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Alight named by Fortune as one of the ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’ in 2024

NEC maximizes business success through Alight’s Advisory Services

About NEC:

  • Founded: July 17, 1899
  • Industry: Network technology
  • Headquarters: Japan
  • Workforce: 118,500 employees

NEC Corporation, a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies, initiated an HR transformation project to accelerate the growth of global business. 

As project implementation began, crucial gaps emerged, delaying the original timelines and stalling the overall project. By partnering with Alight, NEC Corporation was able to amend the scope of their project and establish global centers of excellence. The result was improved management of international talent, acceleration of growth and more efficient global operations. 

Key Takeaways:

  • Comprehensive SAP SuccessFactors modules implementation is key to increased productivity and simplified HR and payroll transactions.

  • Strategic transformation is fundamental for achieving business objectives and unifying global HR systems to drive business growth.   

  • Sentiment surveys provide tangible measurements of change-readiness, enabling the adoption of new HR tools and technologies.

  • Professional advisory services provide clear project ownership, better decision-making structure and improved project governance. 

  • Defining the target operating model as a key milestone drives a smooth cutover into early stabilization of “business as usual” processes and service.

This project has been a measurable success, delivered on time and in budget. HR process alignment, achieving cost and productivity efficiencies by bringing our HR systems together into a single platform, and improved data, analytics and reporting to drive better decision-making. Choosing to work with a global SAP SuccessFactors partner, with experience in complex multi-country HR system implementations and transformation has been a critical success criteria.

Gurleen Knight
Global Head of HR, NEC

Maximizing talent and improving employee experience through global HR transformation

In 2023 NEC selected Alight to assist with their Global Transformation project. The project established global centers of excellence, created an improved mindset around international talent management and developed paths to end global fragmentation and underutilized talent across the enterprise. Several SuccessFactors modules were implemented at NEC, including Employee Central, Recruitment, Onboarding, Performance & Goals and Succession & Development. These modules represented key milestones in achieving a unified, global organization and talent capabilities that could drive business growth. By placing top talent in the most strategic locations, NEC was able to promote a global team ethos and ensure equally accessible development opportunities for employees worldwide.


Continuous support for operational excellence

Since go-live, Alight's AMS and Customer Care teams have been the cornerstone of support for NEC globally. AMS provided vital technical support, including incident resolution and platform enhancements, with expertise in SAP issue management. They also carried out testing of mandatory changes introduced in the bi-annual SAP releases and guided NEC on optional feature implementation. This comprehensive support is instrumental in maintaining the efficiency and effectiveness of NEC's platform, leveraging the team's knowledge and experience to benefit NEC's HR operations.

Alight’s Customer Care team ensured a seamless and responsive support system for NEC employees, focusing on delivering exceptional service and enhancing employee satisfaction. This multi-channel and local language support approach is dedicated to assisting employees in their moments of need, providing quick issue resolution and improving their overall experience. 

We are incredibly proud of the partnership and collaborative dynamic between Alight and NEC throughout our global HR transformation journey. Alight's team seamlessly integrated with our own, working together as one team with a shared vision and common purpose. Their commitment to understanding our unique needs, providing invaluable expertise, and ensuring the success of our project has been exceptional. Together, we have achieved remarkable results that will continue to deliver benefits for our organization for years to come.

Gurleen Knight
Global Head of HR, NEC

Advisory services to ensure success

Shortly after NEC’s initial deployment of their transformation project, limitations became apparent. Alight's advisory team was brought in and identified an overly complex global service-design blueprint that didn’t fit the scope of the global SuccessFactors project. Alight’s advisory team addressed the challenge by revisiting and revamping the blueprint. Best practices of global process design were used to conduct a comprehensive gap analysis of NEC’s original blueprint, where a 50% gap was identified. Within a short span of six weeks, Alight managed to fill the identified gaps within the global service design blueprint. This swift recovery allowed NEC’s technical team to continue their work and keep the overall program timeline on track. Additionally, NEC’s partnership with Alight led to clearer decision-making structures of governance and defined ownership of that governance by Global Process Owners (GPOs) – elements that were previously missing from the initial project deployment. 

In the end, the project was a success. Alight’s quick response resulted in the successful rollout of the first release of the global and technical design (the five SuccessFactors modules) to Japan, LATAM, Singapore and India.

What’s next:

Going forward, this project will serve as a blueprint for success, and continue to demonstrate the effectiveness of strategic recovery and robust deployment of a global SuccessFactors program.

The project reinforces Alight’s commitment to uniquely effective HR solutions that are tailored to each client’s needs.

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