Britannia Building Society has unveiled plans to bring its payroll and HR systems back in-house as it nears the end of a five-year outsourcing deal.
To replace the functionality provided by HR and payroll outsourcer ICS, Britannia is rolling out an HR enterprise system from software giant SAP.
The system will underpin a two- to three-year HR change programme, known internally as PeoplePlus, which includes providing self-service HR functionality for 4,500 employees.
Helen Bates, the HR change manager responsible for the programme, said the decision to bring payroll and HR systems back in-house was driven by the close fit between Britannia’s plans and SAP’s functionality.
The move away from outsourcing was not part of a wider strategy by the building society, but the outcome of a process that identified SAP as being best suited to Britannia’s needs, she said.
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“We wanted to be able to develop applications quickly and have close control over them, as we have so many plans in this area. Our existing outsourcing arrangements were too static and did not give us the functionality we needed,” she said.
Britannia is using HR service provider Pecaso for some of its development work. It expects to go live with the HR database and payroll systems by the end of the summer, and introduce self-service functions for staff by the first quarter of 2007.
