Alfred Karcher SE & Co. (Karcher), a global manufacturer and marketer of resource-conserving cleaning equipment and solutions, has revamped its HR with SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) Suite — moving away from on-premise systems to harness the power of the cloud.
With a product line that ranges from household pressure washers and vacuum cleaners to industrial cleaners and street sweepers, Karcher continues to be a market leader in the industry by focusing on quality and innovation to accelerate business growth. According to the company’s annual report in 2020, its turnover increased significantly compared to the previous record year with Germany, Western and Eastern Europe as a whole, China, Japan, and Australia among the markets with remarkable growth rates.
On the other hand, the family-owned enterprise has also maintained its strong belief in the company’s “special responsibility” for its people, which goes all the way back to its establishment in 1935. Emphasising that employees are at the core of the company’s success, Florence Favrot, Manager of HR Technology and Digitalisation at Karcher, said that they put great value on providing a working environment that empowers the staff to realise their full potential.
Transforming HR with SAP SuccessFactors HXM Solutions
In a bid to help achieve its business objectives and deliver a desirable workplace experience for employees, Karcher has implemented SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite to transition from manual processes and disparate on-premise applications to a digitalised, cloud-based HR platform. Explaining why the company selected SAP’s HR solutions, Favrot said that the SAP SuccessFactors portfolio is in line with Karcher’s overall cloud strategy and has checked all of their criteria with regards to functionality.
“Across the business, we are moving away from on-premise systems to take advantage of the flexibility and cost-efficiency of cloud computing,” Favrot remarked.
Currently, Karcher employs over 14,500 people in 73 countries. In 2018, the company embarked on its HR modernisation project which covered over 90{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} of the workforce, accounting for 12,000 employees in 27 countries. The following solutions were used in the program: SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting, SAP SuccessFactors Learning, SAP SuccessFactors Succession & Development, and SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals.
“With the SAP SuccessFactors solutions, employees benefit from the convenience and simplicity of self-service HR – enhancing the workplace experience and improving access to development opportunities Meanwhile, managers can recruit, develop, and retain the right talent to support the business as we continue to innovate and grow,” Favrot further said.
Partnering with PwC for Various Projects
In addition, Karcher also recently implemented SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central which intends to support intelligent services, offer smart automation, and improve HR workflows across business functions. The solution now serves as the company’s global unified platform for HR data. With the help of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as its implementation partner, the core HR solution has been deployed to all 67 countries that were already leveraging other SAP SuccessFactors products.
In collaboration with PwC, Karcher also developed an interface between SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and an on-premise solution that was used in Germany at the time of the remote implementation. Following the successful project, the company’s HR technology is now hosted in a hyper scale environment to ensure maximum uptime and scalability for employees.
Using SAP SuccessFactors to drive growth and overall enterprise value has long been a key component of PwC’s HR transformation practice, which takes a comprehensive approach to talent management. It can be noted that Karcher also partnered with the professional services firm to deploy the SAP Analytics Cloud solution to boost visibility and participation in planning models across the entire organisation, from headquarters to subsidiaries.
