Solutions Delivery Focus Smoothes Planning, Strengthens Ties

Article

Published: February 18, 2008

Microsoft Information Technology (Microsoft IT) has a Human Resources Solutions Delivery (HR SD) group whose charter is to partner with the Microsoft HR business group; understand the key strategies, business processes, and systems that support the group's business drivers; help prioritize projects to make it easier for Microsoft IT to meet the group's goals; and deliver technology solutions that help Microsoft HR succeed.Since its inception, HR SD has been able to create an integrated, holistic view of all the applications relevant to HR, increase the cohesion of the planning and implementation of HR strategies, simplify and streamline many of the solutions, and improve Microsoft employees' experience with HR tools. The following article discusses the success of and key learnings from the Microsoft HR SD group.

The Microsoft Human Resources (HR) group has approximately 1,400 employees in more than 100 countries. These employees are dedicated to serving the nearly 80,000 Microsoft employees around the globe.

Microsoft expected its HR and IT groups to work together to deliver high-quality solutions and services to the company. The Microsoft HR organization is divided into distinct groups, and historically, each group included internal technical staff members who worked with Microsoft IT to implement solutions for their particular HR area. This setup meant that Microsoft IT essentially worked with multiple HR customers, leaving HR without a comprehensive picture of technology projects.

Other difficulties existed with the structure and approach to business and IT partnership. Both Microsoft HR and IT struggled with a lack of continuity, inconsistent project planning, difficulty with project prioritization and funding, and duplication of effort as one group's solution overlapped with that of another. The disparate HR planning process resulted in a hodgepodge of requested IT projects, many of which didn't reflect the organization's strategic goals. Microsoft IT lacked the necessary business driver information to effectively evaluate and prioritize technology solutions, which meant that the solutions delivered might have more to do with available time and budget than business value. In the end, HR had a portfolio of more than 140 applications that served HR functions worldwide.

Scott Pitasky, General Manager for Microsoft HR, says, "We were building things that Microsoft employees may or may not need and asking for things that we may or may not get. We couldn't successfully set expectations as to projects and their deliverables, which caused people to lose confidence in HR." Microsoft employees commented that there were too many applications that served the same function and too few in other areas of need, employees struggled to find some HR services and information, and HR tools and initiatives lacked consistency in their appearance and functionality. As a consequence, Microsoft HR generalists were not as strategic as they could be because of time spent responding to issues around the portfolio of HR systems.

In addition to those difficulties, often the technology solutions that Microsoft IT delivered for HR overwhelmed the HR organization's ability to consume them. "On the one hand, we weren't able to tackle all the projects on our agenda," recalls Becky Thielen, Senior Program Manager for Microsoft Human Resources. "On the other, Microsoft employees felt bombarded by so many HR solutions and found it difficult to sort through and find the information or tools that they really needed."

Refocusing Resources

In 2006, the senior vice president of Microsoft HR determined that something needed to be done. The answer was to create the HR SD group within the Microsoft IT organization. "We sit in the middle between HR and the IT engineers, and we're ultimately responsible for a project's successful deployment," explains Kyle Johnson, Director of Solution Management for HR Staffing SD. He views the HR SD teams as translators, those who are adept at taking strategic business requirements and goals and converting them into engineer-consumable project plans.

How It Works

The HR SD group includes approximately 30 employees who are divided into teams that each support a group within Microsoft HR, such as Staffing. The senior vice president of HR and her team establish the HR business strategy, and then each HR SD team partners with its specific HR group to take the designated strategic initiatives and develop appropriate solutions to support them. The HR SD group helps the HR group establish solution goals and key performance indicators (KPIs), create the business case for each proposed project, and secure IT funding.

Figure 1. HR groups, HR SD teams, and Microsoft IT maintain a clear division of responsibilities.

"HR SD's role is to help enable the strategy of the HR business by serving as stewards of HR-related processes, tools, and IT investments," says Shahla Aly, General Manager, Corporate and Business Groups SD. "HR SD makes sure that projects are efficient, are measurable, are strategic, and have clear business sponsorship, and that IT investments support the business strategy."

The focus of HR SD differs based on the phase of each project and on the cycle of the fiscal year: preparation and planning before the start of the fiscal year, followed by implementation of selected projects, project management, change management, and so on, after the new year begins. Throughout the year, HR SD includes HR business stakeholders in its team meetings. Together, they determine necessary process improvements to gain efficiencies, such as implementing Six Sigma methodologies as needed. HR and HR SD leaders include each other's representatives in their meetings as a matter of course to reap the benefits of regular collaboration.

