Hornbach-Baumarkt-AG Group

GROUP MANAGEMENT REPORT Non-Financial Performance Ind icators 61
Targeted management development and succession planning
A total of 122 participants successfully completed our training
programs to qualify as divisional heads, assistant managers
and store managers in the past financial year. These training
programs are offered on a uniform basis in Germany, Austria,
Luxembourg, Switzerland, Sweden, and Romania and are due
to be rolled out further.
Our management development activities are based on a
structured succession process installed across the Group for
the first time in the 2012/2013 financial year. This enables us
to identify our need for next-generation operative managers
better and faster than previously. Thanks to this employee
training, any positions becoming vacant can be quickly filled
with internal candidates. This is based on the uniform groupwide
employee appraisal process. A functional level model
was also newly introduced in the year under report. This aims
to structure all job profiles at the company in line with objective
criteria and thus provide clear, fair rules for dealing with
topics such as compensation, ancillary benefits, and career
opportunities.
IT successfully manages extensive release change
Since January 21, 2013, all of the HORNBACH Group’s stores,
administrative departments, and logistics centers have been
working with a new release of our merchandise and logistics
software. In preparation for this change, our information
technology (IT) successfully coped with more than 12,000 test
cases. HORNBACH thus laid the foundations necessary to
benefit from the software manufacturer’s technical upgrades.
In particular, fiscal amendments can now be input directly
and no longer have to be retrospectively programmed on an
in-house basis. Following this change, the maintenance
period has been extended until at least 2020.
A further focus of IT activities in the 2012/2013 financial year
involved pressing ahead with the rollout of the new “FastPOS”
checkout system. Following Germany, Sweden, Austria, and
Switzerland, the stores in Luxembourg and the Netherlands
were converted in the year under report. With FastPOS, the
checkout keyboard is replaced by a touch-sensitive monitor.
This system, which is based on Java technology, has more
than proved itself in practice. Significantly shorter training
periods and improved user management have helped make
day-to-day work easier for our checkout teams.
With the help of IT, we have optimized key processes in our
human resources systems. In mid-2012, for example, we
introduced a browser-based employee survey system. Compared
with the previous approach, this solution has significantly
reduced the volume of processing and enhanced employee
acceptance levels. The eRecruiting system introduced
in Germany in summer 2011 has proven its worth and was
rolled out to Austria and the Netherlands in the period under
report. This system has shown tangible benefits in terms of
lightening the workload at stores.
Sales tax rates in the Czech Republic were raised by one
percentage point each to 15% and 21% as of January 1, 2013.
The resultant adjustments to IT systems ran smoothly.
Group logistics secure competitive advantages
One key success factor in the operation of DIY megastores
with garden centers across Europe is our sophisticated merchandise
management system in conjunction with our homogenous
store network. By operating our own group logistics
system, we have over the years built up a competitive advantage
in terms of store service levels and procuring transport
services. Our logistics system combines direct supplies to
stores, indirect deliveries via central warehouses, and crossdocking.
We launched operations at a fourth logistics center in Soltau
(Niedersachsen) at the beginning of the 2013 financial year,
thus extending our logistics capacities for imports and central
storage in particular.