Staff requirements and inventory planning at the noventum HR Analytics Data Mart at LBS West

Good resource planning, especially in large companies, requires a good interaction of different departments and the consolidation of data from different systems. Without automatism, this means recurring large expenditures. A single point of truth for the data as well as an application that brings together information from different areas is the necessary basis for integrated planning and reporting. LBS Westdeutsche Landesbausparkasse relies on the standards of noventum HR-Planning and noventum HR-Analytics for its future personnel data use in order to have data consistent and universally usable at all times.

Long-term resource planning with less effort

With over 600 employees, LBS Westdeutsche Landesbausparkasse serves around 1.9 million customers in construction and real estate financing. Good support requires the right staff and the right processes. In order to optimally match the annual headcount to the requirements that arise, LBS plans its long-term personnel requirements in customer business on a process-based basis.

Until now, staff requirements planning has been carried out using self-developed workflows and solutions based on various systems. The associated coordination expenses and dependencies now required a new solution for long-term planning.

The new long-term planning should be based on a modern, standardised tool that reduces the effort for data preparation and data management and that integrates ideally into the existing landscape.

Integrated planning with noventum HR-Planning

LBS West finally chose noventum HR-Planning. The solution, based on the CPM software CoPlanner, already has the necessary tools for personnel requirements and workforce planning in its standard version, which were adapted to the processes and requirements of LBS West during the implementation.

Demand planning in the customer area is quantity-based on the basis of processes. The processes relevant to customer service are forecast in terms of quantity on the basis of experience and expectations for the future using rates of change, and the time required for this is also recorded in minutes. From these expectations as well as planned fixed values (e.g. in administration), a requirement plan is determined for each department and function, which then serves as the basis for inventory planning. In the process, surcharges for various general expenses and requirements that depend on inventory are also taken into account.

In inventory planning, the information available in the HR management system Persis is used to calculate personnel development in the long term. On the basis of the requirements data, new hires and other changes are now planned in order to be able to optimally meet the requirements.

The integration of noventum HR-Planning with noventum HR-Analytics, which was also introduced, ensures that information is available universally and consistently.

Using HR-Analytics as data centre

The HR Analytics Data Mart, also implemented by noventum, links all relevant data and forms the basis for planning and reporting. The central employee master data and transaction data from the HR management system Persis are processed and additional transaction and quantity data from the SAS-based Enterprise Data Warehouse is included. In the project, the data sources were merged and customer-specific data structures were taken into account in data management.

The data from the source systems are merged and integrated through uniform and automated processing procedures, and the error-prone and redundant preparation mechanisms are replaced. Thus, the harmonised HR-Analytics data room with all relevant key figures in the sense of a central and homogeneous single-point-of-truth stands as a flexible and expandable database.

The bi-directional interface to the planning system enables the use of the inventory data as a basis for planning as well as the use of the planning results for plan/actual comparisons in dashboards, standard reports or for ad-hoc reporting.

Integration, transparency and future-proof resource planning

Following the successful productive implementation, LBS West now not only has a modern and future-proof system for the long-term planning of personnel requirements and staffing levels, but has also been able to significantly minimise the effort required for the process. By means of automated interfaces, the reduction of manual coordination and the integration of all functionalities in one tool, handling and transparency were significantly improved. Even users who rarely work with the system find their way around quickly. All relevant regulatory requirements are met by using standardised data processing.

With just a few clicks, a new scenario can now be created and a new extrapolation with current data carried out, in which measures can then be easily recorded and their effects immediately evaluated.

The HR Analytics Data Mart also provides new insights into job planning information, which can be used as a basis for future decisions. In the future, other HR-relevant topics can also be easily mapped in the system in order to optimally support corporate decisions at all times.