Ziehm Imaging specializes in the development, production, and global marketing of mobile C-arms. This technology leader is growing fast, and so is the volume of employee documents processed by the HR department. Working with paper files was no longer in keeping with the times. The office space needed to house the employee files alone was becoming a real problem, and the unpopular task of manual filing was taking up more and more time. The need to access paper files has also been a major hindrance to mobile working, which has become a standard since the COVID-19 pandemic.
A user-friendly and future-proof solution
Ziehm Imaging is always striving to digitalize processes and avoid paper. The decision to introduce the digital employee file was thus clear. Centric was selected as product and implementation partner. The HR team particularly liked the intuitive and well-structured user interface, as the two project managers, Sabine Pongratz and Michelle Rupp, explain. Sabine Pongratz says: “Centric Employee File is very user-friendly and selfexplanatory and easy to use, even for people who rarely work with it.“
The HR and IT departments were particularly interested in the option to supplement the Centric Employee File solution with other Centric products in the future in order to gradually digitalize more and more HR processes. There was excellent cooperation between the HR department, internal IT, and Centric when phasing in the Centric Employee File, as the project managers emphasize. The flexibility of the scanning service provider, which digitized around 600 employee files, was also important in ensuring that the new system could begin operations on time. Sabine Pongratz explains: “We at Centric had already identified a company to work with on the scanning of the paper files before the project began – a fortunate coincidence from our point of view.”
Efficient scanning of 600 employee files
After internally defining the future file structure and the content and document types, the HR team wanted to prepare the paper files for scanning. Nevertheless, the time required to review and clean up all the files proved to be longer than initially expected.
With the digital employee file, the paper piles on our desks and the unpopular and time-consuming task of manual filing are a thing of the past.
Sabine Pongratz
HR Assistant
Ziehm Imaging GmbH
Through digitalization, we are working in efficient workflows and have access to all the documents we need, even on the move.
Michelle Rupp
HR Assistant
Ziehm Imaging GmbH
In order to hit the project deadlines, the project management changed the procedure: Instead of the company doing the pre-sorting in house, the service provider scanned and pre-sorted all documents. The HR team was then able to view and delete documents more easily and with significantly less effort than would have been required when manually browsing through paper files. Michelle Rupp wants to pass this tip on to other companies:
By outsourcing classification tasks to the scanning service provider, we were able to take the burden of doing routine tasks off our HR team and stick to the tight project schedule.
Automation of routine tasks
The introduction of a digital file solution dramatically changed HR work processes. Nine HR employees are currently working with Centric Employee File. Files can now be accessed anywhere, even when working from home. Answers to questions are just a click away and no longer have to be looked for in a pile of paper files. For data protection reasons, the HR team operates a staggered access rights policy. In accordance with the dual control principle, only the HR manager and the two project managers are allowed to delete data after checking it.
Time-consuming manual routines such as handling folders, sorting files, punching holes in files, or photocopying are no longer necessary. Today, the HR team saves email attachments or documents scanned in the printer directly as digital files, which are therefore always complete and up to date. The task of manually filing paper files, which previously took work-placement students two hours a week, is a thing of the past.
More office space
For a rapidly growing company, the fact that it is now so easy to create new files has a significant advantage: When the HR department receives new employees’ contracts and enters their data into SAP, the employee file is automatically generated with the master data already processed. The space problem has also been solved. Sabine Pongratz explains: “We now only keep the legally required paper documents in the filing cabinets, which saves an enormous amount of space.” Now the HR department has modern workflows and is perfectly prepared for the company’s further growth thanks to time and space-saving measures.”
