Client Comments

Prodrive accelerate HR Management with Cascade!

Prodrive, based in Banbury, Oxfordshire, is one of the world's leading motorsport and automotive technology businesses, employing more than 1000 people at operations in the UK, USA, Thailand and Australia. Prodrive work with vehicle manufacturers and their suppliers to help them create cars consumers want. Prodrive is one of the world's largest and most successful motorsport and vehicle technology businesses with annual sales of more than £120 million.

While the company's roots are in motorsport, more than half it's business is now involved in developing niche cars and new technology for road vehicles.

In motorsport, Prodrive have won six World Rally titles with Subaru; five British Touring Car Championships with BMW, Alfa Romeo and Ford; and two class wins at Le Mans, most recently in June 2007 with Aston Martin Racing. Today Prodrive run the Subaru World Rally Team in the World Rally Championship, Aston Martin Racing in world sports car series; and Ford Performance Racing in the Australian V8 Supercar Championship Series. Prodrive have also been confirmed as an entrant for the 2008 Formula One World Championship.

Prodrive's automotive technology business works with the world's vehicle manufacturers and their suppliers to develop innovative technologies for their road cars, as well as working with them to create niche limited edition derivatives of their products.

Application of the latest proven technology combined with experienced and dedicated people is key to the success at Prodrive. With this in mind the company set out to procure a cutting edge, proven HRP solution early in 2008. Amongst other suppliers Prodrive selected to review Cascade's innovative .Net solutions. Richard Anderson, Cascade's Sales Director, and Dan Edwards, Cascade's Technical Director, were directly involved in the procurement process meeting with Prodrive's selection team including Phil Nason, Business System Manager at Prodrive. Dan is particularly enthusiastic about the partnership 'Prodrive are an extremely forward thinking organisation and have been pivotal, even prior to selecting Cascade, in helping us progress the development of our new Online Recruitment module' Dan added 'it is Cascade's policy to take direct feedback from clients and prospective clients when selecting new features for the next release of Cascade rather than operating a traditional, closed, roadmap. Prodrive have really encapsulated this principle in the way they have interacted with us over the last few months and I'm really looking forward to working with them on the finalization of the new recruitment features and also new ideas for the future.'

Cascade's new Online Recruitment module, due for release in September 2008 as part of the V3.0 release of Cascade, enhances the current Recruiter orientated Recruitment system in Cascade with Agency, Web and Applicant orientated features. Dan explains 'We can now have applicants applying online through user defined (by non technical HR Staff) web application forms and have made it very easy for applicants to apply by developing Parsing technology which allows our system to scan uploaded CVs and recognise key data such as names and addresses and other information. The system then populates the online application with the data thereby reducing the keying required by the applicant dramatically' Dan concluded 'The new Online Recruitment system includes a range of cutting edge features which really take HR system recruitment software to a new level. Now agencies and applicants can add information through controlled processes meaning that administration is vastly reduced for the HR team'.

Richard Anderson, Cascade's Sales Director, is a confirmed car and motorsports fan so was particularly excited when Prodrive awarded their contract to Cascade. 'When I visited Prodrive I was particularly struck by the level of professionalism and technology employed. It was clear that people and technology were absolutely central to the organisation, from the Aston Martin R&D centre to the requirements of the HR and Payroll teams. On reflection this shouldn't have been a surprise as automotive technology has been one of the most rapidly advancing areas of development in recent history'.

Phil Nason of Prodrive enthused "Cascade both moved the goal posts and raised the bar at the same time. The flexibility and levels of customisation exceeded anything I have seen before across a wide range of business application selections. Instead of an assessment of the normal criteria of "Does it have this field, this screen, does it allow this process, these rules, these reports" Cascade quickly and easily showed how you can create any field, any screen, any process and any report, and importantly have the entire application instantly use the new fields as if they had always been there. If you have never seen an application self generate tables, fields, screens and populate the data just by browsing to a spreadsheet ask Cascade to show you, and prepare to be amazed.

In additonal to the exceptionally well thought out technical features Cascade clearly has an eye for, and understands the value of good design, which is especially important for an application you need your entire employee base to be able to use, with minimal training.On top of that Cascade feels like a company it will be a pleasure to work with"

Prodrive have chosen to implement Cascade's .Net browser based HR solution including Workflow, System Designer, Online Recruitment, along with their HMRC accredited Payroll solution

To find out more about Cascade please contact us via the web site, or by phone or email:

CONTACT:

Andrew Court
Cascade Human Resources Ltd.
Phone: 0113 255 4115
Fax: 0113 255 9073
Email: Andrew.Court@cascadehr.co.uk