A multinational confectionary company required a system to provide all staff with the ability to select from a range of benefits available as part of their remuneration package. The HR department of the company used a SAP system for data storage. They had used a paper based system to allow staff to select their own benefit package but were finding that this was too labour intensive. They considered having a SAP based system but felt that this would be too expensive and difficult to make available to all staff. They therefore decided that staff should choose their benefits through a standard Internet browser interface.
The benefit selection process is run once a year. The benefits are downloaded from the SAP HR system into a Lotus Domino database using the Lotus Enterprise Integrator (LEI). The staff are then allowed to begin selecting their own benefit package.
Screenshot of the browser input
The benefit selection process is as follows:
- The staff members select the benefits that they wish to obtain. When they are happy with these selections, they submit them for approval.
- HR administrators review the benefit selection requests, approving or rejecting them, as appropriate.
- Approved selections are submitted for upload to the SAP system.
- Once the selections have been successfully uploaded, a confirmation message is sent to the originating staff member.
The use of the Flexible Benefits system has allowed the company to personalise the Benefits package provided to each employee. The system has been easy to roll-out and has been well received by staff due to the simple browser based selection process. The strong workflow and security capabilities of Lotus Domino have been used to ensure that the selection process is well controlled, and the upload of data to SAP provides the data warehousing and reporting facilities that are required by the HR department and the enterprise beyond.