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System Consolidation in
the Cloud Enables Rapid
Growth
Fast-Growing Metal Finishing Company Puts HR
System in the Cloud
By Holger Mueller
Vice President and Principal Analyst
Content Editor: R Ray Wang
Copy Editor: Maria Shao
Pioneer was on a rapid expansion path and needed an HR product that could scale for the
growing employee population. The company operates on a 24 x 5 shift system, with complex
payroll and time rules that are typical for the manufacturing industry.
In 2012, Pioneer executives realized that their current HR solution, a mainframe-based
product operated by a service bureau provider, was not the right fit for the enterprises
needs. As often in these cases, awareness of the challenge first arose from a lack of
reporting capability in the solution.
Pioneer grew concerned about getting information out of its previous HR system. If
executives and managers needed enhanced or modified reports, Pioneer always had to go
back to the vendor, often negotiate the cost of the change and then wait for weeks for the
vendor to make the changes. For a rapidly expanding enterprise, this clearly was not a
satisfying solution as the company had to make quick decisions around acquisition
opportunities that often featured labor costs considerations.
By the end of 2012, Pioneer executives started to look for a replacement HR system. In a
very fast-paced selection process, the company narrowed the shortlist to three vendors in
the first quarter of 2013 and ultimately decided on Kronos.
The main reasons for the decision to make Kronos the Pioneer HR system of the future was
the vendors extensive experience in Time and Labor Management. Pioneer was already
running Kronos clocks, so there were synergies on the time capture side. But the company
was also interested in putting run time and attendance processes together with a Core HR
and Payroll system, which Kronos offered. With the price also being right, Pioneer embarked
on a very fast implementation process that saw the company go live on Kronos Workforce
Ready in only three months.
Workforce Ready also appealed to Pioneer since the product runs as a Software-as-aService (SaaS) product. Pioneer only has a very small IT team that was happy to reduce its
workload and not have to deal with more complex networking and security issues that had
to be taken care of when working with the previous
Labor management is a
vendor.
critical part of the Pioneer
business and Kronos makes
Today, Pioneer uses Kronos Workforce Ready for core
that process easy.
HR, Payroll, Employee and Manager Self-Service as well
as Time and Labor Management. Time capture and
Brad Nycz, Director of HR
management play crucial roles for Pioneer as close to
Pioneer Metal Finishing
90 percent of the companys employees are hourly
workers.
What sets Pioneers project apart is the very rapid implementation process, which took just
under three months. Given the large scope of the system, this was truly remarkable.
Moreover, the implementation team used no IT resources during the implementation, just
a few Kronos professional services professionals. The implementation project was
championed by the HR director.
Ironically, the largest obstacle and most time-consuming element of the implementation
process was the transfer of data from the previous vendor to Kronos.
The other challenge was that at the time of the implementation, Kronos did not provide a
test system. So HR professionals took extra caution when creating data to familiarize
themselves with the new HR system.
Finally, reporting is now an easy task, with all relevant HR data in a single system and the
Kronos reporting capabilities allowing the Pioneer professionals to create, modify and
enhance these by themselves.
Originally, Pioneer was going to conduct a formal ROI review of the system selection and
implementation. During the RFP phase, though, it became clear that Kronos would allow
Pioneer to run its system at half the operating cost of the previous vendor, while roughly
doubling the business functionality at Pioneers disposal. When the executives realized
during the implementation that this was truly the case, they abandoned any formal ROI
projects as it was a no brainer decision for the enterprise.
Today, Pioneer has a scalable HR solution that allows it to keep pace with the fast corporate
expansion. Whenever the company acquires another operation, the HR department simply
hires the new Pioneer employees through the HR modules recruiting functionality, which
Pioneer recently added to its functional footprint. That both system and processes scale was
evident when Pioneer made its largest acquisition to date, adding 300 new employees. All
of them were live in the Kronos system on Day 1 of joining the company.
Pioneer also turned on the smartphone access for the HR system, as most of its employees
are always on the go and dont sit down at a workplace computer. Even without training,
employees immediately started to expand their use of the system. For instance, the
company had not planned for a high adoption of direct deposit, but direct deposit of
paychecks jumped 20 percent in the first week of availability in the Kronos system.
Employees just saw the functionality and entered the information. This served as a powerful
showcase for a modern HR system that enables positive side effects.
Moreover, Pioneer operates on a single integrated HR system, which provides one version
of the truth. The days of contradictory information across different systems is a challenge
of the past. Additionally, the company can now handle its reporting requirements easily, as
it has access to its own data and the Kronos reporting tools are flexible enough to allow end
users in the business to extend and run them.
The Pioneer Metal Finishing case study has four important takeaways.
From an implementation perspective, one of the key lessons learned is to allocate ample
time for data migration. If the migration is from a service bureau type of offering, then it is
key to start that process sooner than later. Moreover, it is helpful to directly learn from
another customer who has successfully implemented the same product with a similar scope.
Having access to their practitioners experience can be very valuable and potentially even
more reduce implementation time frames.
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