The following are examples of the teamwork between Microsoft HR groups and their HR SD counterparts, listed by HR area.

Compensation, Benefits, and Performance Management

The HR Compensation, Benefits, and Performance Management team set a goal of redesigning the company's performance management system and integrating it with the Microsoft annual rewards allocation system. Microsoft HR wanted a single robust, online system in which the individual commitments of each employee in the company work force could be stored and easily viewed by other employees and managers alike.

The HR SD group established the Performance@Microsoft solution, this internal tool allows employees a place where they can store their information so that transparency is increased for individual commitments, and the whole organizational commitments can be aligned with the management chain. HR SD also deployed a commitment-setting tool to support mid-year career review discussions. "It's not a static world," says J. Ritchie, General Manager of Compensation, Benefits, and Performance Management for Microsoft HR. "The HR SD team really brought in the process side and got us to think through a lot of ‘what if' scenarios—such as employees switching jobs or countries in the course of the year. They helped us consider the demands that that would place on the system so that it could track the commitments of a truly dynamic workforce."

People and Organization Capability

The HR People and Organization Capability group's main efforts have to do with talent management and, recently, with increasing leadership capabilities at Microsoft. The group realized that it couldn't drive culture change and transform Microsoft by focusing solely on leaders, however—it chose to look at the company's entire employee base. Says Michelle Frank, Director of Business and Talent Infrastructure for Microsoft HR, "We didn't have a good way for people to see how they could manage their careers at Microsoft and take advantage of the various career paths. Nor was there a good way to facilitate conversations along those lines. We wanted to address multiple audiences: employees, managers, and leaders."

The HR SD group worked closely with the People and Organization Capability group to develop CareerCompass, the Microsoft talent management system. CareerCompass can be used for succession planning by helping Microsoft managers understand employee and leadership strengths to support forecasted company growth. Employees and managers can conduct self-assessments based on certain competencies, identify gaps in their performance, and establish a plan to address those gaps. People in all levels throughout Microsoft typically use the application as part of their mid-year review discussions.

Staffing

The HR Staffing area ensures superior talent management across the company. One of the most critical projects for the group is Next Gen Staffing, which aims to replace the multiple applicant-tracking systems that exist throughout the company. Microsoft currently has a main database in the United States and a general international database. Specific Microsoft regions also have created their own databases. Next Gen will replace all of the company's different IT-supported tracking systems with one enterprise-wide solution. Upon its completion, the project will produce one truly worldwide repository of candidates from which recruiters can draw.

According to Pitasky, Next Gen is an excellent example of a major, multi-year project that would be impossible to deliver without HR SD. "The SD team has been essential in helping us evaluate business needs and create the Next Gen project technical plan and road map, tracking process, and governance model," says Pitasky. "I view the SD as our most important technical partner. If I have an idea, problem, or opinion to share, my SD contacts are, without fail, the first people I turn to. Those in HR SD have developed expertise with our subject matter, and they know the rhythm of our business, both with Staffing in particular and HR as a whole. That's really important for a partner."

Tying It All Together

HR SD provides valuable service to Microsoft HR as a whole through its work on specific, group-led projects but also supports the more overarching projects that affect all Microsoft employees. These overarching projects follow the oneHR process model, a key Microsoft HR framework that ties all HR-related solutions to a single, consolidated HR strategy. The joint efforts of HR and the HR SD group to support the oneHR approach are resulting in improved use of resources, better planning and visibility across groups, enhanced ability to consume new products and services, higher levels of predictability and accountability, and increased accuracy around program budgeting in respect to appropriate return on investment (ROI).

To further the oneHR model, Microsoft HR created a project management office (PMO) team known as the HR Operations Excellence group. This group—established to focus on global HR projects across the entire organization—collaborates closely with the Foundation Solutions team, which is part of HR SD and also is responsible for ensuring that all HR solutions support the oneHR approach.

Operations Excellence

HR leadership charged the Operations Excellence group with enabling HR to operate consistently by establishing a process framework. The group also sought to help facilitate project portfolio management through development of a project portfolio solution. The objective was to fully replace the traditional fractured HR planning process, which had resulted in a lack of alignment of HR projects and little visibility into HR's impact on the company as a whole.

