Page 274 - DMGT551_RETAIL_BUSINESS_ENVIRONMENT

Unit 13: People in Retailing: Making People Matter

Notes

Case Study Implementing a Comprehensive Performance

Appraisal System for India’s Leading Retail Chain

About the Customer
The customer is a leading retail chain in India with outlets in all the states and clients
across USA, Europe and Japan. A large conglomerate with interests in various ventures,
the company pioneered the concept of customer-oriented retail stores in the country. Over
the years, it has successfully promoted a number of brands, products and events using
innovative tactics. The company had a handful of stores for the first 5 years of its operations;
today it is India’s largest retail chain with a distinct brand identity that appeals to the
Indian youth.

Customer Challenges
When the customer conducted an internal Employee Satisfaction Survey, the results
indicated that employees were highly dissatisfied with the performance appraisal system.
The appraisal and goal sheets were manual, resulting in a huge drain on employee resources
in terms of time and effort. Additionally, there was no system to post employee KRAs
(Key Result Areas). Employees wanted the company to maintain rosters of employee
KRAs, with a flexible KRA setting process that allowed for detailed mid-year review and
interactions between HR, employees and the respective managers. Thirdly, due to the
manual nature of the appraisal process, the company found it difficult to generate MIS
reports. Finally, there was a strong need for an online central repository of employee
data.

Employee dissatisfaction with these elements was strong and was reflected in rising
attrition rate, decreasing employee morale and loss of faith in the company’s systems and
its ability to manage them.

In consideration of these factors, the customer was looking to implement a complete
solution for performance management that could be customized as per its needs and
mapped to existing processes. This system would have to be implemented within a short
time frame.

Saigun Solution
The customer evaluated a couple of products (SAP HR being one of them) before choosing
Saigun’s EmpXtrack for its comprehensive and flexible features that were available at a
reasonable cost. EmpXtrack was faster to implement and offered a user-friendly, web-
based interface that could be accessed anytime, anywhere. It had ready-to-use and yet,
customizable, templates in every module. The product offered a wide variety of options,
being available in five different editions, with each edition offering a different set of HR
modules. Each edition, in turn, comprised different options based on the number of features
available. This variety made EmpXtrack easily configurable and customizable for the
customer’s needs. Finally, it was cost-effective, offering a flexible pricing model and low
front-end cost.

The customer chose to implement two modules of EmpXtrack that fit its requirements: the
Goal Setting System and the Appraisal System. The solution was required for 500 users
and was to be implemented within one and a half months. To meet the stringent
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