Komatsu Australia: Delivering an experience its employees deserve
Explore Komatsu’s employee experience journey with SAP
Komatsu Australia Pty Ltd created human resources management (HRM) practices that put its people at the centre of the business, building on its excellence in product innovation and customer satisfaction. Using SAP SuccessFactors solutions, the company improved systems and processes for onboarding and engaging its Oceania workforce, embedding continuous HR improvement.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Industrial manufacturing | Fairfield, Australia | >3,500 employees |
efficiency improvement.
enterprise-wide professional workforce productivity gain.
return on investment.
General Manager – Human Resources, Komatsu Australia Pty Ltd
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Industrial manufacturing | Fairfield, Australia | >3,500 employees |
efficiency improvement.
enterprise-wide professional workforce productivity gain.
return on investment.
General Manager – Human Resources, Komatsu Australia Pty Ltd
Transforming HR operations to mirror business excellence
Behind the recognisable machinery and brand of Komatsu Australia Pty Ltd lies an impressive record of excellence in the earthmoving and heavy equipment sector spanning more than a century.
The business provides not only earthmoving machinery but a whole range of equipment and technology-related services in the mining, construction, energy, and public sectors.
With the Oceania workforce, encompassing employees from Australia, New Zealand, and New Caledonia, growing to more than 3,500 employees, Komatsu’s executive management team faced a turning point. The company needed to modernise its HR operations to match the ingenuity of its products and its success with customers.
Melissa Morrison, general manager of human resources at Komatsu reflects on the challenge. “Komatsu has invested a lot in our products and our customers, but when we asked ourselves whether the HR experience matched the company’s aspiration of quality and innovation, we had to admit the answer was no.”
Specifically, Komatsu wanted to implement world-class HR-related business processes in the key areas of attracting and retaining talent. Innovation is a key attribute of the Komatsu brand, and it also wanted to take advantage of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) to keep pace with the market and competitors.
Komatsu operates in sectors where the workforce is highly mobile, and it wanted to mitigate the effects of transience and turnover by doubling down on efforts to attract and keep top-notch talent. The aim was to do this through best-practice employer branding and retention strategies.
Despite its considerable achievements as an employer, and having won awards for its efforts in HR, the hiring process at Komatsu was not a positive experience for many candidates. Other HR processes could be disjointed and haphazard as well.
To begin with, onboarding was bogged down with too much paperwork and repetitive manual tasks, making everything more complicated than it needed to be. After that, HR processes moved slowly, and trying to get a clear overview of HR operations was often difficult, if not impossible. This made it challenging to figure out what was working well and what needed improvement, let alone make any necessary changes.
The process of reflection at Komatsu triggered a new commitment to put the employee experience at the heart of its HR strategy. As well as benefiting new talent and existing employees, the company wanted to elevate HR’s impact and move it away from being administrative focused to create value for the company.
The HR team was adamant that while Komatsu was looking for a top-tier solution to support its revamped HRM function, the initiative had to be driven by its people, with technology as the enabler. This was a business transformation project involving technology, not a technology project for its own sake.
After considering its position, the company began its HR transformation with the SAP SuccessFactors portfolio to redefine and elevate its employee experience. The goal was to ensure Komatsu’s legacy of innovation could be sustained in every step of the employee journey.
General Manager – Human Resources, Komatsu Australia Pty Ltd
Improving employee experience with technology-enabled HR and onboarding
Komatsu looked at available solutions in the market that could fit the criteria for solving their HR challenges. SAP’s size and established reputation were important drivers for its decision to go with SAP SuccessFactors solutions, as was the ability of the solutions to integrate with the company’s other SAP solutions.
Following Komatsu’s successful adoption of SAP SuccessFactors in other regions, it moved forward with implementing the solutions in Oceania.
“Ripping the Band-Aid off” is how Morrison describes Komatsu’s head-on approach to implementing SAP SuccessFactors. Unlike some companies that start with a limited scope, focusing on one or two modules at a time, Komatsu chose to adopt the portfolio. This included the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution and other talent management capabilities to achieve the greatest impact and maximise return on investment.
The team’s holistic approach to the project was a big part of its success. This included strong executive sponsorship; framing the project as a business transformation, not a technology implementation; enthusiastic stakeholders including IT, line managers, and employees; and keeping the employee experience at the centre of all decisions. Importantly, the transformation project was well resourced with a full-time senior project manager and a senior change manager contributing to a smooth implementation.
On a practical level, the impact of SAP SuccessFactors has been undeniable. When asked what a quick win would look like for one of the line managers, the response was “to have full and instant visibility of my entire team’s salaries.” Formerly, these sorts of insights hadn’t been possible without significant effort. Using SAP SuccessFactors, line managers can now retrieve accurate data instantly and with ease.
Many other wins have followed, from recognising a series of critical HR challenges to implementing a comprehensive, innovative employee experience solution, demonstrating Komatsu’s consistent commitment to excellence across all of its operations.
General Manager – Human Resources, Komatsu Australia Pty Ltd
Delivering process improvements and productivity across the HRM function
After a focused project to implement SAP SuccessFactors, Komatsu successfully transformed HR from a back-office function into a strategic driver for attracting, engaging, and retaining the industry’s top talents.
The solutions have been tailored with Komatsu’s branding and are accessed as “Our Place,” with strong internal recognition, ownership, and uptake. A range of process improvements have vastly enhanced candidate care and streamlined the process of transitioning new hires into employees.
The SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding solution now provides a process that is exclusively paperless, with improvements gained through comprehensive digitalisation. The HR team is delighted that this has eliminated tedious and time-consuming manual work, vastly reducing the administrative burden for new hires.
When an existing team member is promoted or transferred, the system handles the administration, notifications, and new salary package details. It’s more efficient and makes a big difference in keeping employees engaged and happy.
There’s a boost to documentation and confidentiality management efficiency, and with the SAP SuccessFactors Learning solution, employees benefit from access to an immersive learning experience with intelligent, customisable digital content that’s accessible from most any device.
Morrison estimates that Komatsu’s human resource management functions are between 25% and 40% more efficient, and the project has improved the productivity of its professional workforce by 2% enterprise-wide.
Building a foundation for the future
The business case for implementing SAP SuccessFactors has been a success, with the project on track to achieve a full return on investment within four years.
Overall, the use of SAP SuccessFactors has embedded a new way of working and serves as the foundation for continuous improvements at Komatsu. The company is planning to leverage SAP’s investment in AI to unlock significant future cost savings and efficiencies, as well as take advantage of the continuous adoption of new leading practices and delivered innovation.
As it looks to the future, the company is confident that its employee experience is a worthy match for its more than a century of product quality and innovation.