Heinrich Schmid

One for All with the EASY personnel file

Today, the Heinrich Schmid corporate group is one of the largest tradesman‘s firms in Europe. With revenues of around 550 million euros and over 5,500 employees (as of 2020) in Germany, it offers reliable planning and implementation of trade services across all areas of construction, focusing on the trade groups of facade and interior construction and building restoration. The company‘s roots, however, go back to professional paint work. They started small back in 1914. The company‘s great grandfather, Heinrich Schmid, founded the business with just one journeyman and one apprentice. Today, the 4th generation is holding the reins. The group is represented by over 120 locations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, and Spain. Schmid focuses heavily on further training and continued education. With an average of 700 interns per year and award-winning training facilities and its own management academy and mentoring programme, the company‘s efforts in shaping tomorrow‘s professional workforce keep step with the big names in the industry.

All locations have the same personnel information at all times

We need an efficient and practical solution. A solution that‘s easy to handle with a good price-performance ratio. That’s what we’ve received with EASY HR.”

Thomas Hölz, HR Business Unit at Heinrich Schmid

The average workshop in Germany has five employees and a regional reach. Most of these are small – not major players on the national market. The Heinrich Schmid corporate group, on the other hand, is another story altogether. It encompasses 120 locations in Germany and other European countries, with a total of over 5,500 employees.

From journeyman to master, from painters and varnishers to drywall hangers, flooring s pecialists, p lasterers, a nd tile layers – to plumbers and heating and air conditioning technicians. Many different renovation trades are represented. They travel all across the country, to over 10,000 construction sites each year. These are distributed not only across Germany, but also in Switzerland, Austria, France, and Spain. Schmid‘s sights have been set on growth since 1914, and they have been expanding their number of locations since the 1960s. Their commitment: Executing projects with professional planning, careful implementation, and on-time completion.

To make sure everything works like it should, the service provider provides support to Heinrich Schmid Systemhaus GmbH & Co.KG in Reutlingen in the areas of personnel and accounting, controlling, IT, and purchasing. The HR business area covers the interface between personnel and IT. Its focus is on utilising software whenever programme changes need to be made or new laws are coming into force, and ensuring these are set up properly in the HR SAP system. The company has been using EASY for SAP for its accounting procedures since 2009; Schmid upgraded to EASY HR in August of 2014, the perfect solution for the business unit HR. “Before introducing the EASY software, we used to keep personnel files in paper form, just like everyone else”, remembers Thomas Hölz. He is heading up the project. “For us, this means making lots of copies and time-consuming filing. But the future will bring a greater focus on paperless work, even in the HR department. We‘ve been thinking about how we could continue operations with so much growth since 2007, especially with our company becoming so large and spread across so many locations”.

Founded

100

Employees

100

Construction projects per year

Project information

Transparency Creates Trust

“Double-entry accounting” has proven problematic in everyday practice in large tradesman firms that work across Europe. There used to be one personnel file in the Reutlingen HR office, and one local on-site personnel file for each of the almost 5,500 employees. “And they certainly weren’t identical” says Hölz. “The local offices had what we didn’t, and vice versa”. This led to discrepancies. The company is trying to avoid these kinds of inconsistencies. New software solutions have to create transparency, which in turn builds trust – as EASY HR solutions show.

Time for What’s Important

This gives the local offices and workshops more time for what’s important. “ Today, our consultants serving the locations don’t have anything to do with structuring our filing system”, Hölz reports. “They can pull up the files online at any time, during any telephone call dealing with HR matters. This is very practical and much faster, simplifying the process greatly”. Today, the local workshops have access to the same file, meaning they’re always working with the same information at all times. All paper documents are now available in digital form. “Often, I used to have to scan in documents first, then send them to a workshop via e-mail. This was complicated and took a lot o f time”, an HR staffer remembers. Employees can now call up files f rom any location. “ That means I ‘m completely independent. I can access the personnel files on a business trip, in my home office, or from anywhere else and answer inquiries quickly. That’s a major help, of course”. This also allows the HR office to focus on their central duties, and on being an interface between HR work and IT.

Intuitive and Practical

The company began considering the question of which software solution was right for them in handling their HR work some time ago. Schmid spent a good deal of time on the decision-making process. “Of course, we also looked at competitors’ products. EASY HR is simply perfect for our needs. There are other products, but they don‘t fulfil our requirements. As a construction company, we need an efficient and practical solution. We need a solution that’s easy to handle with a good price-performance ratio. That’s what we’ve received with EASY HR” says Hölz. Another advantage was that the company had already created a good basic IT landscape it could build on with the product EASY for SAP. An HR employee adds: “In addition, we had already had very positive experiences in advising and service with EASY SOFTWARE when we implemented EASY for SAP. All of these factors together tipped the scales in EASY’s favour”.

Perfect Advising in the Implementation Phase

Hölz is also highly satisfied with the service the company received while implementing EASY HR. He first discussed the preparations that needed to be made on both sides with the EASY project manager. With such good preparation, the implementation phase only took a week. The two partners complement one another perfectly. In the Schmid corporate group, as well as in EASY SOFTWARE, the customer takes centre stage. Careful work, a customer focus, and flexibility are important characteristics of both companies, lived out by their employees. Personal contact plays an essential role. Team-work functions best when everyone understands everyone else‘s needs. “Everything went perfectly, in my mind. Of course there were a few problems here and there. There always are on a construction site”, as Hölz knows. “But we wouldn’t have been able to do it without the EASY SOFTWARE project manager. Somehow he was always able to figure things out, and since then everything‘s been going very well”

High Acceptance Among Employees

Thomas Hölz isn’t the only one who thinks so: his employees, who use EASY HR on a daily basis, agree. “Our employees are very satisfied” he says. Around 200 staffers are currently working with the programme. Ten employees are authorised to create and edit documents, and the others have access authorisation. Of course, there were critical voices against the new launch – that’s normal. But those voices were raised the programme was introduced, and before the company started working with it. “Nobody questioned whether the step of unifying our processes was reasonable or necessary” Hölz affirms. He’s not the only one who‘s convinced. The management in general is satisfied both with EASY iCenter, which the Heinrich Schmid corporate group has been using for more than five years, and with EASY HR. “If we had the choice again today, we’d do the same thing again every time” Hölz summarises.