Telefonica cuts HR running costs by 40% as it replaces hundreds of ageing IT systems

Telefónica, the multinational telecoms group which owns the O2 mobile network in the UK, has cut the costs of providing human resource (HR) services to more than 125,000 employees by 40% after rolling out a cloud-based HR system. The company is replacing up to 175 ageing and incompatible HR IT systems with a company-wide HR service, in a project that gives managers a view of the global workforce for the first time. “The benefit for HR is in being able to look at all our processes in a common way – how we measure headcount, for example,” said Louise Parsons, Telefónica’s head of global HR transformation. The project has allowed the company, which also operates the mobile phone brands Vivo in Brazil and Movistar in Spain and Latin America, to create shared service organisations to provide HR support across 15 countries in Latin America.