Background 

Probitas Pharma is a group of companies in the hospital sector that since 1940 has been meeting the needs of both the professionals working in hospitals and of its patients, particularly stressing the quality of their service and the quality, efficiency and safety of their products. Probitas Pharma has grown rapidly thanks to the gradual advance of technology and the energy of its collaborators, achieving a strong implementation in Spain, its country of origin, and little by little extending its experience across the world.
As a consequence of this growth, Probitas Pharma decided to avail of a global management environment for its holding group, to allow it to efficiently administer its business processes and unify the information from all of the group companies, using the MySAP platform for the purpose. One of the major foundations of this integrated management is people management, which Probitas Pharma also included in MySAP in an integrated manner with the rest of the company processes. 

Objectives of the Project 

The main objective was to have a personnel management format to meet the economic and financial management requirements, together with the development of personnel training and capacities in an integrated and homogeneous way with the rest of the company processes that were already implemented in SAP. 

It was essential for this purpose: 

• To have an efficient and flexible tool to optimise processes in the Human Resources Department. 
• To develop the appropriate engineering to improve the company’s personnel management processes. 
• To centralise the human resources processes in the SAP R/3 system. 
• To integrate personnel management with the rest of the applications. 
• To introduce an extended model of Human Resources Management.    

To that end, Probitas Pharma undertook a complete project for the implementation of several SAP R/3 personnel management modules, specifically: 

• Organisation management. 
• Personnel administration. 
• Payroll calculation. 
• Time management. 
• Cost planning. 
• Training management. 
• Qualifications and requirements.    

The implementation of these modules would allow to unify the existing information in various mediums (some of which would be I.T.-related and others not) and to simplify the execution of several processes that could be automated, such as payroll calculation and payment and personnel cost calculation, integrating those processes with the rest of the company’s economic/financial processes. 

Project Development 

The project was devised in two separate stages: 

• The economic-administrative block, executed as the first stage with the implementation of these modules: 
• • Organisation management. 
  • Personnel administration. 
  • Payroll calculation. 
  • Time management. 
  • Cost planning.    
• The training block, with the implementation of these modules: 
• • Training management. 
  • Qualifications and requirements.    

In both stages, which were executed consecutively, DMR Consulting has been the service partner supporting Probitas Pharma in the implementation of the functions and in the transmission of know-how to the users.
The planning and execution of the project were done taking into account critical and basic factors such as the execution of parallel payrolls or user training and support, in order to ensure a minimum amount of incidents and make it easy for users to adapt to the new tool and processes. An interesting development that should be taken into consideration in this project is the fact that the server where the HR application is located is separated, for safety and confidentiality purposes, from the server where the rest of the SAP R/3 management modules are located. This fact has not entailed a lack of integration between the HR processes and the rest of the processes thanks to the ALE technology, used as an interface for the payroll accounting and for allocation of expenses to cost centres. 

Benefits and Conclusions

Probitas Pharma has obtained benefits in the field of technology and in process efficiency thanks to the implementation of the SAP HR modules. It has not only enhanced its personnel information platform but it has also taken advantage of the implementation project to improve some of its processes, for instance: 

• The personnel hiring processes were sped up and rationalised, enabling tasks to be decentralised and activities to be distributed among the different people in charge. 
• Time management was patently enhanced thanks to the integration of data taken from the control clocks and automatic payroll calculation. 
• The use of paper was minimised and the transmission of information and training material was sped up thanks to integration with e-mail and the introduction of computercontrolled document reading.    

The implementation of the SAP HR module in Probitas Pharma has allowed it to rationalise and simplify its personnel management and ensure the integrity of all of its management processes.