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“Crucial to the success was the willingness of the participating departments to actively contribute. The collaboration between IT, HR, and controlling was exemplary. A project of this magnitude can only be successfully implemented if all relevant departments work together toward a common goal.” Robert Brückner, Vice President IT & Digitalization at the LINHARDT Group |
LINHARDT looks back on more than 80 years of corporate history and is one of the leading manufacturers of aluminum and plastic packaging solutions. As the global market leader for aluminum tubes in the pharmaceutical industry, the group employs approximately 1,800 people at domestic and international locations. To flexibly manage production capacities and respond to changing requirements, transparency regarding available human resources is crucial. For this reason, LINHARDT decided to implement a modern HR analytics solution as the foundation for efficient, data-driven human resource management.
Before the introduction of HR analytics, employee analyses involved a significant amount of manual work. The necessary data had to be consolidated from various HR source systems and prepared for team and department leads. A lack of standardization and automation resulted in a high administrative burden for the HR department.
“By introducing a powerful tool for operational HR management, we have laid the foundation for optimal workforce planning,” explains Robert Brückner, Vice President IT & Digitalization at the LINHARDT Group. “This has enabled us to significantly increase our resource and organizational efficiency while simultaneously empowering managers to take greater responsibility.” The new solution enables team and department leads to independently access relevant HR reports. SAP Human Capital Management (HCM) serves as the source system, providing the transactional data that is made available in SAP BW/4HANA for reporting and analysis. This makes information available more quickly and provides long-term relief for the HR department.
Before the project began, there was no consistent, cross-site definition of the relevant HR metrics. Therefore, the business-specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) were first jointly defined and harmonized. In addition, coordination with controlling was carried out to ensure consistent use of the metrics across all departments.
As a concept and implementation partner, IBsolution supported the project from the design phase through to the successful go-live. The SAP consulting company has extensive experience in the field of HR analytics and had previously worked with LINHARDT to successfully migrate from SAP BW 7.5 to SAP BW/4HANA. This collaboration provided a solid foundation for the new project.
The project teams from LINHARDT and IBsolution combined a structured project approach with agile methods. This allowed them to accommodate new requirements flexibly while ensuring reliability in terms of deadlines and planning. This approach proved to be a major advantage, particularly when converting a central process for evaluating time quotas from a monthly to a daily perspective. Thanks to the parallel activation of organization management, the analyses can now be utilized in accordance with clearly defined responsibilities and reporting lines.
By implementing HR analytics, LINHARDT has significantly increased transparency regarding its human resources and enabled business departments to make more informed and independent personnel decisions. Key metrics on workforce structure, such as full-time equivalents (FTEs) and headcount, are now available, as are metrics from time management – ranging from productive hours and absence rates to vacation entitlements. The standardized reporting process ensures high acceptance within the organization, reduces the workload on the HR department, and supports fact-based decision-making at all levels.
The project’s success was largely based on close collaboration among all stakeholders, as Robert Brückner emphasizes: “Crucial to the success was the willingness of the participating departments to actively contribute. The collaboration between IT, HR, and controlling was exemplary. A project of this magnitude can only be successfully implemented if all relevant departments work together toward a common goal.”
Even after the successful go-live, IBsolution continues to support the LINHARDT Group in operating and further developing the solution. The joint project work has created a solid foundation for data-driven HR decisions and demonstrates how the combination of HR expertise, SAP know-how, and close collaboration generates sustainable added value.
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“By introducing a powerful tool for operational HR management, we have laid the foundation for optimal workforce planning. This has enabled us to significantly increase our resource and organizational efficiency while simultaneously empowering managers to take greater responsibility.” Robert Brückner, Vice President IT & Digitalization at the LINHARDT Group |
Photo: Linhardt