When an international firm asked Anderson Consulting to devise a
new human resource package, savings of £2 million a year were
made
In 1997, Motorola decided to replace the paper-based system it
used to process human resource and payroll information. As error
prone and inefficient as this paper-based system was, more serious
was the lack of standard human resources practices. Motorola SPS
operates in over 50 countries and has 30 factories worldwide,
including sites in the US, Europe and the Far East, and it was
proving hard to track varying human resource policies in different
territories.
Motorola SPS approached Andersen Consulting to devise and implement
a new system that would solve these problems.The human resource
system that Andersen Consulting envisaged would be required to
perform two main tasks:( To collect and process human resource and
payroll information( To allow both managers and employees access to
this information"Our ultimate goal is to build a global human
resources system infrastructure in which managers and their
employees can use the human resources system, along with
third-party service providers, to process human resources-related
data." Andersen Consulting.To provide a consistent base of human
resource information worldwide, Andersen Consulting recommended the
use of SAP's R/3 Human Resource System version 3.0 as the software
standard for processing employee and payroll data. During the
16-month duration of the project, Andersen also acted as advisor in
the configuration of the system, establishing a base of operations
within Motorola SPS to handle employee training and collect
information from vendors.The use of a single method of processing
data brought Motorola one step closer to standardising human
resource transactions. Now, employee data from any international
territory could be processed and stored in the same way. The new
system also allowed Motorola to centralise all its human resource
data for the US in a single facility - the Service Centre in
Phoenix, Arizona.However, this was only one aspect of the project.
To allow managers and employees to access this data, a custom
network had to be designed. This was dubbed ENET - The Employee
Self Service Network.ENET, an intranet-based, system was devised
with two main functions in mind. On one hand, employees were able
access their own personal data using a web-browser. On the other,
managers were able to check and approve the status of personnel
transactions such as a change in job or salary. Additionally, ENET
was also designed to link other types of information including
career development materials, details of courses in the Motorola
University and documents on company policies.As standardisation of
human resource policy was such a key area of concern, ENET was
designed to check data automatically, ensuring a common format was
established, reducing the need for manual data
validation.Crucially, adopting an intranet based application such
as ENET allowed Motorola SPS to establish an International Human
Resource policy, defining set practices in areas such as salary
adjustments, departmental changes, processing new employees and
changes in status of current employees. Any changes in human
resource policy could now be implemented simultaneously in all
territories.Between 1997 and 1999, the new ENET/SAP system was
established in all Motorola SPS territories including sites in the
US, Hong Kong, Europe and the UK. The initial Andersen Consulting
development team of 16 was reduced to a support team of
six.Motorola SPS is expected to save approximately £2 million a
year by reducing the amount of time required for basic
administrative tasks in human resource departments. Updates of the
ENET are currently being planned to include greater facilities for
processing more specific employee data such as personal skills or
languages."The way Enet has changed the way I interact with my
managers and employees means that I have 100 per cent faith in
being able to provide information that I know is available and
accurate. It creates a lot of pride in the human resources
organisation and energy around promoting this system. I'm not
afraid that Enet is not going to deliver, it already has." - John
Morgan, human resources manager, Motorola SPS.
Richard
Pitt