As a plant breeding and biotechnology company, KWS SAAT SE & Co. KGaA, founded in 1856, is the parent company of the KWS Group, specializing in the production and distribution of sugar beet and maize seeds, among other crops. The KWS Group is the fourth-largest seed producer globally, with over 5,300 employees dedicated to financing basic research and breeding activities across the company’s range of varieties.
With a growing number of 87 subsidiary and associated companies, along with an increasing clientele, partners, and employees, the creation of new employment contracts and the associated contract processes have become increasingly demanding within the company.
Time-consuming correction loops, tedious formatting errors, time lost due to duplicate data entry, as well as the desire to act more sustainably and environmentally conscious, were ultimately decisive factors for the automation of German employment contracts.
The introduction of HR Contract Automation further advanced the digitization of contract processes in the HR department. Personnel measures such as salary increases or job changes for employees were thus simplified.
In summary, the solution has been very well received and has been in use since November 2020. Special thanks go to the colleagues at KWS and Alight for their excellent collaboration and outstanding teamwork.
Andreas Nollau
Senior Associate HR Admin DACH
With the project kick-off in August 2020, personnel processes were defined and analyzed. These are based on SharePoint data structures. To minimize dependency on SharePoint, the decision was made to forego the use of SharePoint forms and instead opt for the development of a Power App.
In this process, an authorization concept and a multi-stage approval process were implemented using Power Automate in conjunction with Microsoft Teams. The extension of the audit logs enabled the tracking and assignment of user activities, such as approval processes. For document generation, the partner product Dox42 was utilized. A significant reduction in the over 100 different contract templates was achieved through the use of Dox42. This simplified the management of templates, such as capturing legal changes, to a considerable extent.
By using a Power App, the individual components of the Power App can be integrated and utilized when using other apps as well.
By implementing dynamic templates, new templates can be created and used at any time without the need for development effort. Each personnel measure is dynamically assigned to the appropriate template during creation. When defining a new personnel measure, another template can be added within minutes. Rules for form fields were also implemented, governing aspects such as the determination of mandatory fields and the possible inputs.
