Deutsche Telekom integrates more than 800 HR processes into one unified platform
See how they simplified processes for an enhanced employee experience.
The Business Issue
Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s largest telco providers, with more than 250 million customers, 200,000 employees, and many different subsidiaries. They aim to continually enhance their digital capabilities and ensure their customers remain lifelong fans – a mission that includes providing the best service not only to customers but also to their employees.
Over the years, frequent changes to work law and other regulations had made Deutsche Telekom’s HR processes more and more difficult to handle. The complexity of their HR operations was immense, involving more than 800 distinct processes across more than 25 countries – each with its own local legislations and specific requirements.
These challenges were compounded by the need for precise legal compliance and the complexity of orchestrating different systems while providing a seamless digital experience for employees. Moreover, the traditional bottleneck in digital transformation—bridging the gap between business and IT—was a significant hurdle. Business and IT teams often spoke different languages, leading to misunderstandings and delays in project implementation.
To increase overall employee satisfaction, the organization’s more than 800 human resource processes as well as the respective web-self-services needed to be redesigned, optimized, and built for change. Additionally, modern and intuitive voice, chat, and email contact channels needed to be provided.
The Solution
Deutsche Telekom partnered with Pega to offer their employees a new, stronger solution: HRcules. This HR Customer low-effort system replaces several Deutsche Telekom legacy systems, for example, the HR order management system and the call center application.
HR processes and information are now being unified in one place, so whether the employee uses web self-service or contacts the HR call center, the experience is seamless.
The project, which began in May of 2020, faced all the challenges that came with the remote working model brought on by the pandemic. Despite these challenges, the development team quickly got underway. Pega's low-code, visual UX has made it easier for both IT staff and business stakeholders to collaborate, effectively and efficiently building out the necessary processes.
Taking things a step further, Deutsche Telekom is using Pega Blueprint™ to simplify and accelerate this digital transformation. This began with a pilot project for an invoice approval process, but quickly expanded to more complex and niche processes.
Deutsche Telekom is using Pega Blueprint to further streamline the communication between business and IT by allowing business teams to describe processes in their own terms. Blueprint's ability to add critical elements that business teams might overlook, such as error handling and process loops, provided a more comprehensive and accurate process design. The preview function of Pega Blueprint further reduced misunderstandings by offering a clear idea of the expected outcomes, thus minimizing double work and speeding up the implementation.
Leveraging the power of generative AI and Pega’s industry best practices, Pega Blueprint is empowering Deutsche Telekom to dramatically accelerate application design. Business stakeholders are now able to describe their goals and Blueprint will suggest the optimal workflows, data, and personas for their needs. Now, teams can align on a vision in hours – shortening the discovery process and streamlining development time.
The Results
Deutsche Telekom's HRcules and their use of Pega Blueprint have already yielded remarkable outcomes.
By replacing and consolidating their multiple legacy systems, they’re building agility into more than 800 HR processes within a single platform. This strategy has significantly enhanced employee satisfaction. With the ease of the new platform, HR agents are no longer burdened with repetitive tasks and have more time to focus on providing great service for their current and retired colleagues.
Pega Blueprint's ability to enable business teams to describe processes in their own words also bridged the communication gap between business and IT. This common language is facilitating faster, more effective collaboration – improving the overall experience and reducing the time from process elaboration to go-live.
The results speak for themselves: Deutsche Telekom identified and streamlined 250 low-impact processes, freeing up resources to focus on more critical areas. This not only improved productivity but also led to substantial cost savings, with millions of Euros saved in application operation and management costs. With 500 processes already transformed and 300 more to go, Deutsche Telekom is on track to complete the project by the end of 2025.
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“We said, “800 processes at full scope.” We are done with the first 500 with 300 to go. And we said, we are looking desperately for acceleration. And that is where we saw that Blueprint provides quick wins for us.”
"With Pega Blueprint, business has the chance to describe processes in their own words, with their terms, with what is meaningful to them. And the beauty of Pega Blueprint is that it adds on top things business tends to forget."