Reimagine Digital | Transform Now
How WS Audiology overcame post-merger HR challenges with digital transformation
Post-merger, WS Audiology seamlessly transited to SAP SuccessFactors, which provided a single overview of the HR landscape across 46 operating countries.
Client: WS Audiology
Our role: HR transformation, change enabler and SAP SuccessFactors integrator
Industry: Health
Country: Singapore
Setting the scene
Established through the merger of Sivantos and Widex in March 2019, WS Audiology is a global leader in the hearing aid industry with a clear ambition - to unlock human potential by making wonderful sound part of everyone’s life.
The merger had resulted in an unharmonised HR systems landscape of the two legacy companies, which reduced the efficiency and effectiveness of HR.
PwC Singapore was engaged to design and implement a unified core HR system using SAP SuccessFactors for the 10,000 employees across more than 46 countries globally. This included SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, Career Development Plan and Integration with multiple payroll service providers in selected countries.
Challenges
Announcement of merger midway
The announcement of the merger came midway during the initial global rollout of SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central module. As a result, both WSA and PwC Singapore team had to address the unexpected changes to organisation structure and further complexity to the IT landscape to adapt the implementation plans to account for this
Minimising impact to existing operations
As WSA is already live on SAP SuccessFactors for some countries, this brownfield landscape coupled with fragmented HRIS landscape presented complexity in managing impact and disruption to HR operations and employees.
Geographical spread
Our team’s coordination and project management were put to test with time zones and location, further amplified multiple by dependencies on multiple payroll service providers. The payroll and time integration requirements were made more complex through the different requests across the seven key countries.
How we helped
PwC Singapore worked seamlessly with WSA’s HR and IT functions to drive successful harmonisation of global solution design and configuration requirements among the legacy companies and processes.
Tapping into our best practices, the team crafted a two-speed roll out strategy. First, we implemented the full solution for key countries with business readiness. Second, we rapidly rolled out the minimal viable product (MVP) solution of the Employee Central module. The unique implementation approach provided WSA the ability to establish a single source of truth for all HR activities and enabling a common IT landscape across WSA.
The strong partnership between WSA senior management, project teams and local payroll partners in driving towards a common objective is a key critical success factor in this implementation.
While system changes took place, impacts to the already-live system were minimised and WSA had a seamless transition.
Result and impact
The MVP was rolled out to 46 countries in six months while the full suite of SAP SuccessFactors modules went live in 20 months in four waves, including the payroll solution that was rolled out to seven key countries.
Post implementation, WSA had a successful adoption of SAP SuccessFactors of 10,000 employees. The single global template allowed the organisation to establish a single source of truth for global employee management post-merger. With clearer view of HR data globally, HR became a stronger business partner to support the organisation.
“You have supported us with your expertise as our trusted partner providing excellent advice...The team has also been globally spread and exceptional at maintaining synergies and communication throughout the various levels of program governance. I particularly value the frank and open discussions between myself and the PwC Singapore leadership, to ensure that I am across key issues.”
“It is extremely satisfying to see this project reach the implementation stage. The transition to SAP SuccessFactors will be extremely smooth and satisfying to end-users, and that is a testament to the amount of hard work and dedicated effort to cross-functional excellence.”
