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| Case Studies
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Pinsent Masons/Select Software (December 2008)
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Pinsent Masons is a full-service commercial law firm acting for private and public
sector clients worldwide. Formed on 6 December 2004 following the merger of
two leading national firms (Pinsents and Masons), it is ranked in the top 15 law
firms in the UK and in the top 100 globally.
In addition to its London headquarters, Pinsent Masons has offices in the key
economic centres of Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds and
Manchester. Worldwide, the firm has over 280 partners, a total legal team of
around 1,000 and more than 1,600 staff. Following the merger, when
the firm increased in size by approximately 50%, the company established that its current system was no longer suitable for the needs of the
new firm and a new system from Select Software was chosen.
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Charles Letts & Co/Carval Computing (November 2008)
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Charles Letts & Co began in 1796 when John Letts opened a stationery business and then produced the world’s first
commercial diary in 1812.
The company is now a leading global supplier of personal organisers, diaries and related accessories, commanding 40% of the
UK market and selling in over 40 international markets.
Its two principal brands, Filofax and Letts, carry worldwide recognition. All products are designed inhouse and manufactured
both overseas and at the company’s own facility in Scotland.
Charles Letts & Co Ltd has been successfully using Carval HR Unity Software for seven years. The flexibility of the integrated
HR, payroll and time & attendance management system allows it to cope with the complex shift patterns of 600 employees.
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Alliance Boots/NorthgateArinso (November 2008)
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Alliance Boots (Boots), the leading high-street health and beauty retailer and pharmacist, has
approximately 66,000 employees across the UK. Boots’ payroll was administered internally by a team of payroll clerks, using a 23-year-old system which was costly to maintain
and upgrade, and also heavily reliant on paper, leaving much room for error. Boots had an existing HR department, but wanted
to allow the team to focus on more strategic work, rather than spending time focusing on core HR administration. Boots embarked on an extensive five-month process to choose the best route, and began the tendering process for
prospective outsourcing suppliers, eventually choosing NorthgateArinso.
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Vision Express/NorthgateArinso (November 2008)
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Part of Europe’s largest optical retailer, Vision Express holds an enviable position in the UK as a major ‘one-hour’ optician,
a model of service it introduced to the UK in 1988. The company employs more that 3,600 people across the UK, Ireland
and the Channel Islands at more than 200 store locations. Following a review of its payroll administration technology, Vision Express decided that a replacement was needed for its 10-
year-old legacy system. The new system was required to ensure the payroll function could continue to handle demands placed
on it by the company’s continuing expansion. There was also a desire to use self-service and workflow technologies, and to
integrate payroll and HR systems to create new levels of efficiency. The first implementation was of NorthgateArinso’s Payroll application, which gave Vision Express the immediate benefit of
being able to provide a continuing payroll service as the company expanded.
The payroll implementation was followed by the addition of HR modules, and the integration of HR and payroll.
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Hilton Meats/Bond (August 2008)
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Established over 20 years ago, Hilton Meats supplies the leading supermarket multiple, Tesco, and is a division of the 1,200-
strong global Hilton Food Group. It was struggling to manage the payroll and HR requirements of its staff – data was
having to be manually entered into at least three different systems, recruitment processes were sluggish due to their paperbased
nature and reports for senior management were proving difficult to produce in a timely and accurate fashion. Workforce, Bond International Software’s customisable HR solution, was implemented to manage the personnel records,
training records and recruitment requirements of the company, including managing the recruitment and registration of the large
numbers of foreign national employees where there are essential documents to be processed.
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John Lewis Partnership/Oracle (July 2008)
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One of the UK’s top 10 retail businesses with 27 John Lewis department stores and 174 Waitrose supermarkets, John Lewis
Partnership offers unparalleled service and quality products to its customers. The company is the UK’s largest worker cooperative,
with all permanent staff enjoying a shareholding in the business. The challenges were to standardise, integrate and centralise HR and payroll functions group-wide to align people management with business
objectives and maximise career development opportunities; and leverage market-leading HR practices to enhance reputation as an employer of distinction and attract top retail
professionals. John Lewis chose Oracle for its advanced functionality, more flexible licensing
model, and live referenceable payroll customers.
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Environment Agency/Oracle (July 2008)
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The Environment Agency’s role is to protect the environment in England and Wales and ensure that air, land and water
resources are used in a sustainable manner for the benefit of future generations. Like many government organisations, the
Environment Agency was looking for ways to improve management information, reduce overheads and boost staff
productivity.
The agency decided to use the Oracle E-Business Suite applications as the way forward. It has created an integrated system
for financial and HR management and business intelligence. The new system, called One Business One System(1B1S),
underpins the Environment Agency’s ‘Making It Happen’ agenda and supports much of the day-to-day business in the
agency.
