We're proud to share our video testimonial with Wealthtime, the next-generation adviser platform which combines award-winning service with progressive tech to create a smarter platform experience. Watch the video to learn about the brilliant impact the xcd people solution and team has had for Wealthtime.
We're proud to share our video testimonial with Wealthtime, the next-generation adviser platform which combines award-winning service with progressive tech to create a smarter platform experience. Watch the video to learn about the brilliant impact the xcd people solution and team has had for Wealthtime.
“xcd has been transformational for our payroll.”
Landmark are a commercial real estate business who operate in the flex-space sector, with 30 centres across London and a further 10 across the rest of the UK. Providing flexible working spaces, Landmark is known for its exceptional client experiences.
Landmark appointed a new HR team who inherited legacy HRIS solutions which included an outsourced payroll solution. There was no integration between the legacy platforms, so the team at Landmark had a laborious payroll process each month, which required downloads, data manipulation and the re-upload of Excel spreadsheets across platforms The process was not only time-consuming, engulfing up to three weeks out of the month for a team member, but also impacted accuracy.
The incumbent solution also had issues with limited customisation and a lack of manager visibility, creating extra workload for HR already overburdened by the lack of automation.
Landmark looked at six HR platforms when seeking their new solution. The xcd people platform was chosen for four key reasons.
Firstly, the xcd platform is a Salesforce backed solution, which provided robust security and excellent synergy with the organisation’s existing Salesforce systems – such as Certinia within the finance function. This meant xcd was not only poised to make a difference for the workforce interacting with HR strategy, but also meant leaders from other departments could benefit from the compatibility that comes with being built on the same market-leading CRM.
Next, the flexibility and configurability of xcd appealed to the team at Landmark:
…was the fact xcd is a single HR and payroll solution, which allows any updates made in the HR module to flow through to Payroll, which was a “game-changer” for Landmark, slashing the admin associated with manual data transfer as well as alleviating anxieties around human error and data security.
Finally, and perhaps most significantly, with such a new HR team at Landmark, there was a lack of knowledge around some of the businesses own processes. There was a strong desire to work with a provider that would be flexible to their circumstances and willing to offer the extra effort in implementation. Henry Horsfall elaborates on this:
The resulting solution has transformed Landmark’s HR and payroll function. The team now commonly receive positive feedback on xcd’s dashboards and the solution’s ability to push important information to managers, creating a culture of visibility; the platform’s “incredibly intuitive” interface and “proper self-service”. This has reduced queries coming into the HR team, and any issues that are still being raised are backed with more information, allowing speed of resolution to be quicker.
Engagement has not only improved with managers, but also the entire workforce. One of the first tasks the team at Landmark did in their first performance review cycle with xcd was put in a mid-year performance point and set objectives Within one month Landmark had 90% of our employees with objectives in a platform that they’ve never used before, demonstrating the solutions ease of use.
Moreover, while Landmark’s previous solution had some culture-focused features such as a forum style chatroom, key employee experience touch points such as ensuring accurate pay were time-consuming and challenging, leading to employees often raising frustrating errors. Because of this, Landmark were seeking a solution that provided substantial activity and generated savings, which was highly compatible with xcd’s ethos of providing functionality which will tangibly benefit a business’ people, HR team, and ultimately the wider organisation.
Most importantly, the xcd team provided Landmark with the high-quality support they were seeking, allowing them to achieve what they needed form the platform:
“xcd is our global HRMS and therefore it underpins everything that Fosroc does with their people data making it critical to their working.”
Fosroc is a leading international manufacturer and supplier of high-performance chemicals for the construction industry, with a particular focus on concrete and cement and customers in transport, utilities and industrial.
Fosroc is a British heritage brand, which began over 80 years ago and has become the go-to name for construction companies, offering a wide range of products and brands including Nitoproof, Nitoseal, Proofex, Supercast, Conplast and Dekguard.
It serves customers through our extensive network of offices and manufacturing locations across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India, North, South and East Asia – with distributor representation across many other regions.
With 2000 employees based across the globe Fosroc needed a solution that would provide them with a single source of truth for their people data that could be accessed from anywhere.
