Kopejsko and his team were looking for an Enterprise-Content-Management (ECM) solution, to plan and implement the compensation model with its components incentive, merit increase and individual salary increase (ISI), which was finally launched in 2014. The system-based planning, calculation and reporting should be standardized cross-divisional for all 40 countries by means of the ECM solution. Furthermore, Benteler wanted to obtain scale effects, and therefore create transparency, in order to reduce the administrative effort, improve data quality and quicker responses. At this time other divisions already had SAP ERP HCM in use, so the compensation management solution by SAP was preferred. „In addition, it was hard to find a supplier, who had the neccessary knowledge and the experience in international projects, as is requested by a project, as ours“, IT Business Application Architect Ralf Landgraf, who was responsible for the IT coordination, states. Therefore, Benteler applied directly to SAP, in order to find qualified support for their project. After a recommendation through the software developing enterprise and a subsequent selection process, Benteler found the partner, who met the industrial company´s expectations, in projekt0708.
The challenge was to globally implement the SAP ECM solution with the processes incentive, merit and ISI in a „Big Bang“-procedure from the beginning, and not in the usual manner, successively country by country. Therefore, Benteler preferred an early involvement of the regional stakeholders: e.g. they were invited to test in the main office in Paderborn, where project members of all 40 Benteler sites were asked to come. „Due to the globally displayed project design, we had to consider various currencies and their conversion rates“, Dirk Jäckel, SAP HCM specialist projekt0708´s CEO, explains one of the project´s core requirements. Furthermore, Benteler maps the complete incentive process – from the formula, the bonus is based on, to the total target achievment calculation, in SAP ECM. „Thus, we gain an increase in transparency for our employees and the HR department´s colleagues“, Birgit Bertels from Benteler Automotive Technology´s department Comp & Ben explains.