City Football Group Digital Transformation Initiatives

About the Customer

City Football Group (CFG) is the holding company established to oversee the creation and administration of a network of linked clubs and other footballing operations under the aegis of Manchester City. The company is run as a holding company under parent company the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG).

Scope and Challenges

City Football Group started its digital transformation in 2016 by replacing paper-based systems with SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite including the Employee Central, Performance and Goals management modules, all powered by SAP HANA database platform.

The new system will be used by 1,000 users around the world. In addition, City Football Group is using SAP Jam for collaboration on projects. 

The City Football Group is also planning to go live with SuccessFactors Recruiting Management, SuccessFactors Onboarding and SAP BusinessObjects Cloud, which combines analytics capabilities including planning, predictive analytics, and business intelligence in a single software-as-a-service offering.

Outcome and Implications

The football group, which owns and runs football clubs in England, Australia, New York City and Japan, is also considering Employee Central for payroll and believes it will end up using the software.

Employee Central, which is the core HR system, allows employees to control more of what they are doing, including requesting holidays and direct deposit of checks, Andy Young, CFO at City Football Group said. People can access all their employee records with mobile and were encouraged to check their information when it was loaded and to update it where necessary, he said.

Self-service on the cloud-based HR software is "huge" for the staff since the process used to be very manual, according to Young.

"If you needed to change your bank account details [or] if you needed to apply for holidays, you filled in a piece of paper," he said. "You took it to the HR department and they would input and update your records accordingly."

Employees in major offices completed their six-month performance development reviews in the cloud-based HR software, according to Young.

On the cloud-based HR software, employees also have personalized pages for accessing individual information. Additionally, SAP Jam is used for communicating in groups across international offices, he said.

The company is also implementing SAP ERP, which is set to go live later this year.

"We feel very, very positive about the implementation," Young said. "We feel very positive about the product. We are excited about taking this forward and adding … the recruitment, the onboarding, and the analytics."

Quotes

"We needed to come up with a product that would help support the growth of our businesses. We became much more of a global brand. We have close to 1,000 users around the world. This has been quite a revelation for them. Ten years ago this business was 100 people. The requirements were very different." Said - Andy Young, CFO at City Football Group.

"It simplified the process enormously. This was a very manual process in the past. Having it online, paperwork is not flying around. I know instantly who has done their reviews and who has not done their reviews and at what stage they are." Said - Andy Young, CFO at City Football Group.