Charisma HCM reduces time, human effort and costs at Mega Image

Charisma HCM is a software solution developed by people for people. I believe the technical support and teamwork invested by TotalSoft in this project, add great value to the system and enhance its performance

- Gianina Maria Nița

Payroll & Personnel Manager

Company
Founded in 1995, Mega Image is the largest supermarket chain in Romania, with a network comprising, in late May 2012, 136 stores. Mega Image is part of Delhaize Group, the international retailer founded in 1867 in Belgium, which currently operates on three continents.

The company has two brands on the Romanian market stores: Mega Image and Shop & Go. Mega Image aims to provide every day, service quality and wide range of nutritious, healthy, safe and affordable products.

Situation
Managing over 4790 employees, divided into a large number of categories of activity, is currently achieved by a HR department divided into two divisions: payroll & personnel administration and organizational development (covering the recruitment, integration, training, communication and evaluation areas), that is a team of 40 people. The HR department’s activity is complex and demanding, and turns out quite difficult to manage all types of people, numerous requirements to respond, provide support, to relate with the employees and keep them in a state of satisfaction.

Mega Image was already using Charisma HCM when they acquired La Fourmi. This allowed staff to support the huge growth generated by the acquisition. This is not always easy, but with the support of the application and TotalSoft’s team it was possible.

“Although we had to face several difficult situations, we have always found in TotalSoft not a supplier, but a friend in need. There were cases when the Charisma whole team interrupted its daily activities and sought a solution for Mega Image, because it was compulsory to finalize the payroll that night. And we did it!” Maria Nița, Payroll & Personnel Manager.

To effectively and properly manage a large number of employees, Mega Image had to pay attention not only to payroll and personnel administration, which was run according to its specifications by Charisma, but to the timesheet and release of certificates required by employees. These two activities involve a huge consumption of time and resources.

“Dealing with employees’ timesheets meant that the HR department would only accumulate all the information; then check out the information, but without the possibility to verify each minute the presence of every employee. We used control keys to check timesheet for employees that had left the company and incomplete or poor timesheets.” remembers Ms. Niţă.

Solution
The accelerated expansion and the necessity to obtain a 100% correctly completed timesheet to get a salary calculation free of errors, led to the need for the automation of the two activities. It was decided to implement an integrated HR &Payroll application to remove the tremendous human effort and create benefits for both the company and employees.

In addition, the law forces companies to prove the employees’ presence at the work. For Mega Image’s great number of employees, geographically spread, it was impossbile to deal with classic timesheets.

TotalSoft proposed a modern access timesheet system, based on digital print. The project substituted the old software and installed new terminals in stores, warehouses and headquarters. The solution prevented thus the possibility to commit fraud (timesheet filled in by other person by using someone else’s card) and in addition it was very easy to use.

Basically, all data retrieved by the access time-sheet application through terminals is automatically transferred to the headquarter’s server, which in turn sends them to Charisma HCM. This circuit makes it possible for the employee to fill in its timesheet both at the beginning and the end of the day, and for the manager to check out and validate the records. Validating a timesheet requires 3-4 minutes per day. In order to check them out, a set of tests is run two times per month in order to eliminate any error that can affect the timesheet elements (presence dates, absenteeism, holidays or medical leaves).

Another major aspect for Mega Image was to provide much faster answers to all employees’ requests such as salary certificates. In 2011, aprox. 700 – 800 certificates were issued per month (in 2012 the number reached 1,200/month); this is a huge volume which required paying attention to the way the certificate was written according to its (financial institutions, schools, medical institutions etc.).

This time and human consuming effort was eliminated by the development of a module dedicated to the management of certificates, which was integrated in Charisma HCM. The module contains standardized forms such as certificates for financial institutions, which are now automatically generated by the application.

Results
“Following the implementation of the access timesheet application with fingerprint terminals, we are now benefiting from accurate and real-time data, even if the working hours of the employees vary from one location to another. The management of the company can manage and identify situations of poor performance or justified overtime, who are sure they are assessed and paid according to the hours worked.”

The access-time tracking application has also solved the question to the control of state authorities. The application generates reports of daily attendance, regardless of the geographic area in which the branch is located.

The automation of the certificate issuance reduced drastically the time and resources allocated to this activity. The issued certificate requests are transmitted to stores by the HR department via email, while the certificates are issued immediately by the system and sent to employees via couriers.

“At first I had a concern with the banks' reluctance to accept other formats than their own, but I took the risk because the time for completing each certificate was huge. Now, the entire data is automatically retrieved from various modules of Charisma and the issued certificate may be sent immediately to the employee.”

Finally, Ms. Nita Gianina summarizes Mega Image’s partnership with TotalSoft by drawing a parallel between the experience of several key HR people in Romania and hers:

“Working with TotalSoft provides comfort and confidence that in case of any difficult situation I have a partner who supports me and gives me the necessary help to solve problems well and timely. I give you two examples: the submission of the compulsory fiscal records – to me TotalSoft is the equivalent of a Swiss watch; the submission of 112 Statements, which were a source of huge concern for any HR professional in this country – Charisma gave me no fear.”

Case study revised in 2012.