Nobilia starting to transition personnel management processes over to PERSIS HRM standard software

Growth, mergers, and other large changes quite often present challenging tasks to HR departments. Frequently, the requirements posed to modern personnel management processes as well as to analysis and planning functionalities can no longer be accomplished by simple means. The nobilia company was faced with such as challenge as well. Traditionally, working with Excel, various databases, and e-mail, HR management established a technologically state-of-the-art foundation for its work with the PERSIS personnel management software. With their extensive PERSIS know-how, the HR management consultants of noventum consulting were able to decisively contribute to the project’s design.

Persis job applicant management as a calling card of modern HR work

The nobilia company is leading among fitted kitchen manufacturers in Europe. With more than 70 years of experience, currently approx. 3,300 employees, and sales revenues of EUR 1,126 million, nobilia is representative of “Quality Made in Germany” and of an employee-oriented business culture. The company is operating two plants in Verl, East-Westphalia, and another plant in Saarlouis – in the German state of Saarland – is currently under construction and is anticipated to employ a staff of more than 1,000.

In this growth situation, a powerful overall HR software solution was to make HR management sustainable. Within 6 weeks already, as the first component, the job applicant management already had to be integrated and mapped in a unified software environment. That is a competitive challenge for such a short project duration.

The specific tasks:

• The job applicant management tool from the Persis software package was to be implemented as the HR management product. 
• Going along with the implementation of the software was the relaunch of the nobilia website. The Persis software was to be matched to the website’s new design.
• The whole recruitment process was to be mapped in Persis. This includes the displaying of job advertisements, the establishing of a job application platform to which applicants can upload their documents, displaying the status of job applications within the system for HR management as well as the assessment of the different specialist departments during file review and job interviews.

Persis software maps existing systems and processes

The good adaptability of Persis to existing processes and systems proved to be a very big advantage. As a result, nobilia HR management did not have to familiarise itself with a new recruiting process. The company’s requirements regarding the job application flow were mapped in Persis unchanged: internally utilised terminology, status messages, processing lists of specialist departments, as well as the options for specialist departments to access the system. All relevant data and information are pulled together in Persis; its processing in the fitting design was the task of the agency also responsible for the website relaunch.

Data protection priority in both implementation project and operation

Since data protection is an important topic, especially for HR software, the project staff involved was informed about these aspects in detail.

The excellent interaction of all departments and service providers in the project provided sustainable support for sensibly adhering to all requirements. The nobilia HR department was both customer and driver of the project, all in one. Right from the start, the nobilia IT department was centrally involved in the implementation of the new software. The agency involved in the project took care of the website layout and the data handling. During the software implementation, one project manager, each, from nobilia and from noventum worked hand in hand to be able to optimally coordinate the respective task packages. In addition, noventum provided the system architect, was responsible for training the employees, and accompanied specialised support and consulting in the configuration of the system.

From a technical perspective, the implementation of Persis did not pose an unusual challenge; the software can be implemented in existing web environments without a lot of effort. Persis makes data available as XML files which can be read well by all content management systems. The IT department had to install the system, open up ports, provide e-mail connections, and ensure that the firewall policies were complied with in the process.

The Persis HR software works with internal and external system components that are separated from one another. Initially, job applicants only have access to the external system and enter their personal data there. The external system transmits the data to the internal system. This way, Persis ensures a higher degree of data protection.

The tight schedule was one big challenge for the project management, with the coordination between the web agency, noventum and nobilia being the second. On-time for the relaunch of the nobilia website, which feature the new corporate design and new functionalities, ultimately everything fell into place step-by-step very well, and all systems were active at the desired point in time.

Perspectives

Subsequent to the successful completion of the project, Michael Klein, head of human resources and member of the executive management team, voiced his utmost satisfaction: “When one is under considerable pressure to succeed, it is great to be able to work together with professionals! With their specialised know-how and knowledge gained from experience, our project success was guaranteed.” noventum consultant Steffen Kummer immediately returned the compliment to the customer: “Not least, nobilia is owing the project’s success to its own employees. Quick decisions and short communication paths have made the coordination a lot easier.”

Following the successful Persis software implementation, noventum will be working for nobilia also in the future. At present, a contract management system is being established that makes it possible to generate contracts from within Persis with all activities (e.g. mail-merge templates) via data that already exists in the system. In light of the company’s expansion, the conceptualisation for the implementation of a digital personnel file is another future project.