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| Case Studies
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Euro Garages/Access Select (August 2010)
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Euro Garages is the UK’s fastest-growing forecourt operator and one of the sector’s largest independents, employing
nearly 1,000 staff across 84 sites in the North of England and Midlands. Working closely with corporate partners
including Burger King, Spar and Starbucks, the company is driven to provide quality, convenience and customer
service. Euro Garages was founded in 2001 by the Issa family with the acquisition of a single forecourt site in Bury, Lancashire.
Since then, it has acquired an average of 10 sites each year, making it one of the UK’s fastest growing operators. Users of a payroll bureau since formation, the company sought greater control and flexibility through an integrated
system. Already long-time users of Access Dimensions, Euro Garages made an appointment to view Access’ integrated payroll
solution, Access SelectPay. Following a “very professional product demonstration” Euro Garages’ stakeholders decided that Access
SelectPay would be a sound investment.
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A J Bell/Access Select (August 2010)
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With assets under administration exceeding £11 billion and one of the fastest growing businesses in its sector, A J Bell
is the largest privately owned provider of self-administered pension (SIPP) and stockbroking services in the UK. A J Bell
has won multiple SIPP industry awards, successes that have been achieved through the sheer hard work of its
employees. A J Bell purchased and
implemented the Insight version of SelectHR in 2006. In June 2007 A J Bell altered its management structure and doubled the number of managers. It really needed its HR
system to keep up with it, so implementing SelectHR Web Edition became a priority in 2008 as the need for more flexibility became apparent.
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Republic Publishing/Vizual Business Tools (July 2010)
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Republic Publishing is a young company, only three years old, which creates
content for websites and publishers. It has a small core of full-time employees
and a wider network of 45 freelance writers, operating as a social or virtual
company.
Republic’s journalists attend international trade fairs and report on what they find, providing a new product service and a
trend consultancy for clients such as Nokia, Intel, Vodafone and Best Buy. Once a week, on a Friday afternoon, Republic’s writers meet in London to network with colleagues. It soon became clear that Republic needed to manage its employee
relationships in a more formal way. Republic Publishing needed to find a human resources system that was reasonable in cost. It liked HR.net Enterprise
from Vizual, because it found the core software very straightforward, and it fitted well with Republic’s growing business
and its model of low overheads.
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De La Rue/Vizual Business Tools (April 2010)
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De La Rue is the world’s largest commercial
security printer and paper maker, producing
over 150 national currencies and a wide range
of security documents such as passports, fiscal
stamps, Travellers Cheques and authentication
labels. In business since 1813, De La Rue
employs over 6,000 people across 31 countries. In December 2004, the executive team
announced the results of a strategic review,
highlighting a number of group actions and focused on the need to improve efficiency. As part of this focus, De La Rue introduced ‘Our Contribution’, to empower all individuals to drive improvements. Following the launch of Our Contribution, it became clear
that a reporting system was required that would allow suggestions to be received from employees around the globe and
then tracked through to review, investment, implementation and recording of benefit. De La Rue had, at this time, also decided to implement HR.net Enterprise from Vizual Business Tools and De La Rue soon realised that HR.net Enterprise could be used to facilitate Our Contribution.
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Rentokil Initial/Vizual Business Tools – exclusive interview (February 2010)
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Rentokil Initial is one of the largest business services companies in the world, operating in Europe, North America, Asia-
Pacific and Africa. It has over 78,000 staff in around 50 countries.
Rentokil Initial’s success and reputation is based on providing high levels of customer care utilising technically advanced
services and products. Its team of R&D scientists and technologists help keep it at the forefront of technical developments
across its operations. The company wanted to move to a more consistent and integrated business model. It evaluated the marketplace and chose HR.net Enterprise from Vizual Business Tools because of its flexibility and configurability.
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Anglian Windows/Safe Computing (December 2009)
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Anglian Windows was first established in 1966 when it opened its first
factory unit in Norwich and subsequently its first high-street showroom in
Ipswich in 1969 – at the time it was a revolutionary concept to encourage
the public to view the products personally and discuss their needs.
Anglian Windows’ high-quality, service-based approach has since
reached all the corners of the UK, helping millions of customers. The
company has an annual turnover of £250 million – and a key strategy to
ensure that it stays ahead of the competition is a continual programme
of research and development with ‘state-of-the-art’ manufacturing plants
and an improving product range. Anglian wanted an HR and payroll system that was dynamic and flexible enough to
adapt to both its current and future requirements. After reviewing its options it chose to take the Safe EMS and Payroll
product from Safe Computing.
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Bangor University/Agresso (December 2009)
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Bangor University is based in north-west Wales and has around 2,000 staff and 500 casual workers who are paid
through Agresso’s HR and payroll solution. The key objective behind implementing the new system was to integrate
HR, payroll and finance across the organisation, and this has been successfully achieved and is already delivering
benefits. Bangor chose Agresso because it was keen to integrate HR, payroll and finance. The finance system was due for
replacement within 12 months which presented a good opportunity to look at integrating all three functions.
The Agresso product suited Bangor’s needs because of the inherent flexibility and scalability and its ability to respond
quickly to organisational change – with this in mind Bangor knew it would be able to support the university for years to
come.
The Agresso implementation coincided with the introduction of the Framework Agreement across the entire higher
education sector which required a complete change to pay and grading structures.
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Muckle LLP/Cascade HR (October 2009)
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Muckle LLP is a commercial law firm based in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Specialisms include commercial, corporate finance, property, employment,
dispute resolution, debt recovery, public sector and private client. The firm
has approximately 130 staff with a view to increasing that to approximately
200 over the coming three to five years. All the firm's HR/people
information was in different documents and in different formats. It held a database in Word and other ad-hoc
spreadsheets in Excel. Carrying out analysis or doing any reporting was very manual and extremely time-consuming.
The data it had was often out-of-date and inconsistent. The management of people data was almost entirely manual
and paper-based. Muckle asked six different suppliers to tender for a new HR software system and it chose Cascade.
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Southampton City Council/Capita – exclusive interview (February 2009)
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Southampton is recognised as a leading commercial, cultural and retail centre on the south coast. It is a unitary authority
with a population of around 230,000 and Southampton City Council employs approximately 10,000 staff.
Its stated aim is to transform its services to be as efficient as possible in order to meet the needs of its citizens. To drive
this, the council has formed an outsourcing partnership with Capita covering many of its services, including HR and IT.
The outsourcing contract stipulates that the services will remain in Southampton and not be delivered from any other
location. To achieve this, Capita is developing a modern six-storey office building, opposite the civic centre, as a regional
business centre from which to deliver the services. The new building will provide accommodation for both council and
Capita staff.
The hope is that other councils will join with Southampton, to make this a regional hub and be a centre for expertise and
efficiency. To facilitate this, a framework agreement is in place with Capita to allow other councils to take some of the
services – such as payroll or IT – without having to go through the time-consuming OJEU (Official Journal of the European
Union) notice.
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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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Shelter/MidlandHR – exclusive interview (January 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. As a charity, it is incumbent on Shelter to spend as little as possible on administration costs while still delivering a goodquality
service to its employees consistent with its image as a high-profile, professional organisation. As a caring employer,
Shelter also aims to provide excellent HR and payroll services but it needs these to be as efficient as possible. Shelter liked the look and feel of MidlandHR’s Trent and it ticked all the right
boxes as far as function went.
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