Compass Group: HR Efficiency & Excellence

Compass Group PLC is the world's largest food service and hospitality organization, with annual food service revenues of approximately £11 billion (US$21 billion) and 400,000 employees in more than 90 countries. In the United Kingdom, Compass provides a range of food services for offices, factories, railway stations, airports, universities, schools, health care institutions, offshore and remote sites, retail stores and shopping malls, serving more than three million meals a day

Without a doubt, there are considerable challenges associated with managing HR processes for an organization of such large scale and scope. Compass operated its HR systems on multiple IT platforms and had eight different payroll systems supporting a complex array of schedules and terms. These challenges were magnified by a difficult market and increasingly complex employment legislation, driving Compass to seek a new direction for managing its workforce.

Compass chose Pecaso based on its breadth of experience in successful SAP HR implementations and its superior value proposition relative to competitors (Pecaso was acquired by Accenture in May 2006).

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Compass decided to implement an integrated labor management system to help solve its most pressing concerns. Compass hoped this strategy would improve the quality of information available to managers, enabling them to manage labor more efficiently. They also wanted to provide a common integrated platform across all operating companies within the Compass Group, enabling more consistent and standard performance measurements across the enterprise. It was anticipated that an ILM system would also lower HR and payroll costs by reducing duplication of efforts, freeing up staff to focus on more strategic activities. Finally, the Compass management expected their new system to increase employee satisfaction and, consequently, improve customer satisfaction.

As SAP technology was already in use for Compass's financial systems, the company decided to use mySAP HR for this important initiative. Searching for the ideal partner, Compass chose Pecaso based on its breadth of experience in successful SAP HR implementations and because it offered greater value than its competitors.

To kick off the project, Pecaso and Compass jointly created an initial project plan. Once the plan was developed, the team addressed a variety of important facets of the project, including training, analyzing key business processes, designing an implementation strategy and establishing a steering committee with responsibility for change control, risk management, and the monitoring of key milestones.

The heart of the project was the designing of new business processes. These included a routine cycle that would determine labor requirements, record time and attendance, enable analyses of gathered data and provide a basis for forecasting and planning. SAP technology was critical to the success of this process, with SAP/R3 providing the channels for the exchange of payroll and timesheet data. Other critical components implemented were organizational management, personnel administration and training and event management.

Additional actions the project team took included:

• Replacing all previous systems with monthly and weekly payrolls.
• Rationalizing terms and conditions of employment to a number of pre-agreed contract types.
• Designing a communication program introducing process and system changes, using a range of tools from newsletters to comprehensive face-to-face training.
• Providing assistance after the completion of the project to support the new payroll processes and ensure the complete transfer of knowledge to Compass staff.

According to Sally Mason, HR director at Compass: Implementing the ILM was a long journey from which we have all learned a great deal. It was very demanding, but the team proved more than capable of meeting the challenge. Working with Pecaso proved to be a real partnership. They were committed at every stage of the process.

They quickly earned our respect as they knew their subject inside-out, and also because they were ready to listen to our opinions and understand the context in which we were working. I believe finding the right partners for implementations like this is absolutely critical.

With Pecaso's expertise and leadership, Compass now enjoys access to more timely, consistent and accurate management information as well as more efficient and effective HR processes. Just as important, as administrative tasks have become less time-consuming, HR staff has gained the ability to focus on more strategic activities.

"The relationship that we had with the Compass team was a major factor in the project's success," recalled Tim Bradley, UK managing director at Pecaso. "Only with mutual respect and willingness to work as true partners were we able to complete such a major project according to the schedule."

These results have brought high levels of satisfaction to Compass management as well, and have encouraged them to consider additional enhancements. "We would be happy to seek help from Pecaso to implement other SAP HR components and support Compass's ongoing e-HR strategy," said Mason. "We treat the current project as a platform to achieve even greater benefits in the future."

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