Hudson’s Successful Implementation of a SEMS System

​In July 2003, Hudson, Australasia’s largest recruitment firm, took the ambitious step of launching its Strategic Enterprise Management System (SEMS). This enterprise application was designed to deliver a key performance indicators (KPI) snapshot across all corporate levels.

A quantifiable signifier of progress toward goals, KPIs are a pathway of achieving strategic and operational goals through analytical decision making. They vary between industries in what they measure, but often use a predetermined benchmark from which to measure output and operational results. The benchmark may be based on competitors in the same industry or internal business performance over time.

An example of how KPIs differ centers on a restaurant chain versus an IT enterprise. For the expansion-focused IT firm, the chief performance indicator may be year-over-year revenue growth. By contrast, the restaurant chain may focus on same-store sales as the chief KPI metric for gauging growth. KPIs may be companywide, division-wide, or focused at a more granular level on a specific product, service, employee, or operational element. The aim is to use actionable data to understand why certain outcomes occur.

The automated, web-based Hudson SEMS was powered by the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services platform and combined facts and figures from diverse resource planning sources. The resulting business activity report summarized, combined, and processed data from more than 300 KPIs. It delivered a “single version of the truth” that allowed stakeholders across the company to coordinate efforts and work toward the same, measurable goals.

The system integrated MIS DecisionWare business intelligence capabilities and provided an in-depth analysis of KPIs, as well as predictive value reporting. It also provided a template for managing staff scorecard workflows, with a focus on increasing productivity.

Having these unified insights was critical for Hudson, given that the company included 3,300 employees operating in 28 countries and 101 offices. In New Zealand and Australia alone, there were 17 offices and around 1,200 team members. Specialist consultants drew on industry knowledge and contacts in interviewing recruited applicants, ensuring that they were good organizational fits.

The SEMS employed electronic data collection protocol across staff activities. This took the place of existing paper­based procedures, which required manual collation and were labor intensive. Before the SEMS came online, consultants self-completed monthly reports that documented their activities and progress toward performance targets. Finance staff then took the data and compiled it in spreadsheets, which enabled performance comparisons among employees and allocation of bonus payments.

As Hudson’s group commercial manager Sean Unwin described it, this time-consuming process took staff members away from servicing clients, as they focused on simply filling out forms. In contrast, the automated system accurately measured each staff member’s performance and helped analyze, manage, and track organizational objectives. Mr. Unwin noted that interpreting the data and using it to the company’s advantage still required extensive human input.

A benefit of the MIS DecisionWare business intelligence solution was that it provided an open architecture that could easily be changed to reflect evolving organizational mandates and company requirements. It also provided transparency, which fostered a sense of collaborative effort and shared goal-setting among employees.

In regard to consultants, an in-house customer relationship management system recorded their full range of interactions with clients. Details of calls, such as client name and job position, were summarized in tables that were processed within the SEMS system. Managers could then “drill up, down, and sideways” in a dashboard report, uncovering everything from Australian operations revenues to specific services provided by consultants to specific clients.

Sean Unwin

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