Bringing people and data together for a global engineering firm.
TLWR? Here’s a summary:
• Maccaferri, an international engineering firm, needed a unified HR system to manage their globally distributed workforce across 130 countries.
• Cezanne’s cloud-based HR system helped centralise HR processes, improving visibility, workforce planning, and data security while accommodating diverse local requirements.
• The system’s global functionality, including multilingual support and GDPR compliance, enabled better management and strategic HR initiatives, complemented by payroll outsourcing for their Italian offices.
Maccaferri is an international leader in the design and development of innovative and sustainable solutions for civil and environmental engineering. Founded over 140 years ago and headquartered in the historic Italian city of Bologna, they operate in 130 countries and employ over 3,000 people globally.
In this eye-opening case study, we talk to Michela Carroli – HR Business Partner Corporate & Group Talent Acquisition Manager at Maccaferri – about how the introduction of Cezanne HR has helped the organisation better manage their employees and their data in multiple locations seamlessly.
A more holistic approach to workforce management
“We’re an international organisation. As a result, we have a widely-distributed and diverse workforce who work in a variety of locations across the globe.” Says Michela. “We’d been going through a period or reorganisation and consolidation; but, also undertaking preparation for sustained growth. Because of these changes, we felt we needed to take a more holistic view of the business, and share best HR practices across the entire global workforce.”
Michela went onto say that “It may seem trivial, but when it comes to managing a workforce as widely-distributed as ours, the different locations and cost centres we operate in can become difficult to manage effectively if you don’t have a system with the features to support you. It can also become all-too-easy to lose sight of the organisational structure of your business.”
From an operational point of view, this translated into the need for a global HR system that would allow for the management of HR data and fundamental workforce processes in a single HR platform.
The platform would also need to act as a centralised information hub that key stakeholders – from the global HR managers to the local HR administrators – could find important information necessary for daily workforce management, as well as support their efforts to focus on more strategic long-term HR strategies.
Secure global functionality
Luckily for Maccaferri, Cezanne’s HR software is a global cloud-based HR solution that’s already trusted by thousands of HR professionals around the world. Its class-leading flexibility includes configurations for multiple languages, currencies and cost centres, as well as local HR permissions and approval flows.
Along with offering all the functionality and features needed to manage a global workforce, its secure and robust architecture is GDPR compliant, and hosted on Amazon’s AWS European Union data centres – a world-leading and ultra-secure Cloud Infrastructure as a Service provider. Both these aspects were highly valued by Michela and Maccaferri.
“We’re very happy with the flexibility of the Cezanne HR system and the many language options available to us.” Confirmed Michela. “Cezanne HR has allowed us to replace the existing disjointed local processes we used to have, with a coherent centrally-managed approach that allows us to have an overview of our entire workforce – all without neglecting security and data protection, which is of primary importance to us.”
Helping HR see a bigger picture
One of Maccaferri’s main priorities was to ensure they could have better visibility of the company’s entire workforce. This would allow for better workforce planning and allow HR to focus on more strategic activities, such as career and succession planning.
Cezanne HR helps do exactly that by providing a complete global overview of the company’s organisational structures, segmented by employee roles and responsibilities. Through the centralisation of important workforce data, it also became possible for Maccaferri to effectively monitor and report on fundamental workforce KPIs such as headcount, turnover and diversity and inclusion.
Support for local offices with a global HR partner
Alongside a software that had global capabilities, Maccaferri was looking for an experienced HR partner that could assist with the challenges that result from having multiple offices with differing local operating requirements; such as offices with unusual opening hours, specific national regulations, local holidays and different currencies.
Maccaferri discovered that with Cezanne, they had the dedicated support of an incredibly competent and experienced team who were well-prepared for the specific needs of their Italian offices, to which it has also entrusted – through its partner Wospee – the outsourcing of their payroll processing.
However, the most valued part of the Cezanne service for Maccaferri was the new joined up approach their HR software provided: software that covered global needs of their HR teams and workforce, complemented by dedicated support for multilingual customers, and verticalisation in Italy thanks to Wospee with dedicated consultants for each area of expertise.
Michela confirmed that “With the addition of the managed payroll processing service, we’re now able to manage the entire flow of HR data, from initial employee data to payroll slips. We’re really very happy.”
