LDMS ePersonalakte (electronic personnel record) from Beta Systems subsidiary SI Software Innovation is a key component of HP Germany’s BPO HR Factory. An increasing number of administrations and companies, in particular large ones, outsource their entire personnel processes to external service providers. In Germany alone, more than 750 customers from the public and private sector draw on the services offered by Hewlett-Packard GmbH.

By Default, HP Executes Personnel Record Projects Factory Style

HP is positioning itself on the HR market as a “full BPO services provider” with a focus on payroll accounting, travel expenses as well as finance & accounting. Processing 8 million payslips and more than 1 million subledger accounting transactions, HP is Germany’s largest user of HR systems like SAP ERP HCM and KIDICAP. It takes a harmonized application landscape and standardized, automated processes to handle this volume – a concept HP calls “factory approach”. One of the central components of this BPO HR factory is the LDMS/p electronic personnel record from SI Software Innovation, a member of the BETA Systems Group. 99% of all HP clients already use this service and the portal to access their electronically archived personnel documents. This helped to reduce their print output by more than 50%, and it also accelerated and simplified document retrieval and processing.

Business process outsourcing is one of the key components of Hewlett-Packard’s enterprise services portfolio. And within this BPO sector, HR/payroll is playing an ever more prominent role. Hewlett-Packard Germany divided it into two segments, public and private, and supports both target groups based on the most suitable solution according to the best-of-breed principle. For public administrations, HP has chosen the leading personnel software KIDICAP from GIP, and private-sector HR processes are exclusively handled using SAP ERP HCM.

Centralized Record and Archive Solution for KIDICAP and SAP ERP HCM

Any HR system generates information that needs to be pro­cessed for various output channels before it is archived. Hewlett-Packard Germany has been relying on the LDMS solution from SI Software Innovation GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of Beta Systems Software AG, since 2003. The software serves as a central archive and output manage­ment solution for all lists and documents produced in the context of HR. What prompted HP to introduce the solution were the new German principles on data access and audit­ability of digital documents (GDPdU), which require com­panies to store tax-relevant data originating from electronic systems over a term of ten years. Before, HP transferred all HR-related documents to their clients on CDs and as a hard­copy for filing; job log lists were stored in a third-party appli­cation at HP. The introduction of LDMS has brought many improvements to the clients of HP. LDMS now acts as the central record and archive solution, and as such it enables rapid and convenient access to all required HR documents and ensures that all data is archived in an audit-compliant manner according to tax law provisions.

“From project start to finish, we harmonized very well with SI / Beta Systems”, comments Reinhard Diekmann, BPO HR Department Head at Hewlett-Packard GmbH. But hard fac­tors such as the software’s features naturally played a key role too: “LDMS offers a rich user interface that is at the same time clearly structured and thus simple to use; and this is ideal for the end users, that is, our clients’ employees, who work with electronic personnel documents”, says Rein­hard Diekmann. Also, the LDMS front-end is programmed in Java and therefore connects well with KIDICAP-View, the Java client of KIDICAP maker GIP GmbH.

Access to 320,000 Personnel Cases via the Portal

In just six weeks, the SI team installed LDMS on the servers of Hewlett-Packard Germany’s BPO HR division. First the software for KIDICAP was implemented, and in the second stage the previous archive for SAP ERP HCM was replaced with LDMS. At this point, 320,000 personnel cases and eight million payslips for a total of over 750 companies and administrations are being maintained with LDMS. Gabriele Siebe, Project Manager BPO HR Public at Hewlett-Packard Germany, noticed that the clients print less and less owing to the LDMS archive, steadily embracing paper-free processes. On average, the customers have reduced their print output by over 50%. This is due to the fact that they appreciate the comfortable and reliable new system that helps them forgo the need to print documents.

Great Filter Options for Searching Documents

The clients access the electronic personnel record and the LDMS archive via the HP portal. From the portal, a link takes them to the Beta Business Client, where they are connected to the archive via a secure VPN dedicated line. All users can access LDMS at any time and from any location, they can retrieve documents much faster compared to working with a paper-based file, and they can search it according to freely definable criteria. “We are especially happy with the many selection options that make document searches so simple”, says a satisfied Svenja Sökefeld, Project Manager and Con­sultant at HP – an opinion that HP’s clients also share.

The authorization concept of the electronic personnel record is generally controlled by the higher-level HR application, so in this case SAP ERP HCM or KIDICAP. On the record level, this allows for enforcing fine-grained access to person­nel files and other documents stored in the LDMS archive.