Case Studies

Case Study 1

The Client

Based in southern India, the client is India's largest producer of rubber footwear in the organized sector. Over the past 37 years, the company has grown to be a leader in the segment it operates. Though it started out as a single raw material, multi-product company, it grew to be a multi-raw material, multi-product company over a period of time. It has state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities and testing labs spread across four states in the country.

The Situation

The client had set an impressive growth target for the coming years by consolidating its position in all the segments it operated and innovating in new products. As part of its growth plans, it introduced a leading ERP software for all its business processes. The leadership team was committed to transforming the organization by introducing a few industry best practices in driving the organization through professional management practices. To reach its aggressive targets for growth, the company was looking for efficient methods for monitoring business performance and also for disseminating a mindset for performance monitoring down to the grassroots level.

Abanel's contribution

The client's Board of Directors turned to Abanel to drive the change. We did a thorough study of the footwear industry market and spent time with the business leaders at the client locations to understand the market, the competition, the business priorities and the challenges involved. We constituted a Steering Committee with representatives from the board and the various key functions of the client. Our experience with clients from various sectors helped us build a great deal of credibility with the business leaders as well as with the Board of Directors. We spent time with the team from the ERP vendor as well as the implementation team to understand their experience in rolling out the system at the client location. The client's Steering Committee hand in hand with the Abanel team held a series of multiple iterative discussions followed by review by the Board of Directors to identify Key Performance Indicators which would make the maximum impact on business performance.

The Abanel team was involved at various stages of the project—conceptualization, design and implementation including training the employees and participating in the first set of reviews at the Functional Head level as well as by the Board of Directors.

Practical approach

While the client was looking at the latest thinking in the field of management systems they wanted an approach which would be practical and could be implemented with ease.

Business Impact

The key focus of the assignment was to look at developing a system which would help the Board of Directors have a good feel of the pulse of the organization through a well analyzed, impactful set of performance indicators which would help drive the business.

Scalability

In order to support the organization in its impressive targets for growth, the solution suggested had to be robust to support the multi-fold increase in business expected in the next 5 years.

Facilitate change

The client wanted the change to be facilitated well as to get the buy-in of every employee along multiple functions of the organization. The mandate included preparing the organization to accept this change and sustain it long term.

Impact

The formation of a Steering Committee with members from the Board of Directors and Functional/Business Heads helped build a very sound, collaborative approach to build an impactful management review process. The client learned about the significance of Key Performance Indicators, the importance of focusing on the most impactful indicators and the possibility of deep-diving into any of those indicators to better understand any of the concern areas, if need be.

In order to win acceptance to this initiative, we did separate sessions for employees from all the manufacturing locations and offices to address and eliminate any doubts they might have had. Through education at multiple stakeholder levels and sharing the business perspective of the new initiative with the client, Abanel was able to build ownership for this change management initiative.

The result has been a much more effective and focused review of the performance of the organization both at the level of the Board of Directors and that of the Functional Heads. There is a lot of focus on decisions based on data and an analytical review of the performance of the organization. The focus is more on lead indicators which drive the organization forward in its growth phase than on plain reporting on lag indicators. Benchmarks have been set for most of the indicators and today, the focus and discussion are around how to work towards the benchmarks through continuous improvement programs. More importantly, every function understands why the organization looks at a certain set of data with every employee aligned to organizational goals by focusing on how their function impacts the business results of the organization. The shared understanding has brought in more inter-departmental dialogue and discussions with the intent of building a better organization.

---

Case Study 2

The Client

The India Development Centre for a media research firm headquartered in the US. The organization has successfully developed its brand as a preferred software product development company in India.

The Situation

With the growth of the organization and implementation of progressive HR practices, one of the key areas that needed focus was the automation of a lot of HR processes. The system needed to manage the flow of information among employees, managers, HR officials and other relevant stakeholders. This needed a workflow to handle the various business process transactions and also to route decision making through appropriate approval chains. Three of the biggest requirements were to have appropriate systems in place to handle the recruitment process, the payroll process and the performance management process. In addition to this, there was a need to generate various reports from the system.