The Operations Excellence group worked closely with the HR SD Foundation Solutions team to establish a new, business-driven planning process. The joint team used Microsoft® Office Project Portfolio Server2007 to help clearly define HR's business drivers and translate the overall HR business strategy into concrete, actionable, obtainable objectives against which prospective projects could be prioritized. "It is not difficult to deliver an IT solution given adequate requirements—the challenge is in prioritizing which business capabilities need to be improved, understanding business success metrics, and defining solution requirements," says Francis Gan, Senior Director of HR Business Architecture and Foundation Solutions for Microsoft HR Solutions Delivery. "The real work happened on the HR side, where HR stakeholders and HR SD figured out what was most important in terms of measuring project viability and success."

Because of the effort, HR's project portfolio for fiscal year 2008 went from 84 proposed projects to 14 funded ones, all of which were fully aligned to Microsoft HR and IT drivers and goals. Having a clear, prioritized portfolio is enabling HR and the HR SD group to be successful in their efforts throughout the year because employees in both areas can maintain focus on the projects that matter most. "There's a natural tendency for the business and IT of any organization to approach projects separately, but this experience proved that thinking of integrated planning and prioritization as mutually beneficial exercises to be conducted together will produce far better results," says Gan.

Foundation Solutions

The Foundation Solutions team works with the HR Operational Excellence team and across HR SD. In addition to its PMO function, the Foundation Solutions team focuses on identifying areas of opportunity through business architecture and information architecture. Says Gan, "As stewards of the IT investment in HR systems, we ensure that investments are made in the right areas and are providing adequate return on investment." The team's current projects include developing an HR business intelligence solution and streamlining a currently disparate employee job taxonomy.

In addition, the Foundation Solutions team has combined forces with the HR Operations Excellence group to implement a multi-year plan to deliver an integrated HR portal based on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server2007. The solution unifies the employee experience of the various HR applications and tools by making significant changes to HRWeb, the Microsoft HR intranet portal and the second-most-visited internal site at Microsoft.

The joint team is integrating three separate Microsoft portals and dozens of HR tools into one single point of entry with a consistent user interface across connected sites and applications, and streamlined HR processes and workflows. It's also consolidating global content management and developing a solid, future-state architecture platform by taking advantage of common development components for reuse. These efforts will contribute to an enhanced user experience, reduced maintenance costs, easier information discovery, improved compliance with legal requirements, and a better ability to deliver systems that meet the needs of the global Microsoft audience.

Figure 2. HR SD has taken advantage of many out-of-the-box Microsoft technologies to provide Microsoft employees with targeted tools that make their jobs easier.

Benefits

Microsoft HR, Microsoft IT, and the company's other employees worldwide benefit from the relationship between HR and Microsoft IT through the HR SD group. Projects are delivered in a timelier manner, and the projects themselves are more targeted to provide value to Microsoft employees because they're aligned with the company's overall goals and strategic objectives. Improved accountability and, more important, communication among Microsoft HR, HR SD, and IT resources also has made HR projects more successful. "Using HR's oneHR Project Development Framework and its IT Life Cycle, we've also established a framework for measuring, monitoring and managing each project's impact against target metrics that are aligned to HR's strategic drivers," says Francis Gan.

Improved planning. Because of the creation of HR SD and the opportunity to reexamine processes, HR planning is significantly better than before. The results of the planning work speak for themselves: Microsoft HR and IT stakeholders unanimously approved just 14 projects this past fiscal year, all of which were fully vetted, prioritized, and well aligned with HR goals. "It's a real win-win scenario now that interaction in our business space is more holistic and both sides of the equation routinely share best-practice learning," says Carol Bubar, Senior Director in Microsoft HR. "HR SD understands our capabilities and how to further integrate and improve them."

Increased ability to deliver projects on time. HR SD participation is helping everyone involved with Microsoft HR projects collaborate more seamlessly, avoid missteps, and move projects forward. Says Pitasky, "Before, we operated in an atmosphere in which small groups just created what they needed, resulting in a patchwork of systems that didn't necessarily interoperate and prevented us from easily establishing global solutions. We had no integrity in our technical plans relative to our business plans and vice versa. Now we can address issues from both business and technology perspectives, at the right time in the right way."

HR SD has helped make project communication consistent, structured, and governed. Everyone involved with a project has defined roles and responsibilities, which helps ensure that the team has appropriate expertise on both business and technical sides of a project.

