Global dance company Cirque du Soleil has implemented cloud-based HR service SuccessFactors to help manage its staff as they travel around the world.
Cirque du Soleil tours in more than 100 cities on a yearly basis - with the direct support of an employee group made up of artists, operations and management professionals from 50 different countries.
The organisation said it was looking for a platform that offered both remote access and could handle the extremely complex realities of a global workforce, always on the move.
After an evaluation process, it opted to use SuccessFactors because it is cloud-based and integrates a multitude of workforce-related functionalities that are both mobile and international, according to Bernard Hébert, vice president of Information and Business Systems at Cirque du Soleil. He added that it “simply aligns very well with our needs.”
He said that in using the cloud, the organisation’s HR team is able to deliver all of the key services expected of a world-class HR department, anywhere, anytime.
“It provides the transactional flexibility that is required in order to carry out the HR functions within a company that is complex and in movement,” he added.
“The SuccessFactors Employee Central Function provides us with all the required information to set up any future requirements in terms of master data management.”
Hébert also said it is important, in the future, that employees and direct managers have the option to use self-service functions that the cloud software offers to carry out HR-related activities by themselves.
The unitial investment the group had to make to get up and running was limited to the software component and requires no infrastructure spending, resulting in savings from the beginning, according to Hébert, which made the cloud option much more attractive than staying on-premise.
Furthermore, the core application/platform is maintained and constantly optimised by SAP thus minimising future investment requirements.
“The vast majority of the costs of operational rather than capital investments - making each cloud-based project much less demanding of the enterprise's financial resources,” said Hébert.
Lastly, Hébert said that the service can scale up and down as and when the needs of the group change over time.