The client had finalized on an HRMS vendor based on the needs identified.

Abanel's contribution

We worked on a detailed Systems Requirements Specification (SRS) to bring in clarity on exactly what was needed. Our experience in working with the implementation of world's leading ERP packages helped us bring in the right perspective on what was expected. After getting the SRS approved by the client, the next step was to get a handle on the HRMS solution chosen, its product specifications and functionalities. After a thorough study of the system functionalities followed by hands-on familiarization we spent time on studying how to configure the system for various workflows.

Simultaneously, all the existing HR processes were studied and based on our expertise, we introduced some best-in-class practices through process redesign. All the redesigned workflows were documented with process documentation templates and detailed flow charts.

Before the start of the configuration on the test server, we developed a comprehensive test strategy. The key stakeholders—HR core users, Finance core users and a representative sample of the employees as end users—were part of the team involved in the testing, in addition to the consultants from Abanel. After setting up the test server, three rounds of comprehensive testing were completed by the Abanel team to validate the configuration, the hierarchies and the detailed work flow for all the HR processes. Testing for the payroll was done for 3 months with a parallel run of the legacy payroll system to ensure smooth move over to the new system.

Abanel also provided detailed process documents with workflow for all the HR processes which were to be automated through the HRMS.

The discussions with the Board of Directors helped us focus on some key principles that guided the project.

Impact

There has been almost a 70% reduction in time spent on administrative processes. The system provides an employee self-service option, ease of data maintenance, assured integrity and accuracy of data, faster response to employee queries and minimum paperwork. The HR team was relieved of a lot of fire-fighting on data integrity, data management and employee queries. As part of the project, all the HR processes were streamlined to bring in the best-in-class practices in HR.

---

Case Study 3

The Client

Our client was a new entrant in the key industry verticals like environment, infrastructure, energy and urban infrastructure.

The Situation

We were associated with the organization when it had only a Managing Director on its board. Such an early stage entry into the project ensured that we were glued into the company's organizational DNA when it came to the business strategy, people strategy and future vision of the organization. The mandate for us was to look at the HR infrastructure of the organization from a strategic perspective, involve in the design of all the systems to support the strategy, implement the systems, handhold the incoming HR team and ensure smooth transition of the operationalized systems.

Abanel's contribution

Agility and flexibility
Our customized solutions designed after a thorough understanding of the business needs ensured a robust HR infrastructure that catered to the exponential growth of the organization.

Aligning strategy to operations
Our thorough study of the business priorities, the competition and a detailed analysis of the market for the client's services helped us get a good grasp of the operations required to support the business. We excel at blending strategic thinking with hands-on practicality.

Cost and profitability
Our design of people systems ensure that our clients achieve their business results through optimum cost and profitability when it comes to people-related systems.

Client employee engagement
Our skills at working closely with the client at all levels including temporary and contract workmen ensured that we laid a strong foundation for solutions with employee involvement and buy-in.

Attitude and behaviour alignment
While people system design is our expertise, our architecture goes deeper into the employee attitudes and behaviour ensuring that the systems introduced are accepted well. Our consultants are highly skilled in this area.

Cross functional expertise
Our team's business understanding together with practical expertise in diverse industries across the globe in biotechnology, energy, software, precision engineering, oil, infrastructure and beyond helped bring in innovative designs into the solution.

Creating long-term Culture
We created a culture wherein the focus was directed on the values the organization aspired to achieve. These values were incorporated deep into the policies, the benefit schemes, and the HR systems we built. This helped the client focus on the type of organization needed to be built.

Impact

The organization grew 30 fold from the first few months of operations. As promised to the client, all the HR systems—the selection processes, the new hire orientation, the performance management system, the HR operations, policy and benefits implementation—delivered scalability. This helped the HR team focus on the strategic issues needed to support the business.