BHP Billiton - Reward Online

Situation

BHP Billiton sought to improve the way that their managers performed remuneration reviews by providing them with a custom web-based tool to support the process. After an unsuccessful attempt to have this tool developed by another vendor, BHP Billiton approached Evanscorp to make the system production-ready and to develop it further, in line with their changing requirements.

Solution

Evanscorp began work on BHP Billiton's remuneration tool (now called Reward Online) in 2000, and was asked to make modifications to it in 2001, 2002 and 2003. The work in 2000 involved making the existing tool sufficiently robust for managers to use for the 2000 remuneration reviews. Following these reviews, it was clear that Reward Online needed improvement.

2001: Major Changes for Reward Online

In 2001, Evanscorp applied significant changes to Reward Online (ROL) to improve its robustness and usability. Some of these changes altered the architecture of the Reward Online application, the underlying data source and their interaction. The major architectural changes included:

• The adoption of a new security model and development of a supporting authentication module;
• The use of client-side caching to improve the user experience, especially for those on low-bandwidth connections;
• Improvements to data accessibility through use of:
  1. More reliable accessor methods,
  2. Database indexes to help speed up data retrieval, and
  3. The definition of data relationships to help maintain data consistency.

Many new functional enhancements were also made for 2001, such as the ability to define algorithms for employee allowance calculations, improvements to the tools used to import and export data (from/to Excel), and the incorporation of the new version of an interactive third party data grid, which was used to present data, allow changes to be made and to display the effects of those changes. The grid was packaged as an ActiveX Control and required extensive customisation.

2002: Performance Tuning and Functional Developments

In 2002, prior to the next annual review, Reward Online underwent further improvements to increase the performance of data saving and retrieval, particularly for those on low-speed connections. Issues with the reliability of data accessibility were addressed by implementing newer data accessor technology, the import facility was restructured to minimise the window of opportunity for database table locking, and the ActiveX data grid was replaced with one that used client-side script code, to avoid issues with Administrators being required to install ActiveX controls on users' PCs so that they could use ROL. Of course, several enhancements to functionality were also made. A significant enhancement was the development of a facility to "import" definitions of users from the company's global e-mail address list.

The replacement data grid was developed fully in-house by Evanscorp. It contained a similar feature set to that of the ActiveX control: scrolling, adjustable column widths, sorting in ascending/descending order, propagation of changes to data throughout the grid and other data on the screen, tool tips, pop-up detail screens and the incorporation of links to online help. The aim was to provide an interface to users that would operate using the software that was already shipped with their browsers, so that no software installation or special privileges were required to use the new version of Reward Online. The new grid fulfilled this requirement, thereby improving the usability of the product.

2003: Functional Refinement

By 2003, the user experience with Reward Online had improved dramatically compared to its early days. It had become operationally stable and provided most of the features required by BHP Billiton's managers. No further architectural improvements were identified, but several functional changes were requested for the next round of remuneration reviews.

Given the new technologies that had become available since Reward Online was developed and subsequently enhanced, and in view of the particular changes that BHP Billiton requested, it was decided that we would convert the existing system to use the .NET framework. This enabled changes to be implemented more quickly and easily, and took advantage of new features and toolsets available for development with .NET.

The latest version of Reward Online continues to operate smoothly and reliably for BHP Billiton. BHP businesses that had not previously used Reward Online began to use it this year, having seen demonstrations of its features and benefits. Some new features that didn't make the cut this year may be incorporated next year.

The Result

Through a working partnership between BHP Billiton and Evanscorp, we were able to deliver a production system that supports the company's remuneration process and yields value to the business.

BHP Billiton has used an internet based tool called Reward Online (ROLXP) to help managers model remuneration changes for employees since 2000. Evanscorp have been engaged to modify and develop the tool from 2001 to date. While the concept has always been generally well received by users, last year (after extensive modifications) the managers surveyed were very high in their praise of the system and its stability, and we received many unsolicited comments of appreciation.

I have worked with Phil and Jenny Evans over this period of time and have found them to be approachable, extremely knowledgeable, dedicated and delivering what they said they would (even a little more on occasions than was agreed).

I have no hesitation in recommending them.

Mike McIlwaine

HR Assist Consultant, BHP Billiton