Fosroc did not have a central system for their core HR data and processes. Storage of employee data relied on multiple and inconsistent manual processes and hard copy files, which were often not readily available. Fundamental HR processes were labour intensive and managing the accuracy, security and integrity of HR data was a challenge, which also impacted the ability to report on important KPIs such as manpower costs, headcount, turnover and absence.
For a business that sees utilisation as a key metric, making sure that the right people are working on the right projects at the right times is what drives revenue. Yet they simply did not have the right level of visibility to ensure that people and resources were being utilised correctly.
One of the reasons Fosroc selected xcd was for our user interface, which would satisfy the demands of a global workforce and provide comfort levels for different teams adapting to a new system.
The xcd platform was able to handle their global requirements while offering flexibility within the solution. This flexibility came from xcd being built on the reputable Salesforce platform. Fosroc wanted their solution to have the technical security Salesforce provides, to reassure them that their data was secure and ‘ring fenced’ which xcd’s solution allowed for.
Fosroc required a single solution for their HR data that could meet the needs of its global footprint. As well as Core HR Fosroc were looking for a solution that could manage talent acquisition and development and provide a self-service functionality.
They chose a staggered implementation process, understanding that it would be a big change for their users who previously did not have a HR system to work with.
In phase one, Fosroc implemented xcd in their head office in Dubai and at their manufacturing facility in the UK. Phase one enabled the team to learn more about the system in a live environment and ask our team questions to ensure they were maximising the utilisation of the configuration. This phase was very important as it helped grow Fosroc’s knowledge and understanding of the solution.
“We were partnered with someone who understood what we were trying to achieve, and they worked closely with us to help us realise our vision. This meant challenging some of our requests because it would have impacted ‘ease of use’ of the system which was an important objective for us.” explained Sue Scott, Global HRMS Manager.
The initial implementation saw Core HR rolled out to all sites for local HR to use, as well as self-service for employees to book leave, update personal details and view other information such as job role and compensation details. Sue Scott said, “It was great to see the data all in one place meaning we could easily report on important KPIS and share this information in our business reviews.”
Fosroc then began to roll out their recruitment and talent modules which included probation reviews and annual reviews. These modules required custom configuration and further support and input from our professional service team. The full implementation took 18 months, due to the phased approach.
One of the key improvements for Fosroc was their ability to provide key information to their management teams. They now know that all departments and offices can globally access the same data and analytics, which had not been possible previously. “xcd helped us to achieve it, and sometimes that involved challenging our existing processes and how we did things, which ultimately resulted in a better system.”
Fosroc employees are incredibly positive about their experience with using xcd. Sue Scott believes that “The solution leverages the extensive reputation of the Salesforce platform, while also enjoying the personalised touch of a smaller organisation through xcd’s solution.” She continues “We would recommend xcd to other organisations due to the functionality of the solution and the care and attention that we have received through implementation to customer support. I felt like I could influence the roadmap and that the team would listen to our opinions.”
“I have run 5 new system deployments across finance and HR systems previously and this was head and shoulders above the rest”.
Bridewell is a cyber security consultancy business with offices across the UK and now with presence in the USA.
The company celebrated their 10th anniversary this year and is one of the fastest growing cyber businesses in the UK, experiencing 50% year-on-year growth.
Bridewell currently has 200 employees and counting, with an equal number of customers, and up to 250 active projects running at any given time, with ambitions to continue growing in the UK and abroad.
Bridewell had a patchwork of disparate systems that couldn’t integrate or communicate with each other, which was wasting valuable time and putting an artificial ceiling on their ambitions.
As CFO Ruth Billen recalls:
“When I joined 12 months ago, the business was well run, but it had a lot of systems. There were separate systems for finance, expenses, and HR. The key platform within the business was Salesforce, but nothing else could talk to it”.
With all these different systems, a lot of data had to be handled manually. This meant they were slower to react and had limited trust in that data because of the number of hands and systems it had to pass through.
“We had a lot of spreadsheets, and a lot of emails being sent around with data and reports in them, instead of having that data at our fingertips.”
