An HR portal is often seen as a solution for large companies. Yet the need to automate HR processes depends not only on headcount but also on the volume of transactions. A small distributed team with a heavy flow of business trips, approvals and documents can carry the same load as an organisation several times larger.
In this case study we describe the implementation of the EmployeeGate employee self-service portal for the branch of an international company with around 70 employees.
The international biotech company specialises in laboratory diagnostics solutions and the production of medical equipment. Its Russian branch has around 70 employees, but the volume of documents is comparable to companies several times larger. One reason is that the team is spread across the country and makes a large number of business trips.
Previously all processes were formalised and approved by email. Every employee request went through several stages: the employee contacted the HR director, who forwarded the request to the relevant specialists, who processed the documents and returned the result. The process took time and required constant attention from the HR director.
The company wanted to move to a model where employees can initiate processes themselves and the system automatically routes the request to the right specialists. To achieve this, it decided to implement the EmployeeGate employee self-service portal with electronic signing of HR documents.
Viktoria Kalinkina, project manager at UCMS Group:
“The client was focused on maximum process automation. Usually companies implement functionality in stages - for example, vacations first, then business trips. Here everything had to go live at once.”
EmployeeGate is a web portal for automating HR processes, developed by UCMS Group. The portal brings interactions between employees and HR together in a single system: employees submit applications and receive documents, managers see information about their subordinates and approve requests, and HR specialists process data and generate and send documents through the HR EDF module in EmployeeGate. Employee and reporting-line information is pulled automatically from 1C:ZUP.
EmployeeGate's main advantage is flexible configuration for any business process: complex approval routes can be set up, modules can be added for specific tasks and integrations with other systems can be built.
Viktoria Kalinkina, project manager at UCMS Group:
“Usually during implementation we give the client access to the basic version for testing and then clarify what needs to be added or changed. That approach requires a lot of independent work from the client and can lead to expectations not matching the system's real capabilities. Here the client wanted maximum functionality from day one, so we had to stay in constant dialogue and talk through every configuration option.
We organised a series of meetings with the client's key people, where we demonstrated each section of the portal, explained the configuration options and proposed solutions. This proactive stance worked: the client saw that we were ready to take the initiative and propose the best options based on our experience.”
After a detailed demonstration of the employee self-service portal's capabilities and the client's comments, we moved on to configuring the portal and then, after the minimum necessary testing, to launching it in the live environment. By that point the client already understood how each process would work. Because it was important to launch the portal as quickly as possible, the client was prepared for possible minor issues at the start.
The employee self-service portal provides payslips, vacation balances, certificate requests and changes to personal data. The interface is intuitive and validates the data entered, for example highlighting errors in vacation dates.
One important requirement was access separation and individual document filtering. Managers can see and work only with the documents that relate to their role.
The following modules were configured for this project.
Viktoria Kalinkina, project manager at UCMS Group:
“This is an example of a company where digitalization is not a tick-box exercise but a way to simplify real processes. The client was open to suggestions and ready for rapid change. And the non-standard requirements allowed us to extend EmployeeGate's capabilities. For example, we improved the expense report block: a memo can now be created and signed directly from the expense report, without switching to a separate section. That capability is now available to other companies as part of the portal.”
The project continues to evolve. The next stage is integrating EmployeeGate with the travel system: an employee will be able to arrange a business trip, book tickets, receive the order and create an expense report in a single interface. Data will be transferred automatically between systems, with no manual re-entry.
