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View from the Top - Part 2 | Part 1
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COMPANY FILE
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Founded in 1976, Zuken is a leading
global provider of electronics design and manufacturing
products.
It is headquartered in Yokohama
with sales and support centres in 10 countries. Zuken
claims to have a leading global share of the PCB software
market in electronic design automation. Over 300 software
developers work in its centres in Japan and Europe.
Zuken has invested almost $40 million in R&D over the
past two years.
Zuken has around 1,100 staff worldwide,
with around 65 in the UK. Its human resources function,
based in the UK office in Bristol, covers the UK and
the rest of Europe.
Its customers include ABB, Airbus,
Alcatel, BMW, Bosch, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, NASA, Nissan,
Marconi Communications, Rockwell Samsung, Sony and Toshiba.
Zuken first worked with Computers
In Personnel in 1998 deploying the Compel Personnel
Manager and Recruitment Manager software.
More recently, it chose to become
an early adopter of Compel’s latest product offering,
Ciphr.
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Q: HOW DID THE USERS TAKE TO THE NEW
SYSTEM?
A: Because of the earlier security and access issues, we
tested the software with small groups.
We piloted the system in November 2002 and had feedback by
January 2003. We then put the system on hold because at that
time we were undergoing a major reorganisation, and introduced
it after that. Zuken was hit by the electronics downturn and
decided to retrench with many of the staff in the Bristol
office made redundant. I moved to a consultant role at that
time.
We got staff up to speed with the new system in a series
of meetings. We also made use of movie cameras – which were
used in our design department – to make product demos. So
if an employee wanted to find out about the self-access, they
could click on a button and get a movie on their PC screen
explaining how it worked.
This worked very well. 90% of the employees are graduates
and if you do a standard presentation to them, you’ve got
a problem. Lots of them wanted to access the technology themselves
and the movie shots meant they could do that.
Practically everyone in Zuken is computer literate so it
suits the culture of the organisation to make information
available online. We had looked at the way we did business,
the type of people we were employing and what they were looking
for from HR – and people were much more comfortable accessing
data online.
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Conspectus 2004
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Copyright © 2004
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