De La Rue is the world's largest commercial security printer and papermaker, producing over 150 national currencies and a wide range of security documents such as passports, fiscal stamps, travellers’ cheques and authentication labels. In business since 1813, De LaRue is a member of the FTSE 250, and employs over 5,500 people across 31 countries.

Group Strategic Objectives

Lead by CEO, Leo Quinn, De La Rue is currently driving forward a programme ofoperational improvement, aimed at increasing efficiency and improving shareholder value. In December 2004, the executive team announced the results of a Strategic Review: the review highlighted a number of Group Actions and focussed on the need to improve efficiency through clearer definition of accountability for business units, greater emphasis on controls over working capital and capital expenditure, and increased productivity.

Improving Productivity: the “My Contribution” programme

As part of the drive to improve productivity, De La Rue introduced “My Contribution”, to empower all individuals to drive improvements. My Contribution enables individuals, from any part of the company, to make suggestions aimed at increasing efficiency. All ideas are evaluated, with those likely to generate greater operational efficiency or cost savings, translated into projects. The project has already lead to some 1,500 ideas being put forward by employees, with 250 being resourced as projects.

HR.net & My Contribution

Following the inception of “My Contribution”, and in order to achieve the full benefits from the programme, it became clear that a reporting system was required that would allow suggestions to be received from employees around the globe and then tracked through to review, investment, implementation and recording of benefit.

Interestingly, De La Rue had, at this time, also decided to implement HR.net, a powerful web-enabled HR system, developed by Vizual Business Tools plc. Through the installation of HR.net, the company intended to automate a range of HR processes as well as to consolidate information held in disparate, pre-existing HR systems, on to one central database, housed at the company’s Head Office.

Using the latest .Net technology, HR.net allows any manual HR process to be replicated in electronic form and enables a wide variety of tasks to be carried out by employees on a self-service basis. In addition, HR.net has a highly flexible, customisable workflow engine,which enables organisations not only to automate standard HR procedures but digitise a range of other (non-HR specific) business processes. As any business process can be defined and re-created within HR.net, organisations have the opportunity to streamline not only the HR function but refine processes and create cost-efficiencies in other areas.

De La Rue managers soon realised that HR.net could be used to facilitate “MyContribution”: HR.net’s powerful workflow and project tracking technology could be exploited to support the programme and, as the company had already invested in the HR.net system, no further capital expenditure was required.

“HR.net’s powerful workflow and project tracking technology could be exploited to support the programme.” The executive team can easily identify whether particular functions/projects are running smoothly: the system is far more effective than spreadsheets, allows a unified approach to KPIs and importantly, supplies analysis and reports on use of management time.

By May 2005, HR.net was fully adapted to facilitate the “My Contribution” programme. Now, when employees wish to submit an idea, they can do so in electronic form. Contributions are made via HR.net, by staff, along with some basic information about the proposed project. This, in turn, is submitted to a site facilitator, who makes an initial evaluation and adds more information regarding tangible, quantitative benefits (e.g. using less paper on a paper run), as well as projected savings.

The proposed project is then forwarded to group managers who further evaluate its benefits. Group managers can then electronically create a set of project milestones and quantitative results for the project, as well as set up a project team (for example appoint a team leader, sponsor and members). A project timeline can also be drawn up, tangible benefits outlined against the timeline and costs assigned against a project, allowing cost to be tracked against benefit. The project is then submitted either to Department Head or Financial Approver. Once approval is complete, HR.net automatically generates notifications to project members, along with project milestones and deliverables.

Reporting

Once a project has been put into action, HR.net enables performance to be monitored: an executive dashboard, populated with a series of metrics, allows the executive team to monitor the individual project, as well as to run reports on all the other projects currently inprogress. In addition, HR.net technology enables the executive team to run reports on actual and forecast benefits. Thus, benefits or savings can be easily identified and trend analysis carried out. Importantly, when a project is complete, the effectiveness of its contribution can be assessed.

Key Performance Indicators

HR.net improves reporting in a further way: the system has been configured to automatically trigger notifications, requiring managers to report against Key Performance Indicators (KPI). The resulting management information is then automatically collected, distributed against KPIs and turned into either text or graphical reports. The executive team can easily identify whether particular functions/projects are running smoothly: thesystem is far more effective than spreadsheets, allows a unified approach to KPIs and importantly, supplies analysis and reports on use of management time.

Transparency is facilitated as employees can readily see how their ideas are making a difference to the business. De La Rue’s 5,500 employees, located across the globe, are all able to contribute suggestions: using HR.net’s web-based technology. The programme can be accessed by employees, regardless of geographical location, enabling collaboration across the business.

Andy Brierley, Project Director for “My Contribution”, commented:

“The “My Contribution” programme allows employees’ ideas to be turned into projects, tracked through from concept to completion, and their outcome reported on. The HR.net technology has facilitated this process. The programme is proving highly successful: at present some 1,500 suggestions have been put forward, covering travel policy through to planned maintenance - a real range of ideas.”