Read this article about AECOM, one of our finalists, in the category Best Achievement in Operational Excellence to deliver Digital Transformation, selected by the independent judging panel, for the 2019 Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Industry Awards program. Click here to read articles on other finalists.

iLabor, a digital platform designed to reduce time and manual paper work.

The AECOM transformation journey

AECOM is an American multinational engineering firm that provides design, consulting, construction, and management services to a wide range of clients. With over 87,000 employees, AECOM was positioned number 161 on the 2017 Fortune 500 list. AECOM partnered with Capgemini to transform their F&A and HR processes, and help the organization prepare for new challenges.

AECOM contracts third parties to carry out building and engineering work for its clients and was suffering from an inefficient process of correcting errors in logging its employees’ working hours. This process required AECOM’s project team to complete a Labor Correction Form (LCT) and send it to the employee for their signature. The employee would then have to print the form, sign, scan, and send it to their manager for approval. Once received, the manager would have to print the form again, sign it, scan, and send back to the requestor. Each time a mistake was made in recording the working hours or the hours were coded against wrong task or project code, a lengthy manual and paper-based process had to be initiated to correct the entry.

The process was taking over four days, resulting in incorrect billing to clients, and the knock-on effect of untimely payments to employees and AECOM’s contractors, and heavy delays in HR reporting.

iLabor – an efficient user-friendly digital HR platform

AECOM understood the need for an efficient and reliable working-hours registry that would enable it to bill its clients quickly, correctly, and efficiently, ensuring timely payments to its contractors and avoiding the lengthy process to correct errors in logging its employees’ working hours.

Capgemini and AECOM introduced a user-friendly digital platform called iLabor that helps AECOM fulfill its commitment to its employees, shortening LCT time, delivering timely payments, improving the quality of client billing, and simplifying the entire process to achieve significant cost savings. iLabor enables AECOM to bill and collect revenue from its clients faster and eliminates the main cause for untimely payments to AECOM’s contactors. 

The joint Capgemini and AECOM team leveraged Capgemini’s ESOAR (Eliminate, Standardize, Optimize, Automate, Robotize) methodology to re-engineer the LCT process and set the agenda for a holistic approach to transformation of the entire function. The team eliminated the need to print and provide a signature on the LCT, ensuring no manual and paper-based tasks were required. They also designed iLabor to provide different user menus depending on a user’s access rights and role in the application.

A reduction in processing time and increase in working capital

The implementation of iLabor delivered benefits, including:

• A reduction in end to end processing time from four to two days.
• A 70% reduction in processing time per request.
• A total of 723 hours saved in the process across the organization.
• A significant reduction in the amount of paper used through elimination of printing and scanning.
• Anytime and anywhere accessibility through smart phone
• Created opportunity for Process automation through Robotics