Schwan Foods boosts productivity across 12 sites with 30% faster compensation cycle times

Company profile

Based in Minnesota, Schwan’s Company is a privately held business that manufactures and markets quality foods through home delivery, retail grocery, and food service. Its many popular brands include Red Baron®, Tony’s^®, Bon Appétit^® and Freschetta^® pizza, as well as Mrs. Smith’s® and Edwards^® desserts, Pagoda^® snacks, and Schwan’s^® fine frozen foods.

Business challenges

In 2013, Schwan’s recognized that their annual compensation cycle was timeconsuming and process heavy. Their compensation management solution, from a leading ERP provider, was cumbersome and inflexible. Runtimes took 2-3 hours just to prepare the system and input the budget. From there, validation routinely took another 2 hours—sometimes longer.

To relieve these administrative burdens and enable their compensation team to be more strategic, the frozen food manufacturer sought a solution that could be tailored to their processes, culture, and business strategy, today and into the future.

Successful implementation without intense change management support

Schwan’s runs two compensation cycles a year—in March and May. Approximately 5,000 of their 11,000 full-time employees take part in the compensation process, including 2,000 corporate employees and 3,000 professionals across their 12 U.S. manufacturing sites. In contrast to a typical enterprise technology implementation, which requires an intensive change management program to support and promote adoption, Schwan’s HR team found that this wasn’t necessary—chiefly because PeopleFluent is so easy to use.

"The user interface is extremely easy and intuitive. In fact, because of its ease of use and overall configurability, we have reduced the need for training by as much as 40 percent."

Greater efficiency and productivity, and time to be strategic

Since implementing PeopleFluent Compensation, Schwan’s reports ROI in the form of greater efficiency and increased productivity for the compensation team. The cycle prep time decreased by 30% and employees now receive a complete compensation statement, including merit increases, promotions, and bonus— improving pay transparency and giving them a greater understanding of their compensation.

Schwan’s has put the time saved in prepping, testing, and validating the system to good use. Their compensation team dedicates more time to strategic initiatives, including financial analysis, market data research, and industry trend assessments. They spend more time “in the business” and are able to forge tighter partnerships with business units across the enterprise.

"In the past during our compensation cycles, we would have to remove ourselves from the business in order to complete the cycle on time. With PeopleFluent, there is no break in the research and market analytics."

Going forward, Schwan expects to derive even more strategic value from PeopleFluent Compensation. And as their IT roadmap evolves, PeopleFluent will be there to support Schwan’s future compensation needs and ensure they capture the full value of our robust solution.