Expansion of the existing eQMS to include simple applicant management

And this was the ori­gi­nal sta­te: The up-and-co­ming com­pa­ny Wie­wel­ho­ve is re­cei­ving many ap­pli­ca­ti­ons, both un­so­li­ci­ted ap­pli­ca­ti­ons and re­spon­ses to ad­ver­ti­sed po­si­ti­ons — from phar­maceu­ti­cal tech­ni­ci­ans to me­cha­tro­nics en­gi­neers and sci­en­tists to ad­mi­nis­tra­ti­ve staff. “The­re was a time when re­crui­ters had to ma­na­ge hundreds of ap­pli­ca­ti­ons that would have fil­led se­ve­ral laun­dry bas­kets,” Et­ge­ton re­calls. The chall­enge: The hand­ling of the­se re­quests was not yet di­gi­ta­li­zed and au­to­ma­ted, but most­ly ana­log. This me­ans: First of all, the em­ployees had to coll­ect and print all sub­mis­si­ons that had re­a­ched the com­pa­ny by e‑mail, on their home­page or via tra­di­tio­nal mail. Sim­ply for­war­ding the ap­pli­ca­ti­ons via e‑mail was not pos­si­ble at this time due to data pro­tec­tion regulations.

Yet, prin­ting was not en­ough. The HR ma­na­gers had to ca­te­go­ri­ze the ap­pli­cants sub­se­quent­ly, send di­gi­tal or ana­log re­jec­tion let­ters, and pass the phy­si­cal do­cu­ments of pro­mi­sing can­di­da­tes on to the heads of de­part­ments in­clu­ding the re­quest that the phy­si­cal do­cu­ments had to be de­s­troy­ed af­ter the end of the ap­pli­ca­ti­on pha­se in com­pli­ance with data pro­tec­tion re­gu­la­ti­ons. “In to­tal, the pro­cess was stressful and un­sa­tis­fac­to­ry for ever­yo­ne in­vol­ved,” Et­ge­ton says. In the­se cir­cum­s­tances, the com­pa­ny con­side­red out­sour­cing ap­pli­cant ma­nage­ment to an ex­ter­nal ser­vice pro­vi­der. “Ho­we­ver, this op­ti­on tur­ned out to be too ex­pen­si­ve for us and too com­pli­ca­ted in terms of data pro­tec­tion. We the­r­e­fo­re de­ci­ded to keep the data in-house and de­ve­lop our own au­to­ma­ted so­lu­ti­on for the ap­pli­cant workflow.”

In their long­stan­ding part­ner Di­gi­tal Life Sci­en­ces, the IT ma­na­ger found sup­port for this pro­ject in im­me­dia­te vici­ni­ty. “We knew how Wiewelhove’s IT land­scape works from ex­pe­ri­ence and the­r­e­fo­re we were able to pro­vi­de high­ly tar­ge­ted sup­port for this di­gi­ta­liza­ti­on pro­ject,” says Rene Schü­ring, Se­ni­or Pro­ject Con­sul­tant at Di­gi­tal Life Sci­en­ces. “Tog­e­ther we de­ve­lo­ped a stra­tegy, de­si­gned the so­lu­ti­on on the customer’s sys­tem, ve­ri­fied in a test sys­tem and fi­nal­ly de­ploy­ed the pro­duc­tion sys­tem.” As part of the de­ve­lo­p­ment team Wiewelhove’s HR ma­na­ger was in­vi­ted to ex­press wis­hes re­gar­ding func­tion and de­sign any­ti­me to en­su­re the sys­tem meets the re­qui­re­ments of ever­y­day life to a tee. Et­ge­ton: “We didn’t buy a pro­duct off the shelf but de­ve­lo­ped a re­al­ly cus­to­mi­zed so­lu­ti­on. Di­gi­tal Life Sci­en­ces once again pro­ved to be a com­pe­tent, hel­pful and open partner.”