HR administration at a welfare association: Future-proof social services at Diakonie Stetten with a new filing solution

For many years, Diakonie Stetten had already been using an SAP-integrated electronic solu-tion to manage employee files for its approximately 4,500 employees (plus 1,000 people in the workshops for the disabled). However, its previous filing solution was past its best. The company that manufactured it was no longer in business, and Diakonie Stetten therefore had to it run and maintain it themselves.

Ready for SAP S/4 HANA: the digital personnel file from Centric

The final blow was the upcoming migration to SAP S/4HANA. The old solution would not have been operable with the new SAP system; it was simply not S/4HANA-ready. Centric Employ-ee File, on the other hand, is a pure cloud solution that works in both the old and the new SAP world. And unlike with the on-premises SAP system, the new cloud-based filing system meant Diakonie Stetten no longer had anything to do with maintenance and backup, which is handled entirely by Centric.

Everything pointed to the Centric employee file

When looking for a new filing solution, the project team looked at all the major manufacturers. However, it already knew Centric, as Diakonie Stetten was already working successfully with PLK/PLX and Madap, tools for automatic checking of salary changes, duplicate wage type entries, and the audit-proof generation of audit trails. IT Project Manager Markus Schmalzried: “We’ve always been extremely satisfied with the support here in recent years. Whether it’s new inspection rules or new statutory requirements – Centric always implements these immediately in its software.”

The decisive factor in their decision to choose Centric over several other providers was Centric’s versatile product portfolio for HR document processes. As part of the project, Diakonie Stetten also decided to introduce Centric Payslip Box, a solution for digitally delivering payslips to its employees. The relatively low costs of the licenses, implementation, and maintenance were also a plus point for Centric.

A typical problem in the sector: Employee files for former employees

Centric was also able to impress Diakonie Stetten in another area: the Diakonie HR depart-ment needs to retain the files of former employees. Like almost every other provider in the social services sector, Diakonie Stetten has a relatively large number of so-called dead files – 35,000 to be precise. The reason: These dead files are still linked to company pension enti-tlements, which is why relevant parts of the employee file must be retained. The project team also developed a technically and economically convincing solution for storing these files.

Sophisticated authorization system

The Centric Employee File has been in use for employees since the start of 2024 and Centric Payslip Box since October 2023. Much of the other preparatory work – such as developing the structure and register – was unnecessary or only had to be updated from the previous solution. Diakonie Stetten transferred the documents from the old filing solution into a file sys-tem, which meant they could be stored within Employee File without any problems, despite the fact that there were 1.8 million of them. The project team then set up the individual file structure there, defined how to file pay statements automatically, and – very importantly – set up an authorization path: Who can view, process, and delete which files?

The almost 250 managers at Diakonie Stetten can access the electronic employee files relat-ed to their specific area, while the 45 HR department employees have full access. Working with digital employee files has a whole range of advantages for them, such as the sophisticat-ed authorization concept, which provides extra security.

Speed gain by a factor of five

Petra Rieger from the HR department is a key user of Centric Employee File. She and her colleagues now have access to employee files from anywhere, whether they’re in the office, working from home, or on the move. “Its easy to upload documents with Centric and also to delete them if you’ve uploaded the wrong one,” she says. ”We can also create additional fold-ers ourselves when there are new documents. So you can configure a lot yourself. You can even move and file large numbers of documents in one go – very convenient and time-saving! What used to take several minutes – adding documents – is now a matter of just 60 seconds. We’ve become five times faster here.”

More control, future-proof solutions

Petra Rieger also likes being able to keep tabs on everything: If she hasn’t uploaded docu-ments yet, she can easily identify and upload them later. A detailed error log helps with this.

Of course, management is less aware of these benefits in day-to-day operations. The most important thing for the Diakonie management is that Centric Employee File is now a future-proof solution for the company’s file management. “And this is now the case,” says Markus Schmalzried: “It applies to both the ability to run under S/4HANA and the good support that we’re now getting from the provider.”