WNS: Automating core HR management for different employee personas to support a diverse and quickly expanding client base
HR transformation unleashes innovation potential
Leading digital business transformation and services company WNS (Holdings) Ltd. accelerated its digital HR transformation with SAP SuccessFactors solutions. In place of a fragmented HR IT landscape, the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution integrated with legacy upstream and downstream systems boosts core HR management capability in 17 countries.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Professional services | Mumbai, India | >65,000 employees | Stepping Cloud Consulting Limited |
unique workflows created.
employees benefiting from automated payroll processing.
employee and manager self-service transactions in the first year.
Corporate Senior Vice President, WNS (Holdings) Ltd.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Professional services | Mumbai, India | >65,000 employees | Stepping Cloud Consulting Limited |
unique workflows created.
employees benefiting from automated payroll processing.
employee and manager self-service transactions in the first year.
Corporate Senior Vice President, WNS (Holdings) Ltd.
Digitalizing HR practices to support a new state of perpetual innovation
WNS (Holdings) Ltd. is a digital-led business transformation and services company delivering data-to-decision capabilities at scale and offering deep industry knowledge and expertise in business process management, technology, and analytics. The company counts many of the world’s leading enterprises in insurance, manufacturing, retail, travel and leisure, healthcare, banking and financial services, shipping and logistics, utilities, high tech, and professional services as its clients.
With methodologies, frameworks, proprietary knowledge, and industry-specific technology tools and platforms targeting these industries, WNS is known for industry-focused solutions that deliver business outcomes. WNS is also known for specialized domain expertise that it has developed through its vertical organizational structure, client relationships, proprietary technology offerings, strategic acquisitions, and targeted training programs.
Present in 17 countries and delivering services to customers in 77 locations, the company’s large population of employees is represented in more than 600 job families. With WNS’s business strategy moving from a focus on transformation to a state of perpetual innovation, the company turned its attention to embracing a modern and integrated HR solution embedded with AI capabilities.
Corporate Vice President of HR, WNS (Holdings) Ltd.
Keeping employee personas at the center of its decision-making
With this new focus, when WNS evaluated the multiple HR systems it had in place, it was clear the company needed a new approach. Specifically, it needed an integrated solution that could take care of core HR workforce management processes and directly link to scheduling, time tracking, benefit management, and payroll.
Sridhar Pachigolla, corporate senior vice president at WNS, comments, “When we conducted our review of the multiple best-of-breed applications we used, we explored the option of stitching various applications together. After some consideration, we concluded that the comprehensive nature of SAP SuccessFactors solutions presented a better option for managing HR processes across the employee lifecycle.”
By embarking on its journey with SAP SuccessFactors, WNS would evolve from using disparate HR technology as systems of record and engagement to having one highly accessible and integrated system of HR intelligence and automation. Stepping Cloud Consulting Limited was appointed as the implementation partner, with WNS also drawing on the HR advisory service for SAP SuccessFactors solutions from SAP Services and Support. To configure the technology in the right way for its diverse job families and employee personas, a design thinking workshop was conducted to determine the best approach.
Rukmini Bose, corporate vice president of HR at WNS, explains, “Because we are essentially an extension of our clients’ organizations, our people are involved in a multitude of varied roles in different industries. For example, one of our employee personas is a typical customer service agent who works on shift, has targets, and provides solutions to keep our clients’ customers happy. For them, the SAP SuccessFactors Time Tracking solution is crucial, as is the calculation of overtime with regard to specific pay rules. The needs of other employee personas, such as accountants, are very different; and we need to pay them based on their certifications.”
Thanks to the flexibility provided by SAP SuccessFactors, WNS was able to work with its implementation and support partners to make specific customizations to suit its different groups of employees. See the figure for the IT architecture.
Corporate Vice President of HR, WNS (Holdings) Ltd.
Automating complex workflows based on employee personas
WNS successfully rolled out the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution in all 17 countries, giving its 65,000 employees across 600 job families a consistent experience at their fingertips. Because it was important to connect to external downstream and upstream systems, the company took advantage of SAP Integration Suite on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) to connect these systems.
WNS then integrated capabilities for time off, time tracking, global benefits, and the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll solution in India. Using this setup, employees can do everything from requesting time off to viewing the organization chart and their profiles, accessing reports, and recording their time. Managers can also view their team, delegate workflows, and pick up reminders.
Bose comments, “In terms of catering to the needs of different groups of employees, we found configuring SAP SuccessFactors to be very straightforward. When we went live globally in 17 countries, the first thing we went live with was the employee self-service functionality.”
In the span of one year, WNS recorded more than one million employee self-service and manager self-service transactions. By empowering its people to perform these tasks by themselves, it also freed the HR team from these responsibilities. Bose adds, “A lot of the previous HR shared services work is now handled by the employees themselves, which is a huge saving for us.”
In terms of operational efficiencies, with the move to SAP SuccessFactors, the creation of more than 30,000 unique employee identifiers was automated, liberating the team of this work. More than 175 unique workflows were set up that allow more than 58,000 HR documents a month to be automatically processed without any involvement from the HR team. There’s also been a reduction of more than 40,000 records in the monthly upload volume of data and documents, while the company has also automated payroll processing for 42,000 employees in India.
Corporate Senior Vice President, WNS (Holdings) Ltd.
Building on its fully integrated HR ecosystem with AI
Since the go-live of its global rollout of SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central—together with time off, time tracking, global benefits, and payroll tools in India—the company is now continuing the global deployment of time off and time tracking to other geographies. Pachigolla says that the plan for this phase of the rollout is to prioritize countries with large workforces. The company also plans to press ahead with implementing SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll in the Philippines, Costa Rica, and South Africa.
Having experienced success with using SAP BTP at the center of its digital ecosystem to simplify connecting to external systems, WNS plans to explore using other modern services on the platform for automation and process improvements. WNS is also planning to experiment with AI-assisted user experiences offered by SAP SuccessFactors HCM and the Joule copilot to replace its legacy stand-alone chatbot solution.
Featured partner
Stepping Cloud Consulting Limited is an SAP gold partner with recognized expertise in SAP SuccessFactors solutions. Offering rich experience and deep domain expertise, the company guided the deployment of the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution, helping configure the functionality to suit WNS’s diverse job families and employee population.