For a business that sees utilisation as a key metric, making sure that the right people are working on the right projects at the right times is what drives revenue. Yet they simply did not have the right level of visibility to ensure that people and resources were being utilised correctly.
“We had a lot of spreadsheets, and a lot of emails being sent around with data and reports in them, instead of having that data at our fingertips.”
Ruth Billen, CFO, Bridewell
Bridewell needed a single solution – a single source of truth. They needed to take all the data flowing through multiple different systems and house it in one place, where it could be trusted and easily accessed.
Salesforce has been the foundation, with their other systems needing to be built around it.
Working with both xcd and Certinia, Bridewell have implemented solutions that seamlessly integrate with each other and the Salesforce platform, bringing all their business-critical processes into one place.
From xcd they have implemented Core HR, performance management, and expenses. This has been combined with a full deployment from Certinia for professional services automation, transforming the way that they manage resources, data, and their people.
Partnering with both xcd and Certinia to bolster their single-platform strategy has been a smooth process, helping Bridewell move towards greater efficiency, transparency, and growth, as Ruth Billen admitted:
“I have run 5 new system deployments across finance and HR systems previously and this was head and shoulders above the rest”.
With their HR and finance teams no longer spending all their time trying to reconcile data from multiple systems, they now can add significant value, with their time instead able to go towards analysing that data and using it to make better decisions for the business.
“A single source of truth is critical. Having a platform that you can use – that everyone can use – means that you can make the right business decisions based on the right data.”
Again, with utilisation being central to everything they do, they now have a single platform that can help them manage capacity, and gain visibility of how and where their time, resources, and people are being used.
Whereas before, the HR team needed to pull holiday data from one system and input it manually into their resource management system – a task that risked human error impacting the process – now they have an integrated single solution that allows them complete visibility:
“We can make sure that people aren’t taking too much time off, or not taking enough time which could then become a problem later in the year. We can always make sure we have enough capacity for our projects and that’s critical to keeping our customers happy.”
With a ‘war for talent’ raging on in their sector, having an HR solution on Salesforce has also potential to boost their retention efforts. Bridewell can make sure that their people are getting the right opportunities to work on interesting projects and grow in their careers:
“That comes from managing our sales pipeline – what Salesforce was originally put in for.”
Bridewell has complete visibility of the projects coming up, the capacity within their teams, and can link that to the performance development targets set during performance reviews. They have much more visibility and can react much more quickly than before to make the right decisions for their business and their people. This allows them to grow their Employee Value Proposition and ensure they’re using their talent most effectively.
Most critically, Bridewell knows that they now have a solution in place that is going to help drive their continued growth. The rapid pace at which they’ve grown meant that they needed a solution that could grow with them.
"The Salesforce relationship was a key factor in our choice."
“We like to do things our way,” says Denise Moss, Human Capital Project Manager at the global asset management firm Ninety One. “We want technology that supports us but doesn’t put us in a box.”
This smart approach to technology (and their nine-year relationship with xcd) has allowed Denise and her team to build a consistent employee experience across a workforce of almost 1,200 employees, spanning multiple international locations across Europe, Africa, Asia, North American and Australia.
Ninety One has a culture that strives to give its people the freedom to express their strengths, skills and talents. Their culture is reflected in how they approach Human Capital, and the xcd system has supported them to do this through the bespoke development of xcd modules, such as learning, annual development reviews and SMCR.
Being a truly global asset manager, many of the teams within Ninety One are dispersed across multiple locations around the world, so it is not uncommon for an individual’s line manager to be located in a different country.
The xcd team has supported Ninety One to deliver a globally consistent employee experience that empowers people to ‘drive their own path’.
“The Salesforce relationship was a key factor in our choice,” says Denise Moss. “It’s a key tool for our business, so our people already used the platform every day and are familiar with how it works.”
Today they use xcd for Core HR, Payroll, Performance and Learning. As a business already well used to using Salesforce, Denise and her team have been able to customise the solution to their unique needs.
