Situation

With more than 16,000 employees across six states, the HR Information Systems (HRIS) team of one of the nation’s fastest growing convenience restaurant chains and a member of the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For®, had the challenging responsibility of supporting all existing HR applications, as well as the evaluation, prioritization and project management of new application development.

• Difficulty allocating resources due to variation of project importance, status and governance

“Many of our internal customers would have projects put on hold for weeks and would not realize it unless they asked our team for a status update. It was an increasing problem we were not sure how to address,” – Chief HR Officer

 

Solution

Together with our client, we identified, developed and recommended a methodology and evaluation criteria for existing and future HRIS project requests. This positioned the HRIS team as proactive owners of their customers’ ongoing success.

• Designed project-appropriate tools, techniques, templates and training
• Developed process improvement plan to enable project transparency
• Implemented Post Project Progress Forums to share realized benefits and additional areas for improvement

“Learning from those who actually manage projects allowed us to recognize the need for standardized communication and documentation between HRIS and their customers around specific project request evaluation criteria,” – Senior IT Director.

 

Results

A transformed process and set of supporting tools is in place and has poised the HRIS team for future growth. They can clearly, consistently and confidently communicate their value proposition to the broader organization.

• Created real visibility over each project’s potential ROI

 “BusinessForward has really made a difference within our HR organization. Now our internal customers are more confident in our team members and projects are turned around much faster,” –VP Human Resources.