Time for the core tasks

The HR departments of German SMEs are struggling with numerous challenges: They are often understaffed and fully occupied with routine tasks such as payroll accounting, personnel data administration, time management or travel expense accounting.

Then there is a lack of time for value-adding HR initiatives or - especially in internationally active companies - for building up expertise in relation to the special features of HR work at locations worldwide.

Global HR processes not very efficient

Experience has shown that this is because HR processes are not harmonized across the company and their "maturity level" varies: Location A has already introduced HR self-services for travel expense accounting, location B uses paper documents and an Excel solution, while location C commissions an external service provider.

There is also often a lack of uniform HR key performance indicators (KPIs) across all locations, for example in the definition of part-time employees, which impairs the quality of HR reporting. The management also receives reports late, as the head office has to laboriously compile the HR data, which is usually sent from the locations via Excel, by hand.

SMEs quickly reach their limits when it comes to consolidating and standardizing such heterogeneous HR processes and setting up a globally uniform HR reporting system.

The effort and costs for the selection, introduction, operation and maintenance of suitable HR solutions as well as for the licenses are high, and personnel resources are then tied up in the HR and IT organization and are not available for strategic projects.

In my view, it therefore makes sense to outsource these tasks to an experienced full-service HR provider with binding service level agreements (SLAs). If, as a general contractor, it can also provide all services from a single source in collaboration with its international partners, the customer has a single point of contact for all HR matters - an invaluable advantage.

HR outsourcing also brings cost benefits, with significant savings in payroll accounting alone. The outsourcing partner not only takes care of error-free and compliant payroll accounting and its timely delivery or accurate time management, but also drafts and concludes contracts with local HR service providers and checks invoices.

He also processes change requests, maintains the personnel and payroll data of all employees from the time they join until they leave and takes care of the interfaces between HR and Finance.

This frees up the internal HR organization to focus on its core tasks: employee development, the recruitment of suitable specialists, the discovery and promotion of talent and, in particular, the development of an intelligent HR strategy that is aligned with business objectives and turns the HR department into a business partner for management. The HR reports and analyses provided promptly by the outsourcing partner play a key role in this.

The right HR outsourcing partner supports strategic HR work with customized and platform-independent HR services - technologically State
of the art and of consistently high quality.

For globally active SMEs whose IT strategy is essentially based on SAP software, the use of an internationally deployable payroll application such as SAP ERP HCM in conjunction with the cloud HCM solutions from SAP SuccessFactors is the ideal solution. In this way, payroll, recruitment and personnel development processes as well as HR reporting can be managed globally and HR master data can be managed uniformly.

The security and integrity of personal data must also be guaranteed at all times. Certification of the partner in accordance with Section 11 of the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) guarantees that it fulfills the legal requirements for the processing of HR data in an exemplary manner.

In my experience, one of the sensitive tasks in HR outsourcing is the development of a qualification concept for affected employees in the HR department, which prepares them for new tasks such as recruitment or succession planning at an early stage.