Britannia Building Society: Human Resources Transformation

Accenture’s groundbreaking High Performance Business research clearly indicates that people and workforce issues are critical to competitive differentiation and to achieving high performance.

Accenture leveraged deep Oracle and SAP skills and experience to design, manage, integrate and implement new human resources and payroll solutions for Britannia Building Society—placing it firmly on the path to high performance.

Britannia credits its current position as a leading British financial institution to the contribution of its people and believes that continued investment in this area will provide a long-term return for the business. This insight is validated by Accenture research, which clearly indicates that executives now view people- and workforce-related issues as critical competitive differentiators and key factors in the quest to achieve high performance.

Britannia’s recognized PeoplePlus program is a concrete expression of how serious the company is about giving its people every reason to excel and meeting its aim of being "A Great Place to Work, Grow and Develop." Not only is Britannia focused on improving service levels, a reduction in paper-based processes supports the company’s mission to be environmentally responsible. The implementation of new human resources and payroll systems provides Britannia with a single view of employees and creates the infrastructure to deliver manager and employee self-service that will support Britannia people through the employment life cycle. Easy access to comprehensive management information will help managers capitalize on their investment to meet future business challenges.

Based on Accenture’s approach—and deep SAP technical application skills—Britannia selected Accenture Human Capital Management Solutions (formerly Pecaso) to implement SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Human Capital Management. This solution will integrate with Britannia’s Oracle financials software.

Accenture provided a comprehensive range of services during this implementation, working closely with Attenda and drawing on our alliance with SAP to design the best solution. Services provided by Accenture included technical and functional design of the new business process architecture, project management, consulting, systems integration services and implementation of the solution.

A key success factor was the Accenture Delivery Methods for SAP—a suite of tools and methodologies that reduce risk by leveraging the practices proven during Accenture’s decades of experience.

Accenture leveraged our change management and training skills to help ensure that staff were fully supportive of—and trained in—the new software resulting in a smooth transition to the new system.

Including the rigorous design phase, the implementation took just over one year. A further nine months were spent integrating the subsequent acquisition of Bristol & West Building Society and phase three of the project will include employee and manager self service.

Accenture’s implementation of SAP Human Capital Management will enable Britannia to react more quickly to changing employee needs and support its long-term people strategies. Ninety-six percent of its people already have a better appreciation of the investment made in their well-being.

The new system has also provided the foundations for a flexible benefits package for employees, including buying and selling holiday entitlement; medical and dental insurance; tax-free purchase of bicycles; childcare vouchers; and discounted shopping. This added functionality translates into a more efficiently managed and better motivated workforce—a key prerequisite for high performance.

Karen Moir, director of Organizational Development at Britannia sums up the contribution this project has made: “With Accenture’s help, our PeoplePlus Program successfully brought our HR systems back in-house. Now, building on this new functionality, we can continue to develop our unique approach to our people which is key to improving our business performance.”