Woodgrain Millwork: Reducing Payroll-Processing Cycle

Picture Credit | Woodgrain Millwork, Fruitland, Idaho. Used with permission.
SAP Business Transformation Study | Mill Products | Woodgrain Millwork
Woodgrain Millwork: Reducing
Payroll-Processing Cycle Time by
67% with SAP® ERP HCM
Partner
Real-world solutions.
BESTXPERTS
With a significant number of employees located in 16 U.S. manufacturing and
distribution locations that service nearly 800 big-box retail stores, Woodgrain
Millwork Inc. is one of the world’s largest millwork companies. To reduce cost and
improve efficiency, Woodgrain standardized all employees on a biweekly payroll
processing cycle with the SAP® ERP Human Capital Management solution.
SAP Business Transformation Study | Mill Products | Woodgrain Millwork
Executive overview
Company
Woodgrain Millwork Inc.
Headquarters
Fruitland, Idaho
Industry
Mill products
Products and Services
Molding, doors, windows, and
other wood products
Revenue
Privately held
Web Site
www.woodgrain.com
Partner
BestXperts
www.bestxperts.com
Business Transformation
Top Benefits Achieved
The company’s top objectives
•• Replace its end-of-life legacy payroll application with a new, integrated
human capital management solution
•• Reduce payroll-processing cycle time, effort, and expense
•• Standardize all employees on a biweekly payroll cycle, instead of weekly
and semimonthly cycles
Faster payroll-processing
cycle time
The resolution
•• Replaced the legacy payroll application with the SAP® ERP Human Capital
Management (SAP ERP HCM) solution
•• Implemented SAP ERP HCM in less than 6 months
•• Partnered with experienced payroll systems integrator BestXperts
The key benefits
•• Implemented the solution on time and 15.6% under budget
•• Avoided the expense of upgrading the legacy payroll application
•• Increased payroll volume while reducing payroll-processing cycle time
Read more
67%
>90%
Reduction in annual
payroll-processing cost
44%
Lower total cost of
ownership over 5 years
See more metrics
“Based on firsthand experience with SAP ERP HCM, I can say without
doubt that we made an excellent decision in choosing SAP as our
solution provider and BestXperts as our implementation partner.”
Connie Moylan, Chief Information Officer, Woodgrain Millwork Inc.
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SAP Business Transformation Study | Mill Products | Woodgrain Millwork
Executive overview
Company objectives
Resolution
Business transformation
Future plans
Taking a new path with enterprise
resource planning
“It became obvious we couldn’t continue down the
same path,” says Moylan. “We had to start on a new
path to growth for Woodgrain with an ERP [enterprise
resource planning] solution.” That decision resulted
in Woodgrain’s partnership with BestXperts, an SAP
partner. “BestXperts was much like us,” she says.
“They were about the same size as Woodgrain, and
family owned, like us, with deep experience in the
building products industry.” Moylan felt that both
BestXperts and the SAP ERP application, which
BestXperts had successfully implemented in the
past, were perfect fits to meet Woodgrain’s need for
an integrated ERP solution. “But before we implemented an ERP solution,” she says, “we had an even more
urgent need for an HCM [human capital management]
solution.”
Beginning in 2006, perhaps no other industry has
been as adversely affected by the down economy
as the building products industry. “By the end of
2009,” says Connie Moylan, chief information officer
for Woodgrain Millwork Inc., “our sales volume had
dropped significantly, and 40% of our IT staff had
been laid off.” Up until then, Woodgrain had had an
extremely aggressive acquisitions growth strategy
that began in the 1980s. Throughout that time, the
company was acquiring about two new sites each year,
and every time it did, Woodgrain ended up with a new
system to support. By 2009 – a particularly brutal
year for the building products industry – Woodgrain
had over 100 applications in place spanning nearly
25 sites.
“In 2009, I dug in and analyzed the cost of everything – of every system
and every application we had – and everything pointed to the fact that we
needed an ERP system to replace all of that.”
Connie Moylan, Chief Information Officer, Woodgrain Millwork Inc.
