Overview Media-Saturn chooses Saba for their learning, succession planning, and performance management programs to maintain leadership in a fast-paced retail environment. They provide succession planning and efficient training, tying together performance and learning goals for the company's top 1,500 executives in a decentralized environment to reduce employee attrition and improve internal promotions. Business Challenge Media-Saturn Group needed to provide succession planning and efficient training, and tie together performance and learning goals for the company’s top 1,500 executives, in a decentralized environment to reduce employee attrition and improve internal promotions. Business Benefits -Track improvements in attrition and decreased reliance on external hires -Reduce cost per employee using e-learning -Automate and integrate people management system deployed quickly with no incremental IT costs -Utilize Saba’s multilingual capabilities to use in markets throughout Europe and Asia

1. Case Study
Media-Saturn Group
Media-Saturn Chooses Saba People
Systems to Maintain Leadership in a
Fast-Paced Retail Environment
Industry
Retail
Challenge
Provide succession planning and efficient
training, and tie together performance and
learning goals for the company’s top 1,500
executives, in a decentralized environment
to reduce employee attrition and improve
internal promotions
Business Benefits
ƒƒ Tracked improvements in attrition and
decreased reliance on external hires
ƒƒ Reduced cost per employee using e-learning
ƒƒ Automated and integrated people
management system deployed quickly with
no incremental IT costs
ƒƒ Saba’s multilingual capabilities to use in
markets throughout Europe and Asia
Solutions
ƒƒ Saba Learning OnDemand
ƒƒ Saba Succession OnDemand
ƒƒ Saba Performance Reviews OnDemand
ƒƒ Saba Goals & Objectives OnDemand
The Media-Saturn Group is the leading consumer electronics retailer in
Europe with net sales of more than 19 billion euros in 2008. Headquartered
in Germany, Media-Saturn operates with two sales lines, Media Markt and
Saturn. The clear leaders in consumer electronics in Europe with over 800
locations in 17 countries, Media-Saturn is widely considered a trendsetter in
the industry.
Media-Saturn relies on a decentralized corporate structure, with each store
run as a separate business unit, employing more than 60,000 people in
countries from China to Russia — all of whom need training, in addition to
standard people management activities such as talent and performance
management. Media-Saturn
provides both its business
units and individual stores
considerable autonomy —
We really needed to get the
placing store directors in charge
of hiring, firing, training, and even
right people in place and make
product inventory. Every store
sure they had the right skills
director is also a shareholder;
and were good entrepreneurs,
therefore, directors have an
but we also had to understand
ownership interest in their
their skill sets.
store, which helps drive high
performance.
“
”
Christian Förg
Head of HR Payroll Solutions
Media-Saturn
Training Leads to DoubleDigit Growth
Media-Saturn piloted Saba
Learning OnDemand in Spain
in early 2008. The fully hosted
solution made it possible for the
group to implement e-learning in Media Markt and Saturn stores within four
weeks of signing the contract with Saba. Hosting also ensures that MediaSaturn’s solution will always be secure — protected behind Saba’s firewall
— and incorporate the latest technology.
Following its success in Spain, Media-Saturn began rolling out Saba
Learning in other European markets, starting with Germany, Russia, and the
Netherlands. The stores use e-learning to deliver product information, sales
training, compliance, and new employee orientations.
“Austria launched an e-learning program called Forty-Plus, designed to
enhance the sales of large-screen televisions of 40 