“We use technology efficiently to help us work, but very much customising so it reflects who we are and how we do things as a business,” she adds. “For instance, how we do our performance reviews is unique to us, how we approach probations, it’s all been customised on the system. Also, we use customised fields to record the data we need to keep on people for SMCR.”
When the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR) came into effect in 2019, financial services HR teams had to adapt to a new system of regulation and fresh reporting challenges.
SMCR is designed to encourage greater individual accountability in the financial sector, ensuring firms and staff clearly understand and can demonstrate where responsibility lies. But new regulations always come with new reporting headaches.
Having first identified which areas of the new process could be solved by technology, Denise and her team chose to leverage XCD. “Those parts were tied up with the organisational structure we had on the xcd platform, so there was a good match there,” says Denise Moss. “Now we’ve customised the system to record data around the different certified roles in the business. It’s an annual process that seems to have gone really well.”
“The xcd system has allowed us to build a global system that is accessible to all our employees and managers to manage their requirements all in one place. We’ve been able to configure many different modules to meet our unique requirements.”
B.Braun Medical needed a bespoke performance management system to increase productivity by 10%
Within their mission to achieve market leader status, part of the company’s growth plan included a 10% productivity boost for every employee, over 60,000 people globally.
A huge cultural change was implemented, but how would it be measured?
Crucially, they wanted a system that would conform to B. Braun’s established ways of working, minimising disruption and ensuring a smooth implementation process.
B. Braun challenged us to configure a system that would motivate employees to track and improve their own performance.
Key stakeholders within B. Braun helped us design a unique customisation of xcd’s existing HR and Payroll modules to meet their complex requirements, ensuring it mapped perfectly onto the company’s existing performance processes.
B. Braun’s Learning and Development Manager Nicola Childs says:
“We wanted something easy to use, that wouldn’t get in the way of the conversation but would be sophisticated enough to deliver the complex 360° measurements we needed – xcd does just that. Their experience in performance management also helped us define our system requirements and their pragmatic approach ensured we got the solution we needed.”
Innovative elements included:
As rollout proceeds to the firm’s global workforce, B. Braun’s employees are now being incentivised to take direct control of their own performance management, tracking their success, progression and objective-achievement in real time.
Matthew Metcalfe, Business Technology Manager at B. Braun, says:
“We were shocked by the lack of configurability on offer from most suppliers. Fortunately, xcd provided the flexibility we needed, a totally bespoke system, tailored to fit our specific business requirements.”
XCD implemented a single solution to provide real time HR information at the touch of a button for independent financial advice firm, Chase de Vere.
Chase de Vere is an award winning national firm delivering financial advice to individuals and businesses. With over 200 highly qualified independent financial advisers, the organisation has 450 employees across 13 sites, with offices based in major cities and key financial centres, and advisors covering the whole of the UK.
Chase de Vere’s internal HR software was 10 years old and the team wanted to replace it and incorporate payroll into the new system.
They were working with three standalone systems – holiday and absence, personnel and payroll – and wanted to streamline the way HR worked without losing any of the functionality.
Employee self-service was high on the wish list too, as it made sense for the way the business operated. As a growing business, Chase de Vere wanted a high functioning HR solution that would help them meet ambitious goals.
The xcd team initially configured the core HR product to get self-service up and running and reintroduce HR into the business. This was followed with the introduction of payroll, to offer one complete single HR and Payroll solution.
Gillian Horley, HR Systems and Informations Officer, Chase de Vere said:
“Everything you would traditionally have within a paper based employee file can now be contained within the one system. I’ve got the ability to store documents and correspondence, everything is in one place. That’s the advantage, and it’s the same for our employees. They have self-service access so they can also look at previous performance appraisals themselves.”
Gillian added:
“We have our HR policies and procedures saved within the system so they can see all of this in one place. This includes standard internal forms, any kind of forms they might need to notify us of things; they’re all in the system. As for team charts and organisational charts, I used to have to do them in PowerPoint and update them all the time, now it’s just automatic.“
Efficiency, control and visibility have been achieved within Chase de Vere.
