How Gloucestershire Council modernised employee contracts with Floe

How Gloucestershire County Council modernised employee contract generation with SAP SuccessFactors and Floe

Gloucestershire County Council has implemented Floe to handle the generation of Employee Contracts based on data from SAP Success Factors Employee Central. 

This dynamic solution enables the Council to support multiple business units for the automatic generation of key documentation for new starter and contract change processes.

Integration solution for HCM documentation generation

Easy User Adoption

99.9% Success Rate

Opportunity

Gloucestershire County Council (GCC) decided to migrate its core finance and HR systems from SAP ECC to the combination of SAP S/4HANA and SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central.

Historically, GCC used Varo to generate ‘Statement of Particulars’ (SOPs), based on data stored in the employee records. The SOP details employee contractual detail and allowances specific to the employee or position.

GCC asked Arch to provide a solution for SOP generation for the new system, meeting a number of complex requirements to support different business units including Schools and the Fire Service.

The two main scenarios in which SOPs need to be generated are ‘new starter’ and ‘contract change’, as a new SOP is always required.  The solution needed to support:

  • SOP template management;
  • SOP generation into PDF;
  • Send SOP by email;
  • Preview SOP before send;
  • Synchronous send on generation;
  • Storage before send to support approval processes;
  • Mass SOP generation, with SOPs issued in multiple emails;
  • Mass SOP generation, with SOPs merged into a singe PDF document for printing;
  • Reporting on historic SOP generation.

This type of functionality is not available or possible in the SuccessFactors solution.

“The standard document generation available in SAP SuccessFactors could not meet our requirements. We needed something more flexible that could handle complex templates, draw data from Employee Central and support both automatic and manual generation. Floe provided that capability.”

Callum Parker

Operations and Technology Manager, Gloucestershire County Council

Solution

Floe and Renda.io

The new solution is delivered by Floe, which is installed on S/4HANA, and a custom Fiori app, hosted on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), which was developed by HCL.

The SOP template is managed in Floe Designer, which contains logic to show or hide sections and components of the SOP dynamically, based on the data from SuccessFactors. This includes Logos, Headings, URL links, and texts specific to different employee grades within different business units.  In this way, a single template supports all the different SOP requirements.

Floe is also used to manage the content of the email sent with the SOP as an attachment, which provides flexibility in what data from the SOP is included in the subject and body of the email.

The data is staged in S/4HANA using Varo, to support those processes where the final email is triggered after approval instead of synchronously.  This means that the Varo Dashboard can be used to track historical requests and every SOP output.

When a PDF is required it is generated using Renda.io

The custom application built by HCL delivers the business user interface:  It enables users to request an SOP to be generated, view the preview, and send for approval if required.  The app pulls data from SuccessFactors, then calls Floe for all SOP generation and processing.

Using a range of products as building blocks enabled the amount of custom code required to be very small, provided pre-delivered audit trail and reporting capabilities, and delivered a standard approach for future maintenance.

“The technical implementation of Floe and the renda.io microservice was straightforward, requiring minimal support beyond the comprehensive documentation provided by Arch. This enabled a smooth deployment and allowed us to realise the benefits of the solution quickly”

Kevin Norris

Strategic & Operational Service Manager, Gloucestershire County Council

Working with Arch: Reliable and Responsive

GCC has worked with Arch since 2010, in the design and development of many forms processes.   For the S/4HANA & SuccessFactors implementation project, Arch worked closely with HCL, ensuring that changing requirements and timelines were met quickly and easily.

Brought into the project quite late, Arch was challenged to design and deliver the SOP solution in a very short frame.

“Our existing relationship with Arch gave us confidence that they would understand our needs. They gathered the requirements quickly and delivered the solution with minimal input or follow-up required from us.” – Callum Parker, Operations and Technology Manager, Gloucestershire County Council

Impact

High Success Rate

In the first four months after go-live, Floe has generated SOPs with a 99.9% success rate.  This was a time of enormous system change, and users being asked to work in different ways.

“In a period of considerable change, it has been reassuring to have a solution that works so reliably. The >99.9% success rate reflects our experience since go-live, with very few problems reported and large volumes of documents generated quickly.”

Callum Parker

Operations and Technology Manager, Gloucestershire County Council

Ease of Adoption

The design of the SOP is a close match to the previous design, that was generated using Varo and Adobe Document Services.  For users receiving SOPs, the documents look and feel very similar to the old versions, and now they are distributed using a more user-friendly email.

“Although the process behind the document has changed considerably, the end result is familiar to users. Keeping the SOP close to the previous design, while making the PDF and accompanying email easier to use, has helped make the transition much more straightforward.”

Callum Parker

Operations and Technology Manager, Gloucestershire County Council