Withers & Rogers LLP (Withers & Rogers), one of Europe’s largest dedicated intellectual property law firms, has invested in HR and payroll software from Advanced Business Solutions (Advanced) to increase efficiency and enhance reporting to support its expanding operations.
The integrated OpenHR and OpenPeople solutions, with employee self-service and eRecruitment functionality, have streamlined manual processes and reduced monthly payroll processing time from one day to 30 minutes. The firm recently rolled out the systems to 172 staff in a phased approach.
Withers & Rogers was established more than 130 years ago and has enjoyed significant growth, leading the company to increase its headcount by a quarter over the past two years. Advanced’s systems have replaced time consuming manual processes to maintain HR information which were protracted and prone to error.
Terri Pettifer-Eagles, Head of HR & Administration at Withers & Rogers Group LLP, says, “We considered several systems but the majority offered little more than HR databases with basic reporting functionality. In contrast, Advanced provided us with an integrated HR and payroll solution with intuitive work-flows which allow us to customise the system to our exact needs. Management reporting of our people metrics can now be done much faster and in real time.”
OpenHR and OpenPeople have introduced consistent HR and payroll procedures across the business, significantly saving time and improving the accuracy of employee records by eliminating administrative tasks. Using the self-service module, staff situated at Withers & Rogers’ four UK offices and one in Munich can electronically access and update their current personnel details (bank information etc), submit holiday requests and record sickness absence.
The HR team can now quickly report on a range of trends such as pension contributions, the cost of payroll and employee turnover statistics.
In the future, OpenHR will be used to assess training and development requirements by identifying individual skills gaps to ensure the firm remains competitive. The eRecruitment functionality will also speed up the onboarding process for new starters by automatically sending email reminders to ensure all inductions, orientations and equipment are in place for each employee.
Terri comments, “This implementation has provided significant time savings; we can now run our payroll in 30 minutes instead of a day. By freeing us from manual processes, the HR team is now able to provide more value-added services to the business by reporting on accurate and time critical information to enhance strategic decisions.
“Investing in Advanced’s software has also enabled us to future-proof our business as it is sufficiently scalable and flexible to cope as we continue to grow and expand our presence internationally.”