Real time HR information is available at the touch of a button to those who require it, and the system can grow to support Chase de Vere’s longer term goals.
Sanden were spending huge amounts of time manually managing their people data, compiling reports by hand, and responding to personnel admin requests.
The Sanden Group is a worldwide specialist in heating and cooling technologies. Sanden operates in 23 countries across Europe, America, Asia and Australia through 59 subsidiaries.
Sanden needed to improve its HR function. They were managing employee data with spreadsheets, and absence and performance management with Lotus notes. It was agreed that they needed a self-service HR system that was multi-language and multi-currency so was able to cater for it’s entire operation.
The xcd team worked closely with Sanden to tailor the solution to fit their exact requirements.
The implementation was done incrementally, starting with absence and performance management. Training and recruitment tools followed, and finally succession planning, e-learning, reward statements and automated reporting were added to complete the solution.
Samantha Webb, HR Manager at Sanden Group said:
“We couldn’t develop any further with the tools we had. Although we did have elements of self-service we wanted to move HR to the next level and knew that HR software was the way to do so. However, the need for multi-currency and multi-language limited our options.
“Doing a deep dive into similar companies which did offer multi-languages showed up their limitations. Other firms said ‘we can do French and German but that’s all. In the end we just felt xcd was a true HR system written by HR people, rather than a finance payroll system with a bit of HR added on to it. That is why we chose xcd.”
Sander quickly experienced simpler reporting, improved self-service among their people and clear visibility for managers.
Samantha Webb added:
“People within the business are saying it’s a lot simpler, it looks a lot better, and it’s a lot slicker.
“It’s a lot more joined up for our Director of Finance. He gets the bigger picture of everything that’s going on in Europe: recruitment, everything. He can get his hands on data where he couldn’t before – he’d have to ask a separate unit to create something, but now he can get it together and coordinate it.
“We can also give managers the information that they want. Now we’ve got our hands on all this data with reporting it helps us define our HR strategy as a department. Once we get deeper into clever reporting it’s going to add even more value to management. The value of HR will be clearer too. So much of it is quantifiable once you have the data.
“HR will become a true business partner in the company, a real support to help manage team performance and all sorts of training and development.”
The xcd solution supports 14 sites across Sanden International Europe.
As a result of rapid growth due to acquisition, Enstar Group housed a plethora of systems and paper-based processes, resulting in no common way of working and no central source of the truth.
Enstar is a leading global insurance group that provides innovative capital release solutions and live specialty underwriting capabilities. With over 1200 employees worldwide, they are the industry’s largest stand-alone run-off consolidator.
As a result of rapid growth due to acquisition, Enstar housed a plethora of systems and paper-based processes, resulting in no common way of working and no central source of the truth. Comprising of four independent regions spanning 22 countries, the group was facing a lack of standardisation and was looking to adopt a new way of working.
It was agreed that a single HR system would overcome these challenges, centralising all processes and data globally, and automating time-consuming processes.
Following a thorough research and procurement process, xcd were selected due to their capabilities to meet the complex requirements of Enstar, and their ability to truly understand organisational challenges and develop the solution to meet these needs.
“It was imperative the chosen solution could cope with our international spread, with the ability to configure the different terms and conditions and leave rules etc. There are so many different processes, we needed a robust and configurable system as well as a team offering high levels of support.”
Michelle Slevin, Group Head of HR
The xcd team launched the core HR product to HR users, ensuring they were comfortable with the solution prior to rolling it out to the remaining 1200 users worldwide. Following this, new on-boarding and appraisal processes were introduced via the system. These processes were vital to support appropriate and constructive conversations between line managers and their staff, instead of just completing a ‘form-filling’ exercise. The automatic notifications meant that people could focus their energies on performance conversations, which had a huge impact on results.
A new salary review process was also introduced. Previously, everything was manual, but the system allowed Enstar to create a seamless process, ensuring budgets were adhered to, confidentiality was improved, and all data was real-time and accurate.
