Christina Yue, Customer Learning Manager |

 Established in 1828, Citizens Bank is one of the oldest financial services firms in the U.S. This Rhode Island-based firm offers retail and commercial banking in 11 states and serves as the 12^th largest retail bank in the nation.

Citizens Bank is committed to delivering the best possible banking experience. Employees strive to exceed customer expectations, do the right thing, think long-term and work together. As the

firm sought to incorporate Oracle HCM Cloud into its processes, it kept these four daily priorities in mind.

In January 2015, Citizens Bank began the cloud set up and configuration. Since then, it has completed the implementation of Workforce Compensation, Performance Management, Recruiting & Onboarding, Core HR, Payroll/Time/Absence and HR Data Hub & Analytics.

To ensure an efficient implementation, Citizens Bank enlisted the help of Cognizant, a consulting team passionate about helping businesses move into modern technology.  Cognizant developed an implementation approach based on rapid start implementation methodology with five parts: Accelerate, Plan, Design, Configure, Deploy.

The primary areas of focus for the new system included:

• User experience
• Process transformation
• Cloud technologies
• Integrated data sources

At the end of the project, Cognizant and Citizens Bank identified the following business and technology benefits in each of the areas of focus:

User Experience

• Twenty percent increase in job applicants
• Thirty-eight percent increase in applicants to fill ratio

Process transformation

• Nine percent decrease of days to fill
• Termination of existing TSAs

Cloud technologies

• HR system alignment with overall HR tech strategy
• Reduced cost of upgrades
• Reduced time for upgrades – spanning six to eight weeks instead of six to eight months

 Integrated data sources

• Vendors>taleo>fusion>data hub
• Three passport integrations

In an effort to help other organizations with the implementation of OTAC, Citizens Bank and Cognizant acknowledged four main lessons learned:

1. Data Conversion

It’s difficult to determine how much data to move forward. Citizens Bank addressed this challenge by laying out a strategy for data hub and making sure individual cloud implementations were not impacted when they removed custom fields.

2. Technical Integrations and Interfaces

Citizens Bank encountered a number of custom integrations and feeds it needed to accommodate outside of passport integrations. Customizations are likely where most organizations will run into the biggest challenges and spend the most time.

3. Report Requirements

After completion of the project, the Citizens Bank team realized they had not documented report requirements adequately. Requests came in after implementation instead of upfront. Although it’s difficult to know reporting needs before seeing the application, it’s important to try to make these determinations in the beginning. Additionally, the team believes it would have been helpful to keep doing the analytics work stream three to four months post-implementation.

4. Challenge the business

To alleviate change management issues, Citizens Bank hosted focus groups from the beginning and identified change champions throughout the organization. These leaders attended regular project updates, accessed sneak previews and then presented changes to their peers. This resulted in excitement instead of pushback and ultimately helped with user adoption.

Today, Citizens Bank and Cognizant are happy to report a successful implementation. Moving from manual to automated processes, improving time to hire, and allowing new hires to be more productive in the system resulted in time being on Citizens Bank’s side.

To learn more about implementation including best practices for a balanced user experience, job search, offer creation, and onboarding, watch the Citizens Bank presentation here.

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