Better communication. The new model has lent itself to more structured communication among groups. "This partnership erases lines between organizations and focuses all of us on the overall strategy for HR. Not only do we have a clear portfolio of 14 projects, we now have regular meetings in which we're given the full context in which to consider a supporting IT project because both business and IT representatives are presenting the picture to us," says Bubar. "Having a joint review helps bring out dependencies and gets the right people in the room to hear the information and make informed decisions."

Adds Kyle Johnson, "In a perfect world, you wouldn't need HR SD, but we live in a complex world. It's useful to have someone translate business goals into actionable IT items and then supply Microsoft IT with digestible feedback from HR users so that both sides fully understand all the causes and effects. HR SD does just that."

Stronger relationship between IT and HR. Since the creation of HR SD, the group has been able to provide genuine value to its partner—on its timeline. "Now we've got open communication and buy-in from leaders on the HR and IT sides, who set a positive tone because the results support their high expectations," says Bubar. "We don't waste time with finger-pointing, we just work together to determine necessary technical and/or business adjustments." Evidence of the improved relationship is easy to find, because Microsoft HR evaluates the HR SD group each year. Since the transition, HR's approval ratings of its technical resources have increased dramatically. Previously, HR employees gave them a 1 out of a possible 4 regarding IT value to HR. This year, HR SD received a 4.

At the same time, Microsoft IT benefits from the stronger relationship because the group now has clear prioritization and goals from the business. As a result, Microsoft IT can deliver the projects that are most important to HR and Microsoft employees, making better use of financial and human resources.

Enhanced service to Microsoft employees. Ultimately, the real difference for HR today is that the organization can deliver better service to its customers, who consist of Microsoft employees around the world. Rather than the more than 140 HR applications that used to overwhelm Microsoft employees, HR SD has simplified offerings so that there now are approximately 100 applications. "Microsoft employees also benefit from better-quality projects that have been approached from more angles and therefore are more complete before they're deployed," says Thielen. "Now that we've got frameworks and processes for how to execute projects and align them more closely with the company's overall goals, we're having a greater, more guided impact on employees."

Key Learnings/Success Factors

Some of the most important success factors for the transformation of Microsoft HR and the establishment of the HR SD group include the following:

• Executive sponsorship: The clear support from Microsoft executives gave those responsible for creating the new structure the leverage that they needed to make changes.
• Diversity of a cross-functional team: By gaining support and providing a mechanism for ongoing communication across teams, Microsoft HR and the HR SD group have established and maintained the collaboration structure necessary to accomplish HR's goals.
• Use of standardized technology solutions: Rather than using the point solutions that had been employed previously, Microsoft HR now relies on standardized tools that can be used across the organization, which provides easier development and more streamlined management. Using a portfolio planning tool enables unbiased and unemotional prioritization discussions.
• Cultural willingness: Decision makers in Microsoft HR were open to a change in the project planning and prioritization process. Others in HR and Microsoft IT also were open-minded about trying a new structure and way of doing business.
• Up-front communication: Clear statements of business goals are critical to rationalizing IT investments and to driving a cohesive implementation strategy for both business and IT projects.
• Clear, value-added roles: Determining roles and priorities helps promote accountability and minimize duplication of effort. For those in HR SD, this means focusing on managing IT capabilities for the business, appropriately taking advantage of IT investments, and maximizing the use of technology.
• Team leaders driving and managing change: Experienced leaders who can envision the future state, to-be processes and who understand the environment are key to dealing with hurdles along the way and establishing scenario-specific plans.

Conclusion

The creation of the Microsoft HR Solutions Delivery function has greatly improved the company's HR business. By working in tandem, HR stakeholders and HR SD staff have realigned HR projects, enhanced communication and collaboration, increased accountability, and made it possible to deliver more valuable HR solutions and tools to Microsoft employees globally.

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products or services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada information Centre at (800) 563-9048. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information through the World Wide Web, go to:

www.microsoft.com

www.microsoft.com/technet/itshowcase

For more information about HR and HR SD improved planning via Office Project Portfolio Server2007, refer to the webcast and business case study at:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/0/4/40450754-1ce6-42bd-b302-0df052146be6/HRPPSBCS.doc

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032346076&CountryCode=US

For more information about HRWeb, refer to the webcast at:

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032346074&CountryCode=US

For more information about Performance@Microsoft, compensation, benefits, and employee management, refer to the papers and webcast at:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb735160.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb735166.aspx

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032317049&CountryCode=US

© 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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