“Working with xcd has allowed us to create a system that was heavily tailored to our current and future needs. Previously we struggled to get a real-time view of our data globally and our processes varied between regions. Now our regional HR teams are working together much more closely and have agreed corporate processes. We also have more timely and comprehensive HR dashboard reporting. The xcd team were very willing to substantially tailor the system to deliver on our requirements, which has enabled us to increase engagement and motivation across the organisation.”
Matthew Blair, Project Manager at Enstar
Enstar were able to identify clear ROI from the xcd system in a number of different areas, and are constantly uncovering additional benefits, such as:
"Having xcd is saving us several hours a week in terms of admin, and that quickly adds up."
Founded over 40 years’ ago, GL Assessment is a leading provider of educational assessments to schools, working with schools in over 100 countries worldwide. Its mission is to help every child realise their full potential by providing teachers with an accurate measure of their abilities and attainment, and identifying any barriers to learning that may have. It has a diverse workforce, with staff based in the UK, the US, Australia and the UAE.
Many of the current HR team at GL Assessment found that they inherited a system which they did not have control over. Relying on their vendor to process and manage both payroll and HR, there was limited scope for them to manage the systems themselves, and there was a growing frustration with the mistakes and the lack of care provided by the incumbent solution.
For the HR Systems and Development Lead at GL Assessment, this was a problem that needed to be rectified. “We just felt that with the functionality of the HR system, there was no self-service; there just wasn’t anything that a manager could do or see or change. So, we just felt we wanted something more modern. More user-friendly.”
With the previous solution, GL Assessment was also struggling with limited reporting functionality that made it a challenge to gain any valuable data or insight from their HR processes.
Beyond that, there was also a need for support with recruitment.
“We had no system for recruitment,” says a member of the HR team, “We managed everything through forms that had to be emailed around for all the stakeholders to sign.”
What GL Assessment needed was something that would allow it to bring both HR and Payroll in-house, make it easier for managers and staff to access the information they needed, keep track of absences, and allow for quick and clear reporting on this important data. Also requiring something that could help the team manage recruitment, GL Assessment came to the CIPD Festival of Work hoping to find a solution that could meet their requirements.
“At the Festival of Work, we saw many different stands and many different providers. Many that we looked at could do HR perfectly well, but we weren’t confident that they could also handle payroll as effectively,” admits the HR Systems and Development Lead, “When we found xcd, it looked great, it had the functionality we needed for employees and managers. It ticked all our boxes in terms of HR, payroll, and the support provided”.
Although GL Assessment was not on the Salesforce platform, the fact that the xcd solution was built on the platform gave them a sense of assurance according to one source – “the fact that it was built on Salesforce, an internationally renowned system and platform, just made us feel it was a safer bet”.
“The fact that it was built on Salesforce, an internationally renowned system and platform, just made us feel it was a safer bet”
With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing a remote implementation, the process was still a successful one, with GL Assessment able to go live with xcd HR in early 2021 and payroll following in the spring of the same year.
Now able to leverage the data and reporting elements of the xcd employee relationship management solution, everything is in one place, significantly reducing the time and administrative overheads of the HR process.
The reporting functionality has transformed the way that the team operates, allowing them to access data quickly and efficiently and ensuring that key stakeholders have all the information they need.
As one member of the team says: “I’ve created so many different reports, all available at the click of a button. It’s really sped up the process because we’re not having to manage multiple spreadsheets or trawl through emails to find what we need”.
With the use of data around recruitment, GL Assessment has been able to change their approach to the hiring process, tracking the cost and time to hire, and the ROI of recruitment for specific roles. Something that had previously been impossible for them to do.
In terms of employee engagement, staff can now access their own records, and now able to see the information that is most relevant to them, they are more engaged, and crucially, require less support from HR to answer questions about basic information.
“It’s just so much more intuitive for both employees and managers, people are able to find the information they need that’s relevant to them, so there’s fewer and fewer queries coming into the HR team”, adds a member of the HR team, “Having xcd is saving us several hours a week in terms of admin, and that quickly adds up.”
“It’s just so much more intuitive for both employees and managers, people are able to find the information they need that’s relevant to them, so there’s fewer and fewer queries coming into the HR team”