Solutions in Action

Unilever Delivers Worldwide Human

Resource System with Business Objects

“The implementation
Company Overview: Unilever is a leading supplier of fast moving consumer goods in foods,
of BUSINESSOBJECTS and household care and personal product categories.
PeopleSoft is about
Challenge: Unilever continuously seeks to improve staff recruitment, retention and
improving our motivation via global staff development.
decision making and
Solution: Unilever use the BUSINESSOBJECTS™ information access, analysis and reporting tool,
putting the relevant implemented by Comset, to deliver strategic information across the business worldwide from
information in the a PeopleSoft HR application.

right place throughout Benefits: Unilever now has access to an up to date global database of 20,000 employees and is
providing improved decision making information to the business.
the business.”

P ersonnel motivation and development are increasingly important for global organisations looking
to recruit and retain staff. Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods company, is implementing
an integrated Human Resource system worldwide based on PeopleSoft, using a BUSINESSOBJECTS
application developed by Comset to deliver key information to managers throughout the company.

An increased understanding of the complexity of employee development has prompted the

implementation of integrated, global Human Resources (HR) implementations by multi-national
organisations. As Nick Kitchen, Senior Project Leader, Unilever, explains, “A business is only as good
as the people in it. Unilever must make decisions about people based on the best possible information.
The implementation of PeopleSoft and BUSINESSOBJECTS is about improving our decision making and
putting the relevant information in the right place throughout the business.” Unilever is one of the
world’s leading suppliers of fast moving consumer goods in foods, household care and personal
product categories. The company operates in over 90 countries, employs over 230,000 people and had
total sales in 1999 of £27 billion.

Integrated HR
As a global but largely decentralised organisation,
Unilever had approximately 120 different HR
systems around the world. The company decided
to adopt a common platform across the company
that delivered both transactional functionality
and management information. The company
opted for a distributed implementation of
PeopleSoft with each region having its own local
data.

A key component of Unilever’s people

development strategy is a global database
holding information on the top 20,000 people Unilever UK Headquarters
across the country. “We have a strong internal belief in management development, assessing on
a global, regional and country basis the strength of our resources,” says Kitchen.

In the past, the global database was updated haphazardly from the numerous HR systems via
electronic gateways, paper copies or limited direct access. However, as Kitchen explains, “The data had
to be provided locally but was then not often available for local use. As a result, information was not
updated regularly.” Now the global database is automatically updated from the local PeopleSoft
implementations around the world, ensuring data is input once and available rapidly to Unilever HR
and management.
 Excellent Information Delivery
Kitchen explains, “A key element of the implementation of the integrated HR solution is opening up
information outside the HR department. We wanted to provide users with a reporting tool that enabled
them to do their own querying without needing to be experts in HR. We selected BUSINESSOBJECTS
because it provides end users with the ability to build their own ad hoc queries.” He expands,
“BUSINESSOBJECTS user friendliness combined with its great flexibility makes it a very good tool for
Unilever. Additionally, we are looking to move towards web based technology in the future and
Business Objects web capabilities and strategy played an important part in our decision making
process.”

The system was developed by Unilever with Comset and empowers Unilever management with the
ability to improve staff placement and selection via extensive staff profiling features. Managers are able
to access key personnel information both whilst connected to the corporate network and remotely via
mobile dial-up access. Information is analysed using a custom built BUSINESSOBJECTS application.
Further flexibility is provided to ’Power’ users who may also perform their own
ad-hoc analyses by building their own reports using BUSINESSOBJECTS.

Philip O'Brien, Director at Comset says “Comset has worked with Unilever to deliver a powerful
business intelligence solution that allows Unilever to accurately meet the needs of the business.
Unilever required the chosen technology to be flexible, scaleable and web-enabled. Working with
BUSINESSOBJECTS meant that we did not need to compromise the user or corporate requirements to
deliver a high quality and robust solution”

Delivering Corporate Benefits

Currently Unilever has around 250 users of BUSINESSOBJECTS, with plans
to increase that significantly over the next couple of years by extending its
use beyond the global database to provide access to the local PeopleSoft
implementations. “The global database only holds ten percent of the total
staff population. By providing access to the local databases, Unilever
management will be able to report and analyse on the complete staff
population,” Kitchen says.

This rolling out of HR information to, ultimately, several thousand users

provides the company with significant benefits. “This PeopleSoft and
BUSINESSOBJECTS development gives us the opportunity to do HR
differently,” he says. “We have removed the black box that was HR and
are making the information available to people across the business so that they can do their own
searching and decision making. It puts decision making in the right place and speeds up the process.”

In the future, Unilever will look to use web technology to move towards employee self service and to
automate many day to day HR activities by adopting HR shared service centres etc. “This development
is the first element of a total web based global HR solution,” says Kitchen.

Future developments on the system include

developing a Personal Development Planning “Business Objects web capabilities and
module in PeopleSoft that will add new data in
strategy played an important part in
the form of role, skill and people profiles to that
Business Objects (UK) Ltd
currently held, accessing and exploiting historical our decision making process.”
Objects House information for analysis for the first time and
Vanwall Business Park feeding external training and demographic
information into the global database. Kitchen adds, “We will increasingly use BUSINESSOBJECTS to
Vanwall Road
integrate different sources of data – such as combining information from financial planning with people
Maidenhead planning – which will be very useful.”
Berkshire
Kitchen concludes, “The key to improving our recruitment, retention and motivation of people is better
SL6 4UB information – and even a small increase in staff retention delivers huge benefits. We have to make sure
Tel. : 01628 764600 we have the right information to make the best decisions. With this global implementation of
Fax : 01628 764701 PeopleSoft and BUSINESSOBJECTS we will be able to deliver that information.”

Email: tellmemore.uk@
businessobjects.com

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