People teams (HR) need to comply with country-specific employment laws
Employment contracts were created manually, taking up considerable time and effort
Sought a solution that could integrate with SAP SuccessFactors solutions

SAS aims to bring Scandinavia to the world—and the world to Scandinavia. The flag carrier of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, the airline operates more than 130 routes around the world, including intercontinental destinations such as Asia.

To deliver safe, reliable, and high-quality experiences to thousands of traveling customers every month, SAS employs over 10,000 dedicated colleagues across its global business. In the company’s People function (human resources), professionals strive to recruit the optimal skills and competencies to help the company strengthen its position as one of the world’s leading airlines.

Pi Lindström, data and processes and support leader at SAS, confirmed, “We have a large colleague population across our domestic markets in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, as well as at our international hubs. As we operate in a highly regulated industry, we need to consider compliance and data governance requirements in everything we do—including recruitment.”

To help streamline its approach to human capital management, SAS deployed SAP SuccessFactors® solutions. To maximize its investment, the company looked for a way to remove manual work from document-driven processes, such as creating new employment contracts.

“Creating contracts used to involve substantial time and effort,” said Lindström.

One of the best things about the OpenText team is their creativity. OpenText Professional Services was never afraid to challenge our ideas and propose approaches that we hadn’t considered—it was a truly collaborative approach from start to finish.

Pi Lindström
Data & Processes and Support Leader, People Team (HR), SAS

Solution

To enhance its approach to creating and managing contracts and other people records, SAS decided to use OpenText™ Content Management. Integrated seamlessly with SAP SuccessFactors, the OpenText solution enables SAS to automate document-driven workflows.

Products deployed

OpenText™ Content Management for SAP® SuccessFactors

Automate HR operations with HR document management

Solution deployed

OpenText™ Professional Services

Get a trusted partner to guide your information management path

Building on a proven content management solution

A long-term user of OpenText Content Management (formerly Extended ECM), SAS has relied on the platform to store thousands of records across its global business. Based on the company’s positive experiences with the solution, the SAS project team was confident that OpenText Content Management would be an excellent fit to automate its people workflows.

“Over the years, we have expanded our use of OpenText Content Management to solve new business challenges, so the solution was at the front of our minds during the selection process,” commented Lindström.

Designing new workflows with OpenText Professional Services

Working with expert consultants from OpenText Professional Services, SAS mapped out its existing process for creating employment contracts and identified opportunities to introduce workflow automation from OpenText Content Management. Throughout the project, OpenText worked closely with the SAS labor law department to ensure that the new workflows met the company’s stringent regulatory requirements.

“Working with OpenText Professional Services was wonderful,” said Lindström. “One of the best things about the OpenText team is their creativity. OpenText Professional Services was never afraid to challenge our ideas and propose approaches that we hadn’t considered—it was a truly collaborative approach from start to finish.”

Migrating thousands of records seamlessly

Today, SAS uses native integration between OpenText Content Management and SAP SuccessFactors to eliminate information silos and accelerate contract generation for the Swedish arm of the business. The OpenText solution is now the core repository for people records, and all new employment contracts created in SAP SuccessFactors are stored in OpenText Content Management.

“We had to transfer thousands and thousands of employment contracts from our old storage platform to the OpenText solution, which would have taken forever if we had done it manually,” commented Lindström. “To speed up the work, OpenText created a script that automatically attached the relevant documents to each colleague’s record. There’s no way we could have completed our records migration so quickly without help from OpenText.”

Airplane landing at an airport during sunset.

Today, creating an employment contract is a smooth process. We estimate that our people team in Sweden is now saving around 200 hours a month—or one whole full-time equivalent [FTE] a year. As a result, our team can now spend more time on strategic, value-added work.

Pi Lindström
Data & Processes and Support Leader, People Team (HR), SAS

Results

By leveraging OpenText Content Management with SAP SuccessFactors, SAS is saving more than a thousand hours a year—freeing up one full-time equivalent in its people team in Sweden and enabling the organization to focus on value-added activities.

Saved 1 FTE a year in the People team

OpenText Content Management for SAP SuccessFactors has helped SAS transform its approach to generating employment contracts.

In Employee Central, an admin first selects the relevant candidate, and the system automatically launches OpenText Content Management. Next, the user chooses the appropriate template for the candidate’s role. From there, the solution automatically handles the e-signature process and saves the final copy of the document in the colleague’s file for long-term retention.

“Today, creating an employment contract is a super simple process,” explained Lindström. “We estimate that our admin team is now saving around 200 hours a month—or one whole full-time equivalent [FTE] a year. As a result, our team can now spend more time on strategic, value-added work.”

Enhanced data governance and security

Since it adopted OpenText Content Management as its document management system for SAP SuccessFactors, SAS has also enhanced its data governance and information security capabilities. In Sweden, employment law requires employees on medical leave to submit a doctor’s note on their eighth day off work. Previously, the company stored doctor’s notes as text documents, but SAS saw the chance to improve its approach.

Lindström said, “We have now set up a web form where employees can upload doctor notes. These documents are now automatically and securely stored on each colleague’s record in OpenText Content Management.”

“We are confident that we will be able to replicate our success in other areas of our business,” concluded Lindström. “The combination of SAP SuccessFactors and OpenText Content Management gives us a very solid platform. By continuing our partnership with OpenText, there are endless opportunities to make things better and more efficient.”