In a tight labor market, retaining top talent hinges on providing a seamless employee experience. For one Fortune 500 energy provider, outdated HR systems were creating friction for employees trying to manage everyday tasks—such as requesting PTO or updating benefits—and burdening HR teams with hard-to-maintain legacy applications. With a workforce critical to serving millions of customers, the client considered its employees its greatest asset in delivering uninterrupted service. It needed to modernize its HR processes, automate routine tasks, and rebuild applications on a more sustainable, scalable platform.
The client’s 16 legacy HR systems created a fragmented, inefficient experience for both employees and HR teams. To solve this, Concentrix approached this project from an experience design perspective rather than as a mere technology issue in need of a quick solution. Our goal was to figure out who the target audience was and what they wanted, and we defined the strategy from there. To determine how different staff would interact within different types of workflows, we created a North Star Vision on what an HR modernization journey should look like, which included journey maps and personas.
Initially, the scope was to modernize 13 outdated HR applications. However, the success of the approach quickly expanded the project: within the first year, 50 applications were rebuilt—well beyond the original target. These new apps replaced legacy systems that were costly to maintain, enabled greater automation, and created consistency across HR processes. Importantly, they were designed not as isolated tools, but as part of a broader employee experience vision, informed by journey maps, personas, and a North Star strategy for HR modernization.
To address data failures and lack of visibility, the client’s HR data was migrated from on-premise servers to Microsoft Azure. This eliminated recurring outages and enabled a secure, centralized data foundation. Concentrix introduced Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) with “gatekeeper” APIs to log, track, and govern all data requests, giving the client real-time transparency into data flow. These APIs are now used across at least 15 different teams, ensuring accuracy, integrity, and compliance.
By consolidating HR processes into intuitive, self-service applications, employees gained more control over their own experience—whether managing PTO, benefits, or onboarding. HR professionals were freed from manual data entry, allowing them to focus on higher-value responsibilities. A key improvement was onboarding: previously fragmented across multiple systems, it was redesigned into a unified platform where hiring managers and new employees could track tasks, receive reminders, and monitor progress in one place.
Leveraging Microsoft Power Apps, Concentrix created a scalable solution that reduced reliance on niche engineering talent. The low-code framework allowed both IT and “citizen developers” (non-technical staff) to easily create and customize applications, speeding up innovation while reducing costs. Training ensured the client’s team could manage and evolve the platform independently, using delivered apps as templates for future development.
“Within two months, the Concentrix team built initial platform deliverables. We then built a framework that provides a visual display of all interfaces’ activity in real-time, which has since been adopted in the company as a standard practice. These initiatives noticeably reduced the HR team’s dependency on its IT support team right away.”
– Raghavendra (Raghu) Swamy, Managing Program Director at Concentrix
Modernize and expand HR applications rapidly (50 apps built to date, with more in the pipeline)
Increase employee self-service and reduce HR’s administrative burden
Improve data accuracy, visibility, and compliance through Azure and API governance
Future-proof its HR systems with a flexible, scalable technology foundation
Because these apps have a larger scope of functionality, employees can accomplish tasks quicker, easier, and more efficiently, and by streamlining the employee lifecycle, the client can focus on what matters most: delivering a better staff experience.
