Case Study: John Keells Holdings achieves a future-proof, unified HR and 60% reduction in time-to-hire with SAP SuccessFactors

Building a Future-Proof HR Function to Support Continued Success

John Keells Holdings, Sri Lanka’s largest conglomerate, faced a fragmented HR landscape after rapid acquisitive growth: multiple legacy systems, manual processes, poor visibility into workforce data, and limited scalability. To unify and digitalize HR and create a future-ready function, John Keells Holdings selected SAP SuccessFactors, deploying the SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite (including Employee Central and the SAP SuccessFactors Mobile app) as its single system of record.

Using SAP SuccessFactors solutions—integrated with on‑premise payroll and implemented with Deloitte support—JKH automated recruiting, onboarding, performance, and learning processes and created a centralized talent pool. The deployment cut time to hire by 60%, saved about 7 hours per new hire and 2 hours per employee in performance cycles, eliminated external recruitment agency costs, stored over 17,500 résumés internally, delivered a tenfold increase in learning requests (2,500 in the first cycle), and reduced paperwork and admin time—future‑proofing HR with real‑time data and faster decision making via SAP SuccessFactors.

John Keells Holdings

Isuru Gunasekera

Chief People Officer and Head of Sustainability, ERM, and Group Initiatives