Amey is a leading supplier of consulting and infrastructure support services both in the UK and internationally, with a team of 19,000 working across four continents. Having been in business for nearly 100 years, Amey creates safer, smarter, and sustainable places to live, work and travel. By designing, building, maintaining and investing in our country’s services and infrastructure, Amey makes a difference. Services include engineering, facilities management, utilities, transport, environmental services, defence and justice.
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Amey is a leading supplier of consulting and infrastructure support services both in the UK and internationally, with a team of 19,000 working across four continents. The company is a very varied, made up of five business units covering a wide range of infrastructure and services. Because of the nature of Amey’s business and the amount of TUPE* transfers they do, both in and out of the company, their headcount can fluctuate by two to three thousand a year. This adds enormous complexity to their system architecture, and increases the need for robust reporting solutions to empower business users, rather than relying on expensive ABAP expertise.
Amey required an easy solution that would reduce the complexity of their systems and give them the data they need to run their business. Query Manager is the solution which gives them the flexibility to manage and control all HR reporting and interfaces in-house with quick and easy automated processes.
*TUPE is an acronym for the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations which govern the movement of employees and any liabilities associated with them from the old employer to the new employer by operation of the law. These regulations preserve employees’ terms and conditions when a business or undertaking, or part of one, is transferred to a new employer.
We have been asked whether the HR department could manage QM and reports. One of the major things is that even if you take it slowly, you’ll be able to get your head around QM and produce what you need to – a big benefit is the ease of being able to produce reports – it’s a very user-friendly programme, even though it does complex work.
Ian Thomas, Management Information and Systems team, Amey
Query Manager addressed the following challenges:
Amey’s challenges included: |
The Query Manager solution: |
Expensive ABAP and the need for |
Query Manager has empowered the business to be able to create the reports themselves in-house, rather than use expensive third-party ABAP developers. The estimated amount of time for the process of creating reports has reduced from approximately two months via an external ABAP developer, to two hours in-house. |
The need for a solution that was flexible to report on custom tables or attributes. For example, a number of external companies want to know |
Query Manager has built-in capability to link to custom tables and fields. Amey has used this in headcount reporting; they have a framework that requires up to 20 attributes attached to positions. Query Manager has allowed Amey to report accurately on these and give the business visibility. |
Lack of governance, the risk of widespread access to SAP, and the inability to report out in groups |
Query Manager gives Amey control and allows them to restrict access to selected users, to allow them to publish only the reports they need. Not only does this empower users |
The statutory reporting obligations were very difficult to manage in SAP, and not easy to adapt as new requirements arose. |
With Query Manager, Amey can manage these regulatory reports much more easily. Reports required by Statutory Obligations include the National Minimum Wage, the National Salary Statistics Reports, Diversity reporting, holiday average |
As a contract-based company, Amey manages 2000 TUPE transfers in and out of the company every year, an enormous reporting burden |
From a very laborious process previously of running about 30 reports and creating a spreadsheet, Query Manager has allowed Amey to create a much more streamlined report. An automated solution for data going in and out of SAP has reduced |
HR Input Audits were a challenge |
Query Manager allows Amey to track any input errors and ensure that employee information is correct. |
Payroll and third-party reporting; Amey |
Amey used the Query Manager payroll wizard to create numerous payroll reports. Many are based on a gross-to-net report that gives them full payroll costing. Amey also built a report in Query Manager which automatically determines wage-type and is automatically distributed by email; this task now takes about 20 – 30 mins rather than a few days. |
The control of interfaces, and ensuring HR data is regulated when going outside of the business |
Amey has a project to remove all interfaces and move all the data into Query Manager, giving them greater control. Also, the added security gives them reassurance with GDPR laws coming into effect. |
Amey is finding Query Manager an invaluable tool; every day they find more ways that the tool can help them to provide the information that the business requires.
Their experience shows that Query Manager is a reporting solution that:
“The benefits Query Manager brings to our business is being able to react in real-time; so for example rather than having to wait for payroll to run to get payroll statistics, we actually report out hourly rates that we can charge week-on-week, without having to wait for payroll to run.”
Ian Thomas, Management Information and Systems team, Amey
“The best part of Query Manager is that it is so easy to learn...What I really like about it is the flexibility and the way that you can enable business users. Query Manager has removed the need for technical people to do bits of work, so it empowers users to run reports, create reports and interact with external companies.”
Michael Gleeson, Head of Shared Services Systems and Management Information, Amey
I don’t know why anyone would not have Query Manager; the benefits and the value-add far outweigh the costs. It pays for itself in a couple of months and empowers the HR team.
Michael Gleeson, Head of Shared Services Systems and Management Information, Amey
Huge time savings
Flexibility when generating reports
Custom ABAP reports no longer necessary
Self-service reports for HR Manager
Less pressure on IT, e.g. Infoset customising eliminated
Central management of reports
Rapid implementation – less than a day
SAP authorisations are transferred
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