A case of an emergency move to 1C:ZUP and rebuilding HR processes for a "new" company
In 2001 a multinational company became our client, and in 2022 it sold its Russian business to local management. Building the new processes was entrusted to UCMS Group, because over twenty years we had come to understand the company's specifics thoroughly and had proved that we can handle even emergency situations.
The first priority was implementing 1C:ZUP, and it had to be done in an unrealistic timeframe: two months. Denis Bakulin, project manager on the consulting side, and Elena Skvortsova, project manager on the payroll and HR processes outsourcing side, explain how the UCMS Group team handled this case and what difficulties arose during the emergency implementation.
Specifics:
Bringing in an outsourcer was effectively the only possible solution in a situation involving the sale of a business, a change of legal entity and a move to a new accounting system. The reason is that an in-house team, as a rule, does not have enough expertise and resources to handle this level of task alongside its current duties.
Priority tasks in this project
Denis Bakulin, project manager on the consulting side:
“Of course, this whole project was a huge challenge for us. And not only because of the unrealistic deadlines; we had dealt with that before. The task itself was complex: transfer employees from a foreign legal entity, understand a complex payroll system and configure 1C:ZUP so that it was not too different from SAP. And, of course, it was critical to avoid any delay in payroll for three thousand people.
There are no ready-made solutions for such tasks; an implementation like this cannot be easy. So we and the client were ready to look for non-standard approaches.”
Stage 1. Preparation and analysis of the current state
Methodologists were involved from the start to carry out a detailed audit of the current processes and understand how the accounting system in SAP was built. We identified many nuances that had to be considered during development.
Denis Bakulin, project manager on the consulting side:
“In fact, we usually allow quite a lot of time for business process analysis and preparing a BRR (Business Requirement Review). Here, of course, there was no such time: the whole project had only two months. So we identified at a high level which processes were standard and which were very different, drew up a very short action plan from day one and started the implementation.”
Stage 2. Development
First of all, everyone had to be transferred from one legal entity to another while keeping payroll continuous: that covers both reporting and the daily loading of all hires, transfers, dismissals and so on. On top of that, the move to the other system happened mid-month, so payroll for the month had to be split into two parts on a system that was not fully configured: the first half of the month stayed with the previous legal entity and the second half with the new one.
During development we realised that the remuneration system was tied to a complex HR component and based on timesheets with several types of bonuses, regional coefficients, northern allowances and so on. This is far from a standard task for 1C:ZUP, and simply exporting data from SAP was impossible.
Denis Bakulin, project manager on the consulting side:
“Colleagues at the client company exported data from SAP for us, we analysed it and converted it into templates that could be loaded into 1C:ZUP. It was a genuinely difficult task: to make the new system at least roughly resemble SAP, otherwise the client's employees would not have been able to continue working at all.”
The client has eight timekeepers, and they manually record time data for three thousand people. Manual calculation always carries a risk of errors, especially when 15-20 parameters have to be taken into account for each employee. For example, to accrue bonuses the timekeeper has to enter the bonus amount in the timesheet: if there is a 1 next to the surname, the employee receives a bonus equal to one salary. But if the timekeeper mixes up the bonus column with the working hours column and puts 8 instead of 1 for every employee, the employees will be paid eight times the bonus, and recovering it afterwards will be very difficult. And at the start of work with a new system the likelihood of errors increases.
In the end we decided that an intuitive timesheet portal had to be developed, having first worked through all the scenarios that arise in the calculation.
What else we implemented in the new system:
Stage 3: Testing and go-live
Testing the system was also very different from projects with normal timelines. For example, there was no parallel calculation; we calculated on live data straight away. We only did a test calculation, and only for half a month: that was a first in UCMS Group's entire history, but there was no choice, we had to go live.
At the analysis stage we worked out which operations the client's employees could handle and which would remain with the outsourcer. For example, we deliberately aimed to make the timesheet portal's interface clear, because timekeeping is done by the in-house team. But we kept the rest of the HR data with us, because the client's employees were not familiar with 1C:ZUP and would not learn the correct entry of HR data, without which the timesheets simply would not work, within two weeks.
Elena Skvortsova, project manager on the payroll and HR processes outsourcing side:
“We agreed straight away that our specialists would handle HR administration until the in-house team got used to the new system. And we helped them settle in as much as possible: we produced detailed instructions, ran training and answered questions.
To be honest, it was a very stressful project: our specialists first worked through all the non-standard processes, started working in test mode in a fairly raw system while development was still under way, found errors, passed them to the consulting department, checked again and so on. And then they trained the client's employees and were always available by Skype, phone and messengers to advise and fix errors.”
After implementation, active operation of 1C:ZUP began, during which the team continued to refine the system and resolve emerging issues.
Stage 4: Payroll and HR administration
When the implementation project started, it was immediately clear that the task was complex and non-trivial. Just ensuring the correct transfer from the foreign company and sorting out the pension fund was a challenge in itself. That is why the project manager, Elena Skvortsova, selected only senior specialists who could handle a very tangled situation.
Elena Skvortsova, project manager on the payroll and HR processes outsourcing side:
“In effect our specialists manually rechecked the data for all three thousand employees. And if they found an error, they immediately wrote to Denis to understand the cause and fix it. In general, the team worked almost around the clock, especially during calculation periods.”
Results and achievements
The successful implementation was ensured by careful planning, the competence of the team, prompt resolution of tasks and close interaction with the client at every stage of the project, which made it possible not only to move the accounting processes to 1C:ZUP within a tight timeframe but also to create a foundation for further optimisation and business development.
Elena Skvortsova, project manager on the payroll and HR processes outsourcing side:
“It is very important that the client understands how complex and unpredictable a process developing non-standard functionality for 1C:ZUP is. Our client understood this and said something like: "We understand that it is impossible to make everything perfect straight away in such a timeframe and that there will be errors. But we know you will fix them, we trust you." It was very valuable for us to hear that. And we really made every effort to find errors quickly and refine the system. The whole team did their very best, I am proud of them.
On this project I became convinced once again that a successful implementation is only possible when the consulting and outsourcing departments work together. It is impossible if the implementation is handled by ordinary developers who do not understand HR administration.”
This case shows UCMS Group's readiness for complex challenges and the importance of a deep understanding of the client's business specifics and an individual approach to solving their tasks.
“For our company, 2023 was no less eventful than the previous year, but with your support we managed to adjust and process the maximum possible number of requests, reports and notifications - in short, everything in our field, as we like it 😊
A separate thank you for the specialists approaching every task as efficiently and quickly as possible. They show great care, and in these harsh times that is a very valuable quality.
Given our specifics and the difficult transition period, you have always handled the tasks set in the shortest possible time, thank you very much! It is a real pleasure to work with you!”
