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Business success is dependent on recruiting and retaining the best available talent, regardless of the market or industry in which an organization operates. This means that a company’s HR team, the processes that support it, and the employee experience it provides are all critical to long-term success. As such, they must be kept up to date with modern technology and a suited approach.

So, when a major global pharmaceutical company identified that its HR systems were not fulfilling employee expectations, the business knew that it would have to take action. The organization reviewed the situation and discovered that the multi-faceted processes intended to provide support for a diverse set of circumstance had become confusing and difficult to navigate. In addition, this had led to repetitive loops, redundant work, and more manual effort than desired, all while limiting the time available for user interaction and continuous improvement.

Uninterested in taking half measures, the pharmaceutical company launched a global transformation project that would reimagine its HR processes, forge stronger bonds between various working groups, and increase the speed with which innovation could take place. All of this depended on changing the way the organization developed and introduced new technology and services. As a result, the company set out to implement an agile iterative approach to product development and engaged ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ as its partner to gain access to extensive technical expertise and a rich background of transformation success.

Educational effort supports Agile development

Transitioning from existing strategies and ways of working to an Agile structure required learning and awareness, without which the various teams involved would lack the ability to keep pace with employee needs and expectations as well as the rate of innovation. To respond to this need, the company and ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ launched a flexible coaching campaign.

The partners established a team of expert coaches that could engage with different teams in order to educate and inform key stakeholders and team members on how to adapt to an Agile approach. This group engaged with product owners and project managers while also occasionally supporting entire teams. These coaches worked with the organization and its external suppliers to develop more effective project management techniques and apply more efficient working models. In this way, the company’s internal innovation leaders learned to more effectively manage and empower agility as they developed new tools or services and eventually rolled them out for wider use.

Through the coaching initiative, ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ experts enabled the company’s HR product owners and teams to adopt an iterative development approach that ensured more extensive testing while simultaneously accelerating the rate at which new solutions could be introduced for employee use. This ensured that the company could develop more value-oriented projects with shorter lead times.

Accelerating the development and release of new HR features

Following the educational campaign, the company introduced an incremental approach for product development organized into six-week program planning meetings and program reviews. Moreover, the project rapidly created and prepared new teams while providing a sustainable way of working that fosters innovation and collaboration. Collaboration is driven by a structure that ensures regular alignment between different teams by establishing clear priorities, enabling regular stakeholder feedback related to new features, and clarifying dependencies that required stable inter-team connections.

As a result, employees now report higher satisfaction with the organization’s various HR services and systems. Regular updates and a user-centric focus ensure that this will continue while the greater frequency of inter-team collaboration guarantees that this work can be performed at greater speed. More effective coordination within the company and its suppliers also ensures that the organization will be able to develop new products and applications faster while delivering greater value.

Using its new development approach, the company has since launched a large number of new products and achieved general cost savings related to HR processes. These solutions are available across the world to support a substantial number of workers. With faster updates, greater flexibility, and more effective HR support, the company is now more able to support its employees with user-friendly systems and a commitment to continuous improvement in the future.