Finance teams have easy access to timely information and can close books to government timetables. A single system has
enabled the Environment Agency to move towards a single HR service centre for routine HR administration, which allows its
HR professionals to focus on supporting managers in their business decisions with timely, accurate people information.
Oracle’s Self-Service HR applications enable employees to access and ‘own’ some of their data, which helps ensure that it is
kept up-to-date.
Designed and implemented by Oracle Consulting, 1B1S incorporates a number of software modifications and third-party tools
required to support the Environment Agency’s unique needs.
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KBC Financial Products/COA Solutions (June 2008)
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KBC Financial Products (KBCFP) is a market-leading specialist in equity, credit and fund-linked derivatives with a strategic
focus on technology. KBCFP serves the world’s institutional and hedge fund investment community with the KBC Group controlling assets of over
€315 billion. With over 570 employees and offices in London, New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong, the KBCFP team is supported
by a four-strong HR team in the heart of the financial district of London, four in New York, one in Hong Kong and two in Tokyo. For a
company where 20% of staff are IT professionals, it was important for KBCFP to identify a supplier that could meet its high
expectations and provide it with a solution that was rich in functionality, extremely flexible, had comprehensive reporting and
was able to meet its international requirements too. Furthermore, KBCFP needed a system that could evolve with the business. It chose HR Professional from ASR, a COA Solutions company.
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Interfleet/MidlandHR (June 2008)
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International railway consultancy Interfleet Technology (Interfleet) was created from the engineering arm of British Rail and has
a client base that extends throughout the railway industry worldwide. With a network of offices in the UK, Australia, New
Zealand, US, Canada, Scandinavia, Denmark and Germany, and 663 employees and associate staff worldwide, the company
continues to grow and expand.
Known for providing strategic technological solutions to the rail industry, Interfleet has been equally strategic with its own HR
and payroll management processes, using Trent from MidlandHR for several years. More recently, Interfleet looked to the
future and decided to upgrade to a web-based version of Trent to enable greater functionality. It also, for the first time,
implemented the payroll module and went live with a fully managed payroll service from MidlandHR on 1 April 2007.
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Shelter/MidlandHR (June 2008)
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Shelter is a national campaigning charity working to improve the lives of homeless and badly housed people. Through a
network of housing aid centres, projects and surgeries, Shelter staff provide free, professional and independent advice to over
100,000 homeless and badly housed people each year throughout England and Scotland.
Employees, including volunteers, number well over 1,000 – with 700 at the charity’s headquarters in Old Street, London, 500 in
housing centres and projects across the country and the rest in Shelter’s 100 shops nationwide. In 2003 Shelter implemented a new HR and payroll solution from MidlandHR as recent staff growth within the organisation had
begun to put a strain on its existing disparate systems and the charity needed to find a solution that would bring about greater
control of all its processes. Moving to an integrated, central automated HR and payroll system has helped the organisation significantly streamline its
processes and reduce costs. Building on this success, Shelter was keen to extend its use of Trent and take advantage of its extensive functionality. As a result, Shelter is currently implementing self-service functions across its sites.
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Hanover Housing/Select Software (March 2008)
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The Hanover Group is a not-for-profit organisation providing housing and related services. Hanover currently employs
1,000 staff and manages over 18,000 properties across the UK. Hanover felt that strategic direction required a proactive people function, and in order to achieve this the organisation had
to move from a reactive approach to a proactive one. Added to the fact that Hanover felt its progress was being hindered by its existing HR provider and that considerable
financial savings could be make by bringing payroll inhouse, the organisation decided to commence a review and Select HR were chosen as the supplier of a new system.
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De La Rue/Vizual Business Tools – exclusive interview (February 2008)
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De La Rue is the world’s largest commercial security printer and paper maker, involved in the production of over 150
national currencies and a range of security documents such as passports, fiscal stamps and authentication labels.
A member of the FTSE 250, De La Rue is also a leading provider of cash-handling equipment and software solutions to
banks and retailers worldwide, helping them to reduce the cost of handling cash. It offers experience in banknote paper
production, banknote design and printing. De La Rue has over 6,000 staff in 31 countries. In the UK and
globally it had a variety of HR applications which it wanted to consolidate onto a single system and provide one central
database for the worldwide workforce. It selected HR.net from Vizual Business Tools.
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Atlas Copco/Vizual Business Tools (November 2007)
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Founded in 1873, Atlas Copco is a world leading provider of industrial productivity solutions. Its products and services range
from compressed air and gas equipment, generators, construction and mining equipment, industrial tools and assembly
systems, through to related aftermarket and rental. Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, the group’s global reach spans more than 150
markets. In the UK, the company has manufacturing, sales and service functions with a total workforce of 800 staff located
throughout the country. Atlas Copco’s previous HR system in the UK was proving increasingly inadequate for the organisation, placing significant
administrative burden on HR. Going forward, there was a clear requirement to improve data integrity, consolidate HR responsibility and to streamline
processes. The company needed a comprehensive HR system with self-service functionality and the ability to automate the
production of effective reports for management – all critical to the success of the business. Having assessed a range of solutions available on the market, Atlas Copco was introduced to HR.net from Vizual Business Tools by its software
consultant, Centurion Management Systems.
