Certis: Lionising Skills on the Frontline with SAP HCM
Meet the Authors
Key Takeaways
⇨ Certis Group utilises SAP SuccessFactors to enhance employee lifecycle management, particularly in procurement and frontline staff operations across Singapore and Australia.
⇨ AI integration is a focal point for Certis, with a strong interest in automating resume screening and enhancing candidate experiences in talent acquisition.
⇨ Local skills taxonomy initiatives, such as those by SkillsFuture in Singapore, are being leveraged by Certis to develop workforce capabilities, and there's hope for SAP to enhance offerings that support skills management and technology integration.
Certis is a leading outsourced services partner operating across Singapore and South East Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Hong Kong and Macau. Headquartered in Lion City, the firm designs, builds and operates multi-disciplinary smart security and integrated services. It boasts 38,000 employees globally, and provides physical security to big-name clients such as Nanyang Technological University and Singapore Changi Airport.
Dr. Jaclyn Lee, chief human resources officer at Certis Group and Andrew Soh, head of HRIS, Certis, sat down with Mastering SAP at this month’s SuccessConnect event, the annual flagship conference for SAP SuccessFactors for an interview looking at how the Group uses SAP’s HCM offerings across Singapore and Australia with regards to procurement, frontline staff and the employee lifecycle. They also touch on how AI is galvanising skills taxonomy in Singapore, and what they’d like SAP to offer next with SuccessFactors.
Giacomo Lee [GL]: What is your SuccessFactors story? What success have you had with the Suite?
Explore related questions
Andrew Soh [AS]: We have implemented the Performance & Goals Management module in SuccessFactors (PMGM) for around two years […] We do see a lot of value in SuccessFactors for the whole ecosystem, because it ranges from recruitment onboarding, all the way throughout the whole employee life cycle, with the integration into finance, procurement etc. Our Australian colleagues are soon implementing modules like SuccessFactors Employee Central and Employee Central Payroll (EC, ECP). We’d like to move into ECP for Singapore, as well as our regional markets.
GL: Are there any challenges when it comes to implementation?
AS: It’s not that challenging in terms of implementation. But probably in terms of the nature of our business as we have a lot of frontliners on the ground [for security work]. A lot of title modules in SAP are very specific to corporate staff, so we would like to see how we can be supported by SAP in driving the adoption and cost managing for all our frontliners.
GL: What kind of challenges do you use SuccessFactors to solve on a regular basis?
Dr. Jaclyn Lee [JL]: It’s really about the candidate experience. The whole employee life cycle starts with candidates, right? So they have a good experience, which develops a good impression of the company, right? But if you ask me, I think there’s more we can do: the onboarding platform is still good, but I think it’ll be better if SAP products help us automate resume screening, and use generative AI to shortlist candidates. Recruiters spend a lot of time shortlisting resumes, so I think that’s where AI can play a big part.
GL: How do you deal with regulations across your territories using HCM?
JL: It’s very different. The labour laws are very different; there are a lot in Australia compared to Singapore. China is different and so is the Middle East.
AS: One of the strongest points of SAP is they always support all the statutory changes […] We customised solutions every time there is a change. With other standard support from SAP, it actually help us to not to have to worry and we can move a lot faster.
GL: The big news of SuccessConnect 2024 revolved around new third-party integrations for the skills ecosystem. What’s your take?
AS: It’s interesting […] The [third-party] brand names are probably more supportive to the Western side of the world. On the Asian side there are other providers as well but it really depends on how they can build a collaboration. A large part of Title Management involves skills taxonomy. That is not something that a company builds itself and it is a challenge to keep it updated.
JL: In Singapore we also have local companies that specialise in skills taxonomy. And we have a statutory board called SkillsFuture which has developed roadmaps and training maps, industry maps and so forth also for all jobs. In fact, there’s a huge database of skills and skills taxonomy, so what AI companies are doing is they’re pulling information on them and global databases to put into this very interesting system. There, employees can go in, know where they currently are and plan for themselves across the next five years. ‘If I want to do this role, what are the skills? I need to upgrade in order to move up.’
So, it’s a very individualised kind of AI that can actually help them to develop their careers. I’m not sure whether SAP has this kind of product [integrated] but it’s extremely useful because it helps us to be competitive. It helps to really build up the entire skills and workforce capability to the next level for Certis.
We are actually running a big skills taxonomy project now as we have a big tech business. We develop operational technology, so we have a tech team working on all the skills taxonomy, and it would be excellent if SAP can consider looking at some of these products.
Premium
