STADA Arzneimittel: Driving growth with a culture that puts people first
Creating a consistent global Culture & People strategy with SAP SuccessFactors solutions
STADA’s values of integrity, entrepreneurship, agility, and “One STADA” have helped the company grow rapidly, with employee numbers rising by more than 20% over the past three years. With operations in 50 countries, ranging from manufacturing plants to sales offices, how could the company maintain its unique culture and values?
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Life Sciences | Bad Vilbel, Germany | 12,984 employees (FY 2022) |
Countries moved onto a single global Culture & People platform in 12 months.
Key Culture & People solutions rolled out worldwide in 2.5 years.
Satisfaction rating for ease-of-use in user surveys.
Head of Global Culture & People Analytics and Digital Experience, STADA Arzneimittel AG
Strengthening culture as the business grows
As the owner of well-known consumer healthcare brands such as Grippostad, Nizoral, Zoflora, and Silomat, STADA has always been committed to its customers’ health and wellbeing. STADA is guided by its purpose of “Caring for People’s Health as a Trusted Partner”.
This purpose-driven approach is the foundation for building a culture that enables growth; based on values and on caring for employees as well as customers.
Dr. Thomas Mattes, Head of Global Culture & People Analytics and Digital Experience at STADA, explains: “During the pandemic, we saw why companies like STADA are so important in society, and why they need to be able to rely on their people. To be a trusted partner for people’s health, you have to look after your employees too.”
This value-driven culture is what STADA makes unique. To keep up with the company’s growth, STADA’s Culture & People team soon found its workforce increasing by 5% per year – a significantly higher rate than any other large player in the pharmaceuticals industry.
However, STADA’s leadership knew that sustaining this level of growth would require changes to the company’s operating model. Its business units in each country ran semi-independently, using a wide variety of systems, processes, and standards. To ensure a consistent culture and optimize operations, greater global visibility and control were required at the group level.
Head of Global Culture & People Analytics and Digital Experience, STADA Arzneimittel AG
Putting people at the heart of transformation
STADA recognized that it needed to transform to a more centralized operating structure. Since several of its larger subsidiaries were already using SAP software for time management and payroll, STADA selected SAP as the key strategic partner for this ambitious project. Putting its people at the heart of this transformation, the company decided to prioritize the implementation of a new global HR system built on SAP SuccessFactors solutions.
“Before I came to STADA, the company had successfully piloted SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central in Germany,” says Dr. Mattes. “When I joined, I was given the task of rolling out the solution globally, with the goal of completing the project as fast as possible to help STADA continue growing at a double-digit rate.”
The stakes were high, as the rollout spanned 13,000 employees, 45 countries, and 16 languages. Differing maturity levels between countries’ Culture & People functions further added to the complexity. The largest subsidiaries in Serbia and Germany were already using SAP ERP Human Capital Management to support workforces of several thousand people. Then there were other countries with thousands, hundreds, or dozens of employees using self-developed HR systems or relying on spreadsheets and manual processes.
Nevertheless, STADA’s goal was to get a global view of people management across the whole organization, with no exceptions. “The key constraints for any project are time, cost, and scope,” says Dr. Mattes. “For us, the priority was time. To get a global view of the organization, we couldn’t do the rollout in waves—we had to get all the countries on board as quickly as possible.”
Working with teams from SAP Services and Support and SAP Preferred Success, STADA’s strategy was to control scope and prioritize the modules that would deliver the most immediate value. “We chose SAP Services and Support as our implementation partner because they have the resources to deliver globally,” says Dr. Mattes. “We recognized the value of having local expertise to guide us not just during implementations in Germany and across Europe, but also for rollouts in the Middle East and Asia.”
The STADA team provided two dedicated resources who helped the SAP Services and Support team ensure that the project remained on schedule and delivered the planned scope.
Starting with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, implemented worldwide in just 12 months, the project then deployed SAP SuccessFactors solutions for recruiting, performance & goals, succession & development, compensation, learning, and onboarding, as well as SAP employee experience management solutions by Qualtrics—all in less than 2.5 years.
Dr. Mattes comments: “We had the full support of STADA’s leadership throughout the project, which was a big advantage. We never had to stop or rethink or fight for what we were doing – we had 100% commitment to executing it.”
Head of Global Culture & People Analytics and Digital Experience, STADA Arzneimittel AG
Transforming Culture & People and enhancing the employee experience
The global implementation of SAP SuccessFactors solutions began delivering value for STADA almost immediately. Within four months of the introduction of SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central in 45 countries and 16 languages, the company’s leadership team already regarded it as a vital decision-making tool.
“Our standard report on employee numbers versus our staffing plans comes directly from Employee Central,” says Dr. Mattes. “Those numbers drive our business decisions because we know they are correct.”
The employee records, management hierarchy, and organizational charts in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central are also now regarded as the single source of truth across the business, and integration with SAP ERP HCM enables the German and Serbian subsidiaries to use this data in their time management and payroll processes too.
The SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting solution has been a hit with STADA’s internal recruiters and has enabled a better understanding of metrics such as time-to-hire at the group level. “SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting has been a great solution to prepare ourselves for a more candidate-driven market and keep our hiring metrics healthy,” says Dr. Mattes. “Over the last two years, we’ve seen a gradual improvement in the number of applications per position and time-to-hire.”
Meanwhile, the SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals solution gives leaders insight into targets for managers and employees, helping to ensure that the company’s strategic goals are properly reflected in the expectations set for each area of the business.
Employee development is also central to STADA’s strategy. Dr. Mattes comments: “We need our employees to grow because we are growing—and SAP SuccessFactors Succession & Development is one of the best technologies I’ve seen.” The company holds talent reviews twice a year to discuss employees’ suitability for succession and can capture the data from these meetings live in the tool.
To help employees gain the skills they need for career progression, STADA uses the SAP SuccessFactors Learning solution, which unites learning activities that were previously scattered across the organization and makes them accessible, so employees have one place to look for trainings.
Finally, SAP employee experience management solutions by Qualtrics help STADA listen to and learn from its employees through regular surveys. “We’re very happy with the way Qualtrics makes it seamless for people to participate, just by scanning a QR code on their mobile device,” says Dr. Mattes. “The proof of success is that we’re seeing production workers take part in surveys, not just office staff. Plus, all our countries can easily see their own data via the SAP Analytics Cloud solution.”
Head of Global Culture & People Analytics and Digital Experience, STADA Arzneimittel AG
Looking to the future
STADA’s successful global rollout of the SAP SuccessFactors portfolio is a prerequisite for building a consistent “One STADA” culture to fuel the company’s continued growth. Leadership is certain that the business now has the right platform to move forward. As Dr. Mattes says, “The best thing about SuccessFactors is its global community of customers. We gain great confidence from a network where people are always open and share best practices.”
Moreover, the benefits that STADA has realized so far are just the beginning. Even greater value is expected as the company implements more global solutions, including SAP Ariba, SAP Concur, and SAP S/4 HANA Cloud, private edition.
“In the bigger picture, our SAP SuccessFactors solutions empower our Culture & People colleagues to move away from spending time on administration and focus on building stronger relationships with employees, managers, and recruiters,” concludes Dr Mattes. “I think we would all be happy if we can help our Culture & People team allocate their brainpower to other areas to fuel our growth.”