Q&A with the world’s largest law firm, Dentons, and United VARs partner, Edenhouse Solutions.
United VARs member for the UK & Ireland, Edenhouse Solutions, has been working with Dentons, a global law firm, for the past 18 months to transform their talent program. It is one of the largest ever SAP SuccessFactors implementations, bringing together 77 countries and 189 locations under a common global template.
Edenhouse recently interviewed their customer, Carl Jewitt, Global Program Director for Global Talent Transformation at Dentons, about his experience of the transformation project. Read on to see how the partnership between the customer, Edenhouse, and the United VARs network has contributed to the success so far.
You can listen to the full 24-minute interview on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Edenhouse: Why did you choose Edenhouse as your implementation partner for this project?
Carl @ Dentons: The key concern for us was to work with a partner that could help bring all our regions together and design a global template, the global core really, but that could also allow regions their local requirements. Because we're implementing on a regional perspective, some of the regions aren't going to be implementing until 2022 or 2023, which has been exacerbated because of Covid-19. Trying to maintain their focus was a concern for me and so the level of engagement was really important.
We've sustained that level of engagement either with you guys at Edenhouse, or with me and my team, the Region COOs, and with the Talent Teams. It was a really good process, and there was a lot of desire from the regions to get new processes. There's a real pull from people around the world to have this more efficient system with better ways of working.
Edenhouse: We're now 18 months down the line and we're already live in Australia. How do you think the partnership between Dentons, Edenhouse, and United VARs has worked so far?
Carl @ Dentons: The relationship has worked really well. I was lucky enough to meet the other United VARs partner, the guys at DXC Oxygen, who are near our Sydney office. It just felt as though we were talking to Edenhouse, which is a testament to what the United VARs relationship is all about.
We split the launch in two because of the whole impact of Covid. The first launch in July was to give the system and new processes to the Region Talent Team. Then, the wider launch was to everyone across Australia, which DXC helped with, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. They have been an overwhelming success.
We only had a couple of hours a week in some instances to engage with the Dentons Talent Team because they were supporting Covid-related activities in their offices. To work with them in that intense way was hard but I think we achieved it really, really well.
Within a couple of weeks, we were over 86% for logins, not counting repeat logins. That is phenomenal when you consider the Covid environment we're in, and we're now tipping in at nearly 100%.
And that, of course, has created confidence in the other regions who are saying, “Wow, we launched in a Covid year. That's incredible. Who were you working with? How did you achieve that?”. We're certainly seeing that confidence then ebbing into Canada and in the States and in the other follow-on regions. So, I'm really satisfied with the launch, it's gone incredibly well.
Edenhouse: Did this move to HR cloud technology help users continue working once Covid-19 hit?
Carl @ Dentons: Absolutely. We've got a lot of paper-based processes across our regions, so this came at the right time. Now we've got a cloud-based solution with more efficient processes it’s saving the Talent Team a lot of time. They're feeding back to us that they’ve got more time to spend with our partners and their teams and that's a huge benefit. When we go mobile, which is maybe not required right now given the impacts of Covid, the fact there's so much functionality in the app is just going to leap it forward again.
We've been talking about people working from home, flexible working, for a long time. The legal sector has a reputation of being behind professional services in that regard. Dentons' move to the SAP SuccessFactors cloud-based solution that we now have is another building block to help us deliver that. Really, the move to get everybody working from home was pretty seamless. In all honesty, it was very, very fast.
When it comes to facing the many challenges of a project like this, the key thing is keeping a personal approach. So, working together as one team, working with clients and implementation partners together, and being able to adapt to any challenges along the way, whether that be cultural, or system and solution-related.
About Edenhouse
Edenhouse Solutions is a leading SAP Platinum Partner and the United VARs member for the UK and Ireland. Their SAP specialists implement the latest SAP technologies and Cloud innovations and are dedicated to helping their customers optimise their investment in SAP through their SAP Support Services.
About United VARs
United VARs is certified with the highest SAP status as Platinum Partner and forms an alliance of leading IT solution providers in approximately 100 countries to guarantee the best service and support for your international SAP implementations, ERP optimization projects, and cross-border nearshoring. Are you planning a global SAP rollout? Watch the United VARs video
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