Reimagine Digital | Transform Now
Digital HR transformation of a local university
PwC helped a world-ranking university successfully achieve digital HR transformation. A well-planned transition programme with customised change management strategies was introduced to enable the university to easily adopt enterprise cloud HR solutions.
Client: Top university in Singapore
Our role: HR advisory, change enabler and system integrator
Industry: Higher education
Country: Singapore
Setting the scene
Our client is a world-renowned higher education institution and has nurtured generations of talent. The institution is amongst Asia’s best and is recognised for its influential research, innovative academic programmes and visionary enterprise.
As part of its culture of innovation and excellence, the university embarked on a large-scale Human Resource (HR) digital transformation journey with PwC. The goal was to progress to more modern, digital ways of working which enabled HR to focus on employee experience over bureaucratic process and policy. The client wanted to implement SAP SuccessFactors, a cloud HR solution with mobile and self-service facilities to improve convenience and service, streamline workflows and reduce paperwork thereby increasing responsiveness to faculty/staff without driving up operating costs.
Challenges
Overhauling a two-decade old, heavily-customised legacy system, created to meet diverse stakeholders’ needs has its challenges:
- Inefficient HR workflows due to disparate ways of working and distinct business requirements across multiple faculties & departments and autonomous schools
- Consolidating requirements from numerous third-party systems into a single interface. The complex integrations needed to be optimised and aligned with the new data model
- Large volume of historical employee and payroll data due to the 2 decade old system that needed to be cleansed and transformed
- Securing the endorsement from multiple stakeholders, including union, when making changes to policies
- Shift employees away from current processes to adopt new and more efficient workflows
“Throughout the program, you (PwC) have supported us as our trusted advisor providing excellent advice not only with respect to technical systems implementation…(but we’ve) also been able to leverage PwC’s HR transformation and higher education expertise.”
How we helped
- Facilitated key conversations between key stakeholders through a visioning workshop, to co-create and align the vision, purpose and guiding principles to meet the needs of the stakeholders
- Ensured constant and sustained stakeholder engagement in the design of the new system through agile iterations to meet multiple business requirements
- Provided strong project management expertise to achieve streamlined workflows in a timely manner through the planning and implementation of SAP SuccessFactors, an integrated cloud HR solution comprising end-to-end HR modules in phases
- Drove effective decision-making through the establishment of clear governance and regular cadence
- Incorporated a scalable integration architecture design to handle large volumes of integration and data touchpoints
- Drove employee adoption by developing an innovative change management programme involving representatives from leadership, management and staff across the university. This included:
- Co-creation of content in the HR system through hackathons
- Conduct of personalised engagement sessions for stakeholders to address their needs
- Implementation of a fun and interactive gamified approach to increase awareness of system changes
- Co-creation of content in the HR system through hackathons
Result and impact
Despite disruptions from COVID-19, the first phase covering HR goals and performance functions went live in seven months. The successful adoption of new processes in SAP SuccessFactors, including continuous performance management has reshaped the way performance is managed today.
Three additional modules dealing with core HR, payroll and compensation functions were launched within three months of phase one’s completion. There was a high initial adoption rate of over 85% across employee and senior management. Over 17,000 accurate payslips were generated, and staff rated SAP SuccessFactors four out of five stars in an experience survey.
The third phase of the transformation will cover the learning, recruiting and onboarding functions, and is slated to be live by November 2020.
“I just tried the Cloud HR System. User friendly and much better than many other systems I have dealt with… very well done; must have been a massive undertaking.”
