Employee File saves of up to 90 percent time in key HR processes: ebm-papst

4,000 HR files in paper form, floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets, cramped rooms – until recently, that’s what the HR department of air and heating technology specialist ebm-papst in Mulfingen looked like. In its independent subsidiary in Landshut, with its 1,000 active employees, the sit-uation was much the same – worlds away from how it operates today with Centric’s digital em-ployee file. This has generated time savings of up to 90 percent in many crucial work process-es, in addition to other benefits such as greater transparency and data security.

In its search for the right solution, ebm-papst chose Centric's cloud-based Employee File from a field of five providers.

“Compared to other file solutions, we definitely liked the graphic design and the usability of this product best. The handling is modern, intuitive, and therefore very different from the classic SAP interface with its many buttons,” says Andreas Hosch, Director Payroll & Administration Air Technology Europe at ebm-papst Mulfingen GmbH & Co. KG.

For the company, it was also important that Centric offers much more than just the Employee File. ebm-papst is thinking about payroll and master data verification for SAP HCM and digital payslip sending. Centric offers solutions in both areas with the PLK/PLX checking tool, the MADAP master data tool, and the Payslip Box digital payroll solution. Andreas Hosch: “This means we can get everything from a single source, which was not possible with any other provider.”

Strong support for interface development

The file project started in January 2022 and immediately presented a very particular challenge: At ebm-papst Landshut GmbH, which has only been part of the company group for a few years and has an independent HR department, the Soprahr HR personnel system from Steria was (and still is) in use. Although the changeover to SAP is scheduled to take place in 2024, the master data from this HR system also had to be transferred to Centric Employee File when it was introduced. "However, this was not something that all providers wanted to get involved in,” recalls Marco Pernstecher, Director HR Services at the Heating Technology division in Landshut. “Centric, on the other hand, assured us right from the start: It will take a bit more effort, but it will work out.”

So, first, the project team at ebm-papst had to get Steria to program a new interface – a pro-cess that took some time. The Centric experts helped to speed this process up by providing Steria with constant support, and giving tips on how to set up the interface and how to develop it even more cost-effectively.

5,000 employee files scanned and transferred

At the same time, ebm-papst contracted an external scanning service to digitize and index the employee files for its approximately 5,000 employees and made the scanned data records accessible for the Centric application. Andreas Hosch and Marco Pernstecher had previously defined the desired file structure with their respective HR teams – again in collaboration with Centric.

Since fall 2022, around 30 HR employees from the HR departments (HR Business Partner, Payroll, Time Management) in Mulfingen and Landshut have been actively working with the digital employee file on a daily basis. They access the HR documents directly from the HR system (SAP HCM or Steria Soprahr). Initially, ebm-papst deliberately opted not to use ESS and MSS scenarios such as those supported by Centric’s solution. Therefore, only corresponding roles, user, and access authorizations were defined within the HR department. These were developed by ebm-pabst together with Centric. The best-practice authorization structure proposed by Centric was adapted once again to meet individual client needs.

“Our goal was to digitalize and streamline HR processes, and we have really succeeded with the new solution. We came from a completely analogue paper process and are now achieving time savings of 80 to 90 percent in many everyday work processes thanks to the new filing system.”

Andreas Hosch, Director Payroll & Administration Air Technology Europe at ebm-papst Mulfingen GmbH & Co. KG.

Location-independent access to HR documents

Andreas Hosch views the success of the project as follows: “Our goal was to digitalize and streamline HR processes, and we have really succeeded with the new solution. We came from a completely analogue paper process and are now achieving time savings of 80 to 90 percent in many everyday work processes thanks to the new filing system.”

There was another advantage: Especially since COVID-19, work at ebm-papst has become more mobile, and HR specialists need to be able to access files from home. This would not have been possible without the digital employee file. It also increases data security: If a paper file is lost or destroyed in an accident such as a fire, it is lost forever.

The SAP data center, on the other hand, has a sophisticated recovery and backup concept for digital files. At the same time, automated deletion deadlines ensure that data sets are promptly destroyed when they are no longer needed. Finally, logging functions make it possible to track in detail who had access when and how.

"Hosting data in the cloud was a first for us," says Marco Pernstecher. "But the days of worry-ing about possible security breaches are now over." It is notable that ebm-papst has entrusted particularly confidential HR data to the cloud. This is because the company still runs its other SAP ERP components on its own servers – for the time being.