Sodexo: At the service of its personnel
-
Industry:
Food services & facilities management
-
Employees:
427,268
-
Headquarters:
Issy-les-Moulineaux, France
Managing Human Resources and Information Systems is a difficult task, even more so when your name is SODEXO and you employ more than 100,000 people across Europe, 30,000 of them in France alone.
It is this challenge that Michel Foulon, VP Strategic Planning and Control at SODEXO decided to take on in implementing change in France and Germany.
Context and the challenges
The SODEXO Group, a leader in the restaurant and services industry, decided to align the working practices of its four subsidiary companies at the end of the 1990s. It wanted to update its systems before the year 2000, so it worked with NGA HR.
The complexity of processing Sodexo’s payroll in France
SODEXO’s payroll in France is particularly complex. This is as a result of the diverse employment statutes and contracts. These consist of:
- 32,000 salaries paid per month
- 5 x collective agreements: SNRC, SYNTEC, Hospitality, Index-linked payroll for Seconded Municipal Staff, Monaco
- Around 30 different types of employment contracts
- 7 x salary categories: active, apprentice, artist, extra…
- Employment type L122-12 resulting from restaurant buybacks. Consequently there are significant number of transactions per month: 3,900 incoming and 3,500 outgoing
First SAP payroll project before 2000
The initial payroll system, based on SAP, project was launched in 1999. As a result of the approaching deadline of 2000, SODEXO had an ambitious plan to meet the deadline. It optimized its payroll over the subsequent two years. During this initial stage SODEXO’s priority was to guarantee the internal maintenance of the application.
During the upgrade of its SAP system and contract renewal, designed to improve productivity and quality, the organization began a second phase in the strategy to:
- Reduce the maintenance budget
- Manage internal resources dedicated to non-strategic tasks (9 FTE: Full-time equivalents)
- Guarantee quality operations and constant growth, notably with regard to regulations
About Sodexo
Established in 1966, Sodexo’s headquarters are in Marseilles, France. They are a leading restaurant/catering services company. With over 28,000 sites in 80 countries they are truly a global player.
“Alongside its commercial competitiveness, one of the key factors which convinced us to choose NGA Human Resources was their leading position in SAP HR with respect to Payroll. It came down to having the best possible consultants in order to maintain a certain credibility with the internal teams, who are themselves experts in the field.”
VP Strategic Planning & Control and IS&T, Sodexo Alliance Europ
A Second Phase: Outsourcing Payroll
There were several objectives set by SODEXO:
- to reduce the total cost of salary slip production
- to standardize the calculation rules
- to implement the “Organization Management” module
- to add a decentralized time registration module for the 3,000 sites across France
- to integrate the HR / Payroll systems between the various countries
Two Possible Scenarios Presented Themselves To SODEXO:
1.To pursue the development and maintenance of the HR / Payroll applications internally with the use of existing teams.
2.To outsource payroll processing and change management (ASP mode), a model already employed by others within the group (China, Asia-PAC).
In turning to NGA Human Resources, SODEXO in the end opted for the outsourcing solution with its rapid ROI and straightforward quantification.
The project, jointly executed by SODEXO and NGA Human Resources has resulted in simplified payroll preparations and their subsequent transfer to NGA Human Resources’ external platform.
ResultsAmong the numerous benefits observed, one can cite:
- significantly reduced total cost, per salary slip
- substantial gains on shared SAP technical environments
- the complete delegation of routine tasks to NGA Human Resources, allowing SODEXO to focus on more valueadded work
Evolution of the Project
On the back of these successes, SODEXO decided to pursue the development and optimization of its HR/Payroll systems by exploiting its partnership with SAP and NGA Human Resources. For example:- the development of a HRIS for Europe (in progress)
- the implementation of a time registration module supporting various job profiles in the different locations (in progress)
- a successful initial ASP (Application Service Provider) test with SODEXO Altys-KLM in the Netherlands (6,000 salaries)
- full payroll outsourcing (BPO) in Germany (5,000 salaries)
Why NGA Human Resources
The selection process for choosing the right outsourcing partner was long and rigorous. NGA Human Resources was finally retained for four main reasons:- NGA Human Resources’ position as ‘European leader in SAP HCM’ made it the perfect partner for lending SODEXO international support
- A positive shared initial experience in Belgium enabled NGA Human Resources to demonstrate its professionalism
- NGA Human Resources tendered the most competitive commercial proposition
- NGA Human Resources’ strong spirit of partnership and enterprise finally convinced SODEXO
