The Egger Group, a leading international manufacturer of wood products, was growing fast. Supporting an expanding employee base required scalable, streamlined HR and payroll solutions.
Egger Group at a glance
- Industry: Wood products
- Founded: 1961
- Headquarters: St. Johann, Tirol, Austria
- Employees: 9,600
The challenge of scalability
To support its new US employees, Egger needed a permanent payroll, time and employee self-service system. The solution had to be cost-effective to cater to a smaller staff initially, but scalable to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding employee base. They sought a trusted, experienced partner to assist with system implementation. So they turned to Alight.
A partnership built on proven expertise
In the beginning, Egger was using a local, temporary payroll system to get them up and running. However, since the company was already using SAP Payroll and Time On-Premise for offices in Europe, they decided to implement the same system in the US, for the sake of consistency and ease of training.
After reviewing several potential partners, Egger selected Alight to install the SAP solution. Expertise, industry reputation, and a real-world understanding of how US payroll worked, made Alight the right choice. There’s was also a familiarity, with Alight having successfully partnered with Egger in its European offices, including on payroll in France.
Globalized migration and implementation
Every project brings its own set of challenges and opportunities. This one was no different. First, Alight had to navigate the migration of data on the temporary payroll system to the new SAP system. Then, they had to make sure Egger had the required tax and legal documents. Towards the end of implementation, Egger reconstructed the Payroll / Benefit Department, requiring personnel changes. This meant further consultancy work from Alight to bring the new staff up to speed. In addition, Alight modified the Employee Self-Service system to meet the project’s requirements.
With ongoing consultation, guidance and advice, Alight steered Egger through the implementation requirements including gathering, design, testing, deployment, operating and change management approaches. In January 2020, Egger was up and running with a robust, intuitive SAP HCM and Payroll system.
The new system allows Egger to keep payroll administration in-house, resulting in lower processing costs. A streamlined solution connecting offices worldwide, each with local languages and specific country modifications, allows Egger to easily access the information and reporting they need, when and where they need it.
And, the HR and payroll teams can focus on strategic tasks rather than time-consuming, resource-heavy administrative processes. The Employee Self Service system is helping staff find the solutions they need on their own. Egger is planning to introduce a mobile self-service app in the near future.
Following this initial project, Egger Wood Products, LLC signed an additional contract with Alight for local, ongoing application maintenance support.
One of our team leaders had experienced working with Alight previously and had rated them highly.
Egger
We were able to demonstrate to Egger that we had the requisite depth of Payroll and Time expertise, knowledge and experience, including in the US, to guarantee a successful project, and our organizational capabilities allowed us to do it in a very cost effective manner.
Alight
When we met them initially to discuss working together, they impressed us greatly with the extent of their understanding and knowledge of the kind of system we wanted. The effort and skill Alight demonstrated throughout this project through to the final successful completion was, to us, very valuable indeed. It was a great partnership, and we were delighted with the quality of their services.
Egger Group
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