Customer Stories 
Summary
Long a trendsetter in the Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization industry (CDMO), Siegfried Holding AG recently undertook a project to radically revamp its spreadsheet-driven Performance Management approach. Although cost-effective and straightforward, talent leaders recognized that the challenges of this dated framework were becoming difficult to ignore. As such, Siegfried teamed up with the talent experts at Avature to develop an agile, single-source solution capable of mirroring the organization’s culture, values and preferred performance evaluation workflow.
About Siegfried Holding AG
Headquartered in Zofingen, Switzerland, Siegfried is a leading global CDMO, offering pharmaceutical industry partners a broad range of custom development services, drug substance and drug product manufacturing capabilities. Founded in 1873, the company’s core competency is process development and the integration of chemical and pharmaceutical capabilities into a single business model. With nearly 150 years of industry experience, Siegfried helps its customers scale as they manufacture innovative pharmaceutical products for patients worldwide.
The Challenges
Over the last ten years, Siegfried has rapidly and continuously expanded its business operations. Whereas in 2012, the organization was home to approximately 800 employees across four locations, they now have over 3,600 employees located at 11 sites across seven different countries (Switzerland, United States, Malta, China, Germany, France and Spain).
With such rapid growth, talent leaders suddenly found themselves in the unenviable position of evaluating performance for an increasingly international workforce without the benefit of a flexible and integrated performance management solution. Siegfried’s paper-based approach presented the organization with several challenges, the most notable of which was a lack of process control.
Once evaluation spreadsheets were sent out to managers at different office locations, it was impossible for HR leaders to track and measure participation in the initiative. Katharina Karpf, Siegfried’s Senior HR Project Manager and Head C&B in charge of the Avature collaboration, referred to performance management during this period as a “black hole.”
“From an HR perspective, the implementation of the Avature solutions has proven to be extremely powerful.”
Katharina Karpf
Senior HR Project Manager and Head C&B at Siegfried
The Core Objectives
By 2018, the challenges of Siegfried’s spreadsheet-based approach to measuring performance far outweighed the benefits. It was not only proving increasingly difficult to measure the effectiveness of their evaluation framework, but the costly and labor-intensive process of printing and collecting spreadsheets could no longer be justified.
Turning to Avature, Siegfried looked to develop a single-source solution capable of adapting to the company’s traditional target-setting approach to performance while also offering the flexibility to allow rapid integration for new acquisitions and evolve over time.
Talent leaders did not want to radically change the strategy behind performance evaluations (i.e., target setting, development planning, feedback processes, etc.). Rather, they wanted a technology that could help simplify and streamline the experience while also staying true to the organization’s values, culture and legacy.
The Key Results
Working together over a six-month period, Avature and Siegfried successfully developed an agile and engaging performance management solution that addressed the critical challenges of each stakeholder group – from HR to employees to managers – and also remained faithful to Siegfried’s focus on simplicity and ease of use.
Employees can now easily access all of their performance targets in a centralized location (stimulating process participation), as well as review the formulas for each target category (driving process transparency). For managers, all information related to performance management is accessible in one place with the click of a button, facilitating continuous feedback while also saving time and resources.
For HR, talent stakeholders have complete process control, including access to KPIs and robust process reporting. HR can measure process participation, address any issues that arise concerning engagement and make data-driven decisions concerning workforce needs. In addition, data protection is no longer an issue. Designed with advanced data support and security measures, Siegfried’s new performance management solution ensures compliance with GDPR and other major data protection regulations.
“With Avature, we found a solution and provider that allowed us to implement a tailored-made process and further develop the solution going forward.”
Katharina Karpf
Senior HR Project Manager and Head C&B at Siegfried
To Conclude …
Internal surveys show that most of Siegfried’s workforce welcomed the introduction of the solution, appreciating its ease of use and the general move to a paperless evaluation process. Talent leaders have since developed a “wish list” of process features and adjustments for version 2.0 of their agile solution, which were continuously incorporated into the solution. This continuous improvement approach helps Siegfried future-proof its approach to employee performance management.
