100% outsourcing of payroll and staff administration

The Company
Coca-Cola HBC Romania, member of Coca-Cola Hellenic, is the leader of the non-alcoholic beverages market in Romania. The company bottles a range of Coca-Cola products from carbonated soft drinks (Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite, Schweppes), noncarbonated (Cappy Tempo), nectars (Nectar Cappy), to tea (Nestea), water (Dorna Dorna-White Spring, Poiana Negri), energy drinks (Burn) and ready to drink coffee (Illy). Coca-Cola products are bottled in factories strategically placed in different regions of the country: Ploiesti, Timisoara and Vatra Dornei.

Currently (January 2014), the company has approximately 1,700 employees.

The situation
In mid-2011, the HR department of Coca-Cola HBC Romania has decided to outsource many time-consuming activities, namely the payroll and personnel administration, to a strong partner who would use a competitive and secure software platform, a partner who would ensure the business continuity.

"We looked for a provider to develop a partnership on the long term; the selection criteria we had were related to issues such as company’s reputation, the maturity of the software solution used for service delivery and the quality of the technical support. Of all the companies we discussed with, TotalSoft best answered our expectations" says the Reward & HR Services Manager with Coca Cola HBC Romania.

The Solution
The agreement came into force in January 2012 with a calibration period between the specific business requirements of Coca Cola and the services offered by TotalSoft. It was the moment when working procedures have been established between the teams, but also in the system, so as to eliminate any possible error that could occur at the level of payroll, HR data management or the approval flow for leaves.

During this period TotalSoft team worked at the headquarters of Coca Cola, a decision that greatly helped to clarify various questions quickly and eliminated any errors or time that would have been lost with the correspondence between the teams. Once the procedures have been standardized, things went on track and Coca Cola HR team integrally transferred payroll and personnel administration to TotalSoft, while retaining its prerogative to periodically check the correctness of TotalSoft activity.

 „I believe that, at  a certain level of business you can control things up to a point, then you have to trust that the partner  you have chosen will provide you with accurate data and that he will learn to do things as well as you do. Working with TotalSoft goes very well, the best proof being that I hear of this company only the day my salary is transferred“.

To manage time sheets of over 1,700 employees who are in geographically dispersed locations, TotalSoft implemented an online system which has been adapted to meet the requirements of Coca Cola. Specific elements of the production activity were included, allowing detailed tracking of several types of absences, various work programs based on which employees are paid and the recording of overtime and its recovery. This solution has been integrated with the accounting system used by the company (SAP), allowing automatic transfer of accounting information and notes required for salary calculation.

Results:

• Leveraging routine activities from HR specialists so they could focus on management activities. By outsourcing and payroll, staff administration, monthly statements to authorities and pay slips to TotalSoft, the HR team has more time for personnel management activities. "I really wanted to outsource 100% and eliminate certain internal flows which prolonged the response time to employee requests”.
• Increased data safety by standardizing, simplifying and automating processes;
• Safety in terms of auditing;
• Eliminating human error. Following the implementation of online timesheet application, manual information collection (thus human error) were removed and time spent processing excels was reduced, as information necessary for salary calculation is sent automatically.

 
The quality of the services provided by TotalSoft led to CocaCola’s decision to expand the cooperation also to its subsidiary in Moldova. Thus, since June 2012, the 200 employees of Coca Cola Chisinau benefit from TotalSoft services.

Case study revised in 2013.