The most valuable resource of a consulting company is its staff. Taking as close a look as possible at its own human resources today and in the future is therefore also a component of success. Drees & Sommer has now expanded and improved its system landscape with noventum HR Planning powered by CoPlanner.

With the system, which has been live since January 2021, it is now possible to forecast RTD development to the day on the basis of employee master data and planned assumptions. This information is available to various stakeholders in the company in different perspectives (company, locations, teams, etc.). In addition, the system can be used to create a well-founded personnel cost forecast at any time.

The new system ensures reliability and quality of the figures as well as transparency and integration of all information carriers and recipients involved. In addition, the high degree of automation saves time and effort, as redundant data maintenance is no longer necessary.

Personnel planning for approx. 4000 employees worldwide

Drees & Sommer is the innovative partner for consulting, planning, construction and operation. As a leading European consulting, planning and project management company, the company has been supporting private and public clients and investors in all matters relating to real estate and infrastructure for 50 years. In interdisciplinary teams, around 4000 employees at 46 locations worldwide support clients from a wide range of sectors.

[cf. https://www.dreso.com/de/unternehmen]

State-of-the-art planning for HR controlling in demand

As in most companies, sound personnel cost planning at Drees & Sommer can only be achieved through the cooperation of many responsible parties. Even before the introduction of HR planning, the HR Business Partners at Drees & Sommer ensured that the outlook for all personnel movements was as well-founded as possible. Until now, these were maintained on an Excel basis with a great deal of manual effort and condensed daily or prepared for various report recipients. Colleagues in the finance department used this as a basis for their regular personnel cost forecast.

A reorganisation finally gave cause to replace this process with a software-based solution in order to reduce manual effort, simplify access to information and finally also to bundle responsibility for process and result.

The new HR forecasting system had to integrate as well as possible with the HR management solution SAP SuccessFactors, which now combines almost all HR-relevant information. The goal was to create a standard for workforce planning and personnel cost planning that would fit the requirements and yet be flexible enough to easily map possible additional customer needs.

Strong partner sought

Based on these requirements, Drees & Sommer decided to introduce noventum HR-Planning powered by CoPlanner and to implement it with the experienced team from noventum consulting. The solution has been live since January 2021 and provides the HR forecast of

Drees & Sommer for even more quality, transparency and topicality.

Map workforce developments transparently and flexibly

The core of the planning is an FTE-related development of the headcount based on existing information from SAP SuccessFactors and additional planned assumptions. These are essentially planned new hires (but also already known changes to existing employees such as changes in working hours, absences, promotions, etc. before these are mapped in the HR management system.

The FTE planning is updated daily with data from SAP SuccessFactors. New plans can be made at any time by the HR Business Partners. If a planned position is filled, it can be directly linked to the new employee in SAP SuccessFactors - when updating in noventum HR Planning powered by CoPlanner, planning assumptions are thus automatically replaced by real data. Also in comparison with budget and forecasts, the link between the once planned position and the actual filling becomes clear.

Automate and harmonise cost planning and forecasting

A preview of personnel costs is regularly generated on the basis of the current FTE development (monthly preview in Germany for 75% of the employees, once a quarter for the international workforce). Depending on the company, this is based either on the update of actual data from payroll systems (such as SAP HCM) or the development of gross wage information from SAP SuccessFactors. Employer contributions can be parameterised on a country-specific basis and calculated automatically for each calculation. For new jobs, average salaries are used, which can be maintained on the basis of various characteristics. By integrating those responsible for finance directly into the system, a common and reliable picture of the future is created quickly and efficiently.

This result of the personnel cost and FTE planning can then be transferred to the controlling system used in the group at any time. Reconciliation and audit reports ensure consistency and traceability. The standardisation of cost calculation while retaining national specifics further enhances transparency and trust.

With teamwork to a better result

Even in dynamic times, a rapidly growing company like Drees & Sommer must constantly be able to rethink itself and its future. This also applies to HR, which is responsible for the company's most important asset. A reliable picture of the future can only be drawn together by all those involved (departments, HR business partners, HR operations, finance) working together. This is exactly what happens in the newly introduced noventum HR-Planning powered by CoPlanner: the various parties involved bring their information together and thus help to map current expectations as accurately as possible. This creates more transparency and quality and still succeeds in less time and with less effort than before. This picture of the future is then also accessible to other areas that need this information for their decisions (site managers, team leaders, etc.) - in this way, the system ultimately becomes the single point of truth for personnel planning in the future.

Realistic planning with HR controlling

The clear picture of the future in Drees & Sommer's HR division relates to the further development of the workforce and thus to the early forecasting of the development of resources and costs. With the systems created, a solid foundation has been laid for many years, which can now be built on in the future, e.g. as part of further automation steps to continuously improve usability and accuracy.