Xplor Technologies is a global platform integrating software and payments solutions, and commerce accelerating technologies for businesses. Xplor was formed in March 2021 through the merger of payments companies TSG, founded in 1994 in New Zealand, and Clearent, a payments company based in the US. Before merging with Xplor, TSG chose Bob as its HRIS and central source of truth for employee data, but halfway through the implementation process, it merged with Clearent to form Xplor. Xplor faced the unique challenge of implementing and launching Bob as an HRIS for all of its sites and entities, including those using other HRIS platforms. They realized the enormity of introducing a new platform to a company of over 2,200 employees, hailing from a diverse range of companies, countries, and corporate cultures, and understood the need to build a detailed change management process to support and engage their people during the transition phase and throughout the process.
Introducing a new HRIS to an enterprise-sized corporation
As a large company formed as a result of several mergers and acquisitions, Xplor has a diverse global population of employees (Xplorers) from many different work cultures, legacy brands, and global locations. Many of them had been using other HRIS platforms—including BambooHR, Paylocity, Cornerstone, and People HR—and were used to varying work processes and approaches. Xplor’s People Team realized that introducing Bob as its centralized HRIS, and encouraging their people to embrace it as their single source of truth, was a huge task that needed to be carefully planned and executed.
Engaging employees with a clear communication plan
Xplor understood that to launch Bob successfully, in addition to the technical implementation, they needed to build a detailed communication and change management process. They needed to create awareness around Bob, educate Xplorers about its capabilities, drive behavior change, and continuously provide help and support throughout the process. They chose Workplace from Facebook as their communication platform and began introducing bob through a series of posts well ahead of the launch date.
As part of the launch, their number one priority was improving the quality of their people data. So, the People Team sent out numerous comms requesting that firstly people leaders, and then Xplorers, go into Bob and “self serve”—check and directly update their personal information, ensuring its accuracy. Doing this involved a significant behavioral change as before implementing bob, the company had no centralized and dedicated data repository, and Xplorers could not self-serve to access and update their data themselves.
The team set a goal of 80% of their people logging in and updating their personal details within 30 days. They crushed that goal, with 86% of Xplorers updating their information within the first 24 hours.
The success of the first phase of Bob’s rollout revealed that Xplor’s people were engaged. The next step involved educating them about bob’s capabilities. To facilitate this, Xplor’s People Team held several live training sessions on different aspects of bob. They even built a comprehensive Knowledge Library on Workplace, including a wide range of content, such as videos and guides targeted to different audiences such as the People Team, people leaders, and Xplorers. They also created a training course on the Udemy online learning and teaching platform that was available to all. Xplor’s People and Communications teams started sending out regular comms to their employees, inviting them to training sessions, and encouraging them to use the available resources to learn more. They also used analytics to track how many Xplorers read the Workplace posts, opened the Bob invite emails, and visited the knowledge library to measure the success of their launch plan.
As the date for the launch approached, more comms were sent out, including a message from the Chief People Officer, creating a feeling of excitement and anticipation about Bob throughout the company.
A carefully planned Bob launch
In line with their change management strategy for introducing bob, Xplor also took a carefully planned approach to its launch. With Bob encompassing many features for managing HR and people processes, Xplor didn’t want to overwhelm their people, so they decided to take a phased approach.
Starting at Core HR and expanding from there
In line with an incremental rollout approach to change management, when launching Bob, Xplor’s People Team chose to focus on Core HR, and its crucial component, people analytics.
The People Team had already collected updated people data company-wide, so they could now use this data to create reports that they were unable to make beforehand. For example, before implementing Bob, when they wanted to create a headcount report, the Director of HR contacted all of the different locations, requesting a current headcount. The data was provided in various formats, which then had to be collated to create a report. It took two weeks until the People Team could use this data, but it was already out-of-date by that time! Using Bob’s Analytics, Xplor’s People Team now builds reports in just a few minutes, solving a major pain point for the company.
Following Bob’s launch, Xplor’s People Team has seamlessly created reports on company KPIs such as salaries, growth rate, and diversity —both company-wide and filtered by site or division.
As they continue to expand their launch of Bob, the People Team has a detailed plan for introducing new features, including Time Off (which has been launched for some regions), Talent, and Compensation Management. They love Bob’s integrations, which help ease their people processes—specifically Bob’s integration with their ATS, Smartrecruiters, which has significantly reduced the time spent on transferring data on new hires.
In a large and diverse enterprise like Xplor that boasts over 2,200 employees, slow and steady wins the race. Careful planning and frequent communication have resulted in a very successful Bob integration and launch with no teething problems, a satisfied People Team, and happy Xplorers.
Main takeaways
- Xplor used a change management approach to launch Bob to its 2,200 Xplorers worldwide.
- Xplor created a comprehensive knowledge library, as well as a Udemy online course, to educate and support their people on how to use Bob.
- Within 24 hours, 86% of Xplorers had updated their personal information on Bob via self-service.
- Xplor chose to roll out Bob incrementally, ensuring successful behavior change.
- Using Bob, Xplor’s People Team cut their headcount and salary reporting process from weeks to minutes.
