veritas has a global HR system (Success Factors) and want it as the “one-stop shop” for the company.
Head office and Europe wanted the system to drive info out to payroll systems globally. However, to realise that isn't easy.
1,300 payroll employees have historically been manually processed via spreadsheets. In an old school style of payroll processing – “quiet for 2/3 weeks and then a mad scramble” as Sally Alderman stated. As well as being a massive resource drain, the potential for error was very high.
It was clear that this system needed to change.
It was a requirement that SuccessFactors integration and upgrading to latest payroll technology happened for all seven payrolls at the same time on a single go-live date.
If successful, the UK team would become the first team in Europe to accomplish this upgrade and integration, potentially paving the way for other offices to follow suit.
As part of the project, the team was tasked with completing a full data cleanse of its HR records. As well as integrating with SD Worx, they took the opportunity to fully upgrade too.
Sally Alderman stated: “There was no point having data flow into really old system”
From the front-end, Bureau Veritas needed a seamless transition for the employees viewing payslips and engaging in other HR activity.
At the outset of the project, it was fully understood that the area where SD Worx could help create a real benefit to Bureau Veritas would be from the integration of HR data.
The team delivered a workshop to outline the integration requirements and discuss what data was to be integrated.
Following this, Bureau Veritas had some time to examine and review how they intended to get the data into the format required before development. When Bureau Veritas was ready to re-engage, the SD Worx team restarted the project and consulted closely with them during the design phase of the interface.
Once the interface has been developed, the project entered the testing phase whereby Bureau Veritas could see the results within a demo system. This testing platform was crucial as it allowed complicated scenarios to be executed in a safe environment to give all parties confidence that the finished interface was going to deliver the benefit required.
For the go-live, SD Worx extracted the data from their old version of the system so the team at Bureau Veritas could enhance the data before re-uploading into the new version of the system. While the new system was setting in, the Implementation Team provided a period of “hypercare” before handing over to the day-to-day Support Desk.
As Sally stated, "to get the transition to run smoothly, you need the right people" and it was during this implementation process that it “really cemented the fact that we are one team".
The project was a success and all payrolls went live as expected. In terms of seeing positive results, they were instantly realised.
One of the biggest benefits has been time saving within Sally’s team and beyond - New starters are now set up automatically instead of a week of manual intervention.
Same goes for typically busy periods like salary reviews / bonuses. Now when it’s time for the annual salary review it means that “if 1000 changes are being actioned, it all just flows through automatically”.
The SD Worx solution has "created this true circle of data" that encapsulates Success Factors, pensions and more. The system is also intuitive and helps its users get the best out of their data, for example the system flags errors if mandatory info has not been added.
While time saving is the largest and most important, another key improvement has been with accuracy.
Previously the team didn't understand the impact of this. According to Sally, working with SD Worx on the solution has "driven a greater understanding and responsibility for getting things right the first time"
It’s helping Sally’s team plan better, create more opportunity and stability too: “One of the other great benefits is that the workload is spread more evenly. It means we can be more flexible with time off, creating a better work/life balance.
“It means that there are development opportunities within the team now which we couldn't commit to during the traditional payroll process. Now that the manual inputting has gone career development is now a reality.”
Contact with SD Worx team is still going strong 15 months on too.
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