Brita: Access to thousands of employee files directly via SAP successfactors

The BRITA Group is globally active, with around 2,300 employees, of whom 1,000 are working for the German company BRITA SE. Here, the electronic Centric Employee File was introduced in summer 2023, and two further German subsidiaries are in the starting blocks already. At BRITA, this was preceded by the switch to SAP Success Factors as the new HR solution.

Both systems are closely integrated and allow the company to jump into the HR world of tomorrow.

This globally active German manufacturer of drinking water filters is currently in a state of flux. The aim was to introduce digital processes, which BRITA could not do with the previous HR software. That’s why BRITA decided to introduce SAP SuccessFactors. SAP's cloud-based HR solution has been in productive use since 2020, starting with Employee Central and Recruiting, followed by Talent Management tools like Goals &Performance, Succession & Development, and last but not least, Learning (live since summer 2023). The aim is to establish SuccessFactors as the leading system for everything to do with HR administration.

“The number of documents that have to be processed in paper form has decreased significantly, as many processes can be reproduced within SAP SuccessFactors.“

Jenny Schilling, Senior Manager HR Services at BRITA SE

The era of paper files is over

Maintaining a modern HR solution alongside thousands of employee paper documents, stored at the headquarters in Taunusstein, where they fill up meter after meter of shelf space – did not make sense anymore.

"Especially during the pandemic, when a large proportion of our HR staff were working from home, this was a huge problem,” recalls Sven Döhlert, Manager HR Business Projects, IT Demand, & Project Management at BRITA.

Ensuring everyone working in HR has access to the files they need creates an almost unmanageable administrative burden when working in a hybrid environment. The need for digitalization was therefore obvious, not least because BRITA was about to embark on major renovation measures and move into a new building. It did not want to move the old document jungle with it.

“Especially during the pandemic, when a large proportion of our HR staff were working from home, thousands of employee paper documents, stored at the headquarters, were a huge problem.”

Sven Döhlert, Manager HR Business Projects, IT Demand, & Project Management of BRITA SE

More than 50,000 documents had to be digitized

The implementation project started in March 2023, and the file has been in active use since July of the same year. Before that, all 1,000 existing files, totaling more than 50,000 documents, had to be digitized, for which BRITA contracted an external scanning service provider. The Centric project team captured the structure of the existing paper documents in the electronic employee file and loaded the digital documents into it. Electronic files have also been set up for former employees who have left the company in the last three years.

The file is only integrated in SuccessFactors; no further integration was necessary. Both systems are hosted by SAP in the cloud. Centric set up the connection to Outlook and established the option to directly upload documents from the program as part of the implementation for BRITA.

The Centric Employee File complements SuccessFactors given that only a handful of documents, such as degree certificates, could be attached to a profile in the previous solution. In order to view most of the documents relating to HR, employees still needed to look at the paper file. Employment contracts were created and fed with data from SuccessFactors, but everything else was done outside the system: sending documents by email or even printing them out, signing them, scanning them again, etc.

Moving away from paper-based work – towards digital workflows

With Centric Employee File, BRITA is also meeting all data protection requirements in human resources. “It is always possible to see who has accessed which file and when. The handling is much easier,” says Sven Döhlert.

Around 20 HR specialists have access to the employee files for a relevant work area according to their role, seven of whom are power users who work with the system every day. For them, the electronic employee file makes many day-to-day tasks much easier.

“The long-term benefit of electronically performing operations that were previously carried out manually is huge.”

Jenny Schilling, Senior Manager HR Services at BRITA SE

At the same time, the team still sees a lot of potential for expansion, including the implementation of electronic signatures. “However, we still have to legally check in advance which documents may and may not be signed electronically under the Evidence Act,” says Sven Döhlert. In the near future, BRITA also plans to migrate the document creation process –which currently relies on Word mail merge – directly to the Centric Employee File. BRITA has not implemented ESS or MSS scenarios for the time being, but individual employees can access their documents by borrowing files. And this is also much easier than in the days of physical file folders.