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West Ham banking on Sage signing to kick on from last season's woes

Premier League football club West Ham United have today announced they are partnering with HR software platform, Sage People, to help integrate HR and recruitment operations across its business.

What this means in practice is that the East London club will move away from the manual processes it currently uses to manage the expenses and payroll services for its 250+ non-playing staff towards a cloud-based system fully accessible on mobile and other smart devices.

The East London side chose the software firm following a competitive tender process which saw 60 initial applications from rival businesses bidding for the contract, and now hope to have the system up and running by September just after the new season begins.

Mike Bohndiek, Head of IT, West Ham United FC explained that last season’s move to the Olympic Stadium posed an ideal opportunity to modernise the club’s processes and move towards a ‘mobile-first’ strategy to meet the needs of a 21st Century workforce.

He said: “Previously, all of the club’s IT resources were on-premise and had no mobile or smart device compatibility. We wanted to adopt cloud services to modernize how we support our workforce, and the club’s move from Upton Park to the London Stadium gave us the perfect opportunity to do this and move to a mobile-first strategy.”

In moving to the cloud-based platform, the implementation of the new system marks another modernising step for West Ham United following its move to the London Stadium last year, with the club hoping for a better season this time around after complaints about the lack of atmosphere and overzealous stewarding overshadowing their big move.

The club eventually finished 11th in the Premier League, but not after numerous negative headlines had dogged their inaugural season at their new home.

West Ham and their fans will be hoping for a better showing this time around, both on and off the pitch, and Michele Gull, the club’s Head of Human Resources, believes Sage People’s new platform will help to support its staff recruitment and retention efforts in the coming years.

She added: “Our main focus was to improve our employee experience, which had impacted on talent recruitment and retention in the past.

“Equally the nature of the processes in place made it challenging for the HR team to keep pace with the Premier League’s reporting requirements and the day to day running of the club.

“The addition of the company intranet capability, which Sage People allows, will also be critical in maintaining an engaged workforce.”

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