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SAP Business Transformation Study | Mill Products | Woodgrain Millwork
Executive overview
‘Winning’ with human capital management
Company objectives
Resolution
Business transformation
Future plans
support for best HCM practices that’s built in to SAP
ERP HCM. Woodgrain also leveraged BestXperts’
agile implementation methodology, which employed
six-week “sprints” to develop the blueprinting,
configure the solution, review it with business users,
make refinements, and deploy specific functionality
to support the business. As a result, Woodgrain
deployed SAP ERP HCM in less than six months and
15.6% under budget. The project also came in 70%
under budget for custom development by adhering
to best practices. By October 2011, Woodgrain was
using SAP ERP HCM to meet 100% of its payroll
processing needs.
Woodgrain’s drive to implement an HCM solution
stemmed from an end-of-life situation with its
existing payroll application. As of November 1, 2011,
that application would no longer be supported by
its vendor without an expensive upgrade and high
annual usage fees. Although the legacy payroll application was easy to use, it didn’t solve Woodgrain’s
need for system integration, because it wouldn’t
natively integrate to SAP ERP. Moreover, the cost to
continue using it was very high compared to the SAP
ERP HCM solution. “In fact,” Moylan reports, “SAP
ERP HCM was about 91% less costly on an ongoing,
annual basis than it would have been to keep our
legacy payroll application.”
Woodgrain decided to implement SAP ERP HCM
as part of its “Woodgrain Integrated Now” (WIN)
project. During deployment, the firm relied on the
“I can point to our deployment of SAP ERP HCM as a superb example of
how BestXperts’ iterative implementation methodology can succeed in
cost-effectively meeting an aggressive timeline.”
Mike O’Dell, President, BestXperts
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SAP Business Transformation Study | Mill Products | Woodgrain Millwork
Executive overview
Succeeding with best practices
Company objectives
Resolution
Business transformation
Future plans
“One big reason the implementation of SAP ERP HCM
was successful is that BestXperts is very much into
best practices,” Moylan says, “and now we are too.”
Woodgrain attributes the use of the best practices
supported by SAP ERP HCM as a major contributing
factor to the benefits the firm is reaping today from
its new, comprehensive payroll-processing solution.
reduced its annual cost for payroll processing by
over 90%. Furthermore, Woodgrain has cut the total
cost of ownership of its payroll solution nearly in half.
“I’m glad we started with HCM,” says Moylan, “and
not a more difficult challenge, like manufacturing,
because those best practices for payroll supported
by SAP ERP HCM really gave us a solid first win for
our WIN project.”
For example, Woodgrain has significantly reduced
its payroll-processing cycle time from six days to
just two days – while simultaneously doubling its
payroll-processing volume. The firm has also radically
Key benefits
67%
>90%
44%
6.3%
15.6%
50%
Faster payroll-processing
cycle time
Improvement in data
accuracy, to 99.9%
Reduction in annual
payroll-processing cost
Below budget in implementing
the HCM solution
5
Lower total cost of ownership
over 5 years
Reduction in payroll-related
workload
Executive overview
Company objectives
Resolution
Business transformation
Future plans
Moving forward
with future plans
The implementation of SAP ERP HCM has opened
wide the door of HR possibilities at Woodgrain.
“We’re just in the infancy of a huge opportunity to
automate our HR processes,” says Moylan. Among
other goals, these opportunities include the use of
exception-based time sheets and the implementation of manager and employee self-service. In
addition, Woodgrain is now considering the elimination of its legacy timekeeping system, which Moylan
anticipates will lead to additional ongoing payrollprocessing savings.
CMP17547 (12/04)
In the past, Moylan felt the legacy IT systems were
like a ball and chain that prevented her company
from accomplishing its long-term goals. However,
the implementation of SAP ERP HCM has changed
that picture. “Now we have a platform for growth and
strategic execution,” says Moylan. “I think the sky’s
the limit in terms of what we are going to be able to
achieve.”
Copyright/Trademark | Privacy | Impressum
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Picture Credit | Woodgrain Millwork, Fruitland, Idaho. Used with permission.
Picture Credit | Customer Name, City, State/Country. Used with permission.
Woodgrain Millwork