Tenova: Engineering a global talent company
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Industry:
Metals & mining
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Employees:
4,800
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Headquarters:
Castellanza, Italy
Tenova is a leading supplier of products and engineering services for the metals, mining and mineral industries. They needed to implement a new HR solution that could support international growth as well as having analytical and decision-making capabilities. This is in addition to nurturing its people in order to build a global talent pool.
Challenging growth
Since 2006, Tenova has experienced significant growth in its international workforce. From less than 1,000 employees in 2006 it’s talent pool grew to 4,800 in 2014.
Last year alone, following the latest acquisitions, the company expanded by 25%. The increasing organizational complexity resulting from expansion reduced the amount of:
- Global governance
- Central control of HR processes
- Decisions and
- People management
This situation presented a big challenge to Tenova from a business point of view. Especially since it values its people as the critical success factor in fostering competitiveness and innovation.
In response to this, the CEO and top management requested the review and harmonization of key HR processes. This was in order to support business development and decision making.
The existing HR and IT systems and processes were found incapable of sustaining such an evolution. Different HR systems in countries with varying coverage levels, made it very difficult to have reliable, consistent and updated HR data.
Naturally, these are needed in order to make strategic decisions and to establish uniform people management as well as common ways of working through policies and procedures.
The HR platform project
Following the internal definition of the desired TO-BE model and gap analysis, Tenova searched for the right long-term partner that could help achieve its ultimate HR transformation goal.
This goal was to establish integrated HR processes at global level, based on a common information set. The goal should support growth through the development of business-critical HR factors and provide analytical capabilities. NGA HR won this selection.
The HR Platform Project covers the entire Tenova Group, globally, in 5 languages (Chinese, English, German, Italian and Russian). The aim was streamlining Talent Management and HR Analytics functionalities.
Additional processes in scope included; performance, compensation and benefits, organizational structure, recruiting and selection, training and development, workforce planning, reporting and KPIs.
The new HR system also needs to incorporate the “core HR” process flows already in place while, from a technological point of view, integrating seamlessly with the current SAP HCM landscape.
About Tenova
Tenova is a worldwide supplier of advanced technologies, products and engineering services covering key segments of the metallurgical process and the entire mining value chain. With 4,800 people, Tenova and its network of companies, operates in 26 countries, on 5 continents.
“Tenova’s core asset is its people: talent management is a key process and the HR platform we developed is the foundation of it. I believe we have strongly improved our talent decision process, which has become much more fact-based, while enjoying, from an IT perspective, a global, common and secure platform.”
Chief Human Resources and Information Officer, M&A, Tenova
- Strategy: to provide top management with metrics in the form of strategic HR dashboards and KPIs — on different dimensions and with varying degrees of geographical / organizational detail — which will form the basis of the business strategy, as well as enable HR management to better control HR functioning and maintain alignment with business evolutions.
- Operating: to commend human capital by improving related process efficiency and HR data quality as well as establishing a common way of working with a strong worldwide focus on people development.
- Basic HR: to harmonize data collection at the corporate level by leveraging a single master data, thus allowing for standardization of data sets and coverage, data consistency and reliability, and increased availability of information at the global level.
During the proposal stage, NGA advised Tenova on how to achieve the expected goals and on all of the possible technological scenarios that could enable the desired HR change.
The NGA way to Tenova’s successful HR Transformation is represented by a hybrid approach. SuccessFactors was selected by Tenova as the best-fit option for Talent Management redesign, with cloud solutions adopting best-of-breed streamlined processes as well as ensuring usability and, thus, acceptance. It also permitted a full coverage of functionalities needed by Tenova within a short implementation time. NGA took charge of implementing the following SuccessFactors modules: Employee Profile, Performance & Goals, Compensation, Succession & Development, Recruiting and Learning.
On top of this, Nakisa was chosen to improve organizational structure management while SAP Budget and Planning Consolidation (BPC) was deployed to sustain workforce planning and analytics, headcount reporting and cost analysis. The existing SAP ERP HCM environment would be leveraged as a single master data for all of the HR information at both the corporate and local levels and would be integrated with both the SuccessFactors platform and local legacy payroll systems. From a project time-scale perspective, a gradual approach was employed, beginning with a pilot phase, followed by 3 different waves for the different groups of functionalities. NGA would also provide post-project training using the “train the trainer” approach.
The BenefitsThe project go-live is well underway, with waves completed, so far, on time and within budget. The Group already estimated 10% savings on HR activities, thanks to improved quality of information and increased process efficiency. In particular, the sources of savings are:
- Real integrated HR landscape, avoiding duplicate recording of data on multiple systems, redundancy, errors, reworks and manual checks, and periodic and ad hoc requests for HR information, thereby allowing for fast execution of all HR processes
- Increased coverage of performance management and efficient process traceability at the corporate level
- Ability to perform hiring approvals directly on the system, which also permits tracking of candidate selection for current and future job opportunities in a common database
- Regular updating and alignment of organizational charts with structural changes, both at the local and corporate levels
- Elimination of main ICT local solutions
The Success Factors solutions have received, up to now, excellent feedback from users, thus facilitating change management and engagement in a new way of working. Andrea Lovato, Tenova Chief Human Resources and Information Officer, M&A, commented on the HR Platform Project outcomes: Tenova’s core asset is its people: talent management is a key process and the HR platform we developed is the foundation of it. We have now access to our employees’ skills sets career experiences and performance. We can easily share these through our company network and access our organization’s talent much more efficiently. Our HR team is accessing an accurate employee database while the management has abandoned any other HR self-developed applications, thanks to the ease of use of the SuccessFactors platform. I believe we have strongly improved our talent decision process, which has become much more fact-based while enjoying, from an IT perspective, a global, common and secure platform.
Why NGA Human Resources Tenova chose NGA as a partner to develop its HR Platform Project because of both our strong competencies in the IT field and our proven ability to deal with all HR issues. Furthermore, NGA is a recognized global supplier with the capacity to support the entire Tenova Group. Working with NGA consultants, Tenova had the chance to witness and appreciate their ability to suggest new points of view and make constructive criticisms, allowing Tenova to identify issues and weaknesses that would otherwise remain undisclosed.