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BBC/Capita HR & Payroll Services (June 2007)
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The BBC’s decision to outsource HR services followed an internal review which identified this as one of the measures to
help put extra resources into programmes as part of the BBC’s radical plans to transform the organisation into a simpler and
more creative digital broadcaster.
The services which BBC People, the broadcaster’s strategic HR division, were seeking to outsource included the full HR
process administration, 1st line ER advice, recruitment process, remuneration, relocation, occupational health and disability
access services. BBC People supports around 27,000 BBC staff, some 6,000 casuals and 6,000 freelancers based within
multiple UK locations and internationally.
The solution designed by Capita had to provide the breadth of required services at the scale dictated by the size of the
organisation. Fixing the service costs for up to 10 years, it had to deliver 30% savings while improving consistency,
introducing new e-solutions and releasing the BBC People team to focus on key business change issues.
Throughout, a strong cultural fit with the BBC had to be maintained.
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Shelter/MidlandHR – exclusive interview (February 2007)
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Shelter is the largest housing aid charity in the world,
helping more than 170,000 homeless and badly housed
people in England and Scotland every year. The charity has
a turnover of £43 million and employs over 1,000 staff and
volunteers between its campaigning and advocacy
organisation and its retail arm, which runs 100 shops across
the UK. Over the past eight years, the organisation has more than doubled in size, and as a result it had outgrown its paper-based
processes. It had an HR system but through lack of resources, this was not upgraded and kept up-to-date, so it
lagged behind what Shelter needed as a modernising, professional organisation. It went live with MidlandHR's Trent in April 2003.
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Network Rail/Logica (May 2006)
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Network Rail Limited is the operator of Britain’s railway infrastructure, providing operations, maintenance, renewal and
enhancement of the rail infrastructure, which covers 21,000 miles of track, 600 tunnels, 1,100 signal boxes, 2,500
stations and 40,000 bridges. Network Rail spends £14 million a day on the infrastructure and handles around 25,000
train movements around Britain’s network every single day. Network Rail decided to expand the capability of its existing Oracle 11i E-Business Suite financials and procurement
system and selected global Oracle Certified Advantage Partner Logica for a phased project to replace its existing
legacy HR and payroll solution using the Oracle 11i HRMS suite.
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City Lit/Software for People (March 2006)
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City Lit is a college located in Covent Garden in the heart
of London and was established over 85 years ago. It has
recently moved to a brand new purpose-built building in
Keely Street. The college provides adult learning
opportunities for over 24,000 students every year, offering
the biggest part-time choice of courses in the capital. City
Lit also works with groups in the community to bring
learning to as wide an audience as possible, including
award-winning work with homeless people.
It has about 220 full-time employees and approximately
700 hourly paid lecturers. The college has been using
Software for People systems for over four years and
currently uses SfP World Service for all its HR and payroll
needs.
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RDF Media/Snowdrop Systems – exclusive interview (January 2006)
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RDF Media is one of Britain’s leading TV production companies, responsible for programmes such as Wife Swap,
Faking It, Holiday Showdown, Scrapheap Challenge, Ladette to Lady, Rock School and The Queen’s Castle. It has
offices in London, Manchester, Los Angeles and New York, and is one of the UK’s fastest growing companies. The company produces shows for all the major UK terrestrial broadcasters and a number of US broadcasters. Its
staffing levels can vary significantly, depending on the number of programmes commissioned. RDF has 120
permanent staff, and another 200-300 people on fixed-term contracts. To keep track of its employees and reduce
time spent on HR administration, RDF is using Snowdrop HR software, comprising the Evergreen HR management
system and the U-Access employee self-service module.
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TotalFinaElf/Logica (March 2005)
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Payroll is one of those critical, but non-core activities that is taken for granted by employees but could cause major
problems for the business if missed – a challenge which is only magnified when there are 7,000 employees and 1,200
pensioners.
When Elf merged with TotalFina, the emphasis was immediately on productivity gains. This led the group to look at
internal processes that could be made more efficient, in order to secure a better service at a lower cost to the business.
One of the areas that came under scrutiny was payroll.
TotalFinaElf is now the fourth largest oil company in the world. Previously the company was three separate businesses:
Total, Fina and Elf. Total and Fina merged in 1999 and Elf joined them in 2000. When the group started looking for a solution for the company as a whole, the key criteria in the selection process was
the scalability and reliability of the technology behind the system. Of all the solutions they looked at, Logica
demonstrated that it had the most professional data centre, disaster recovery and business continuity plans.
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