Benefits

Through the delivery of a SAP BW Solution for the HR department, Lafarge Roofing achieved the following benefits:

• Visibility of Employee Behaviour in a globally recognized format
• Quick identification of R/3 process inconsistencies
• Ability to compare Actual with Plan data from one cube for the first time
• Information & Analysis on Resource Efficiency to enable trend spotting & anomalies
• Ability to compare Payroll & Resource Efficiency?s across numerous sites

Howard Cotterill, Lafarge Roofing IT Director was extemely happy with the project. 

When we were asked to provide information via BW on HR Payroll, we were concerned that we would have to take valuable resource away from our frontline applications (never easy to justify), or to put it at the back of the queue.  Neither option was very palatable but our two years experience with BW made us naturally cautious.

As chance would have it, we had been impressed with Bluefin?s ability to resolve some specific issues that we had been experiencing with our mainstream BW applications, so I decided to ask them whether they would be interested in developing an HR payroll cube with little or no technical input from our own staff.  That is, to come in, liaise directly with our business team, build a BW application, leave it fully reconciled and working - all for a reasonable and fixed price!

I can now say how pleased I am that Bluefin was up to the challenge - they did just what they said they would do.  We?re very pleased with the outcome and with the handover to our technical team for routine checks.

Process

Lafarge Roofing identified the need for improved HR reporting, and engaged Bluefin to propose a solution.  Bluefin proposed a one month fixed price project that delivered on time and budget.

The Payroll solution was to be used to analyse weekly paid employees, and to allow a comparison of actual versus plan data at cost centre level (plan data was not held in SAP).  An additional benefit was also sought to summarise the salary paid employees together with the weekly paid employees.  The above was done by amending the Business Content cube to:

• Split the time granularity of the datasource from Monthly to Daily,
• Create a Plan indicator field to allow for the reporting of Plan data,
• Create manual flat file feeds to populate the Plan data.

The Time & Management Solution was used to give a breakdown of Overtime & Absenteeism by employee, and was Business Content apart from the calculation of the Headcount. Queries & workbooks were then created to reconcile the data at the level of granularity required.

A Lafarge Roofing business user was heavily involved in the project, and by the end of the project was able to fully support the business with the solution.
The solution was then supported through Bluefin?s Total Customer Portal, as ad-hoc queries for enhancements and assistance arose over time.

Background

Lafarge Roofing use SAP HR to record time, and pay, workforce on a weekly basis.  Whilst the SAP R/3 solution delivered effective time capturing and payroll, it was less effective at identifying trends or anomalies within the workforce at an employee-day level.  LR wanted to compare employee data against plans, and know what their workforce were doing & costing on a weekly basis.  They also wanted this data to be in an accessible format that was understood globally.  This would quantify what was considered to be good or bad within LR HR, and so set the precedent for the future.

About Lafarge Roofing

Lafarge Roofing (formerly known as Redland Roofing Systems) is part of the Roofing Division of the worldwide Lafarge Group.  Operating in the UK and Ireland, their goal is to deliver high quality roofing solutions that perfectly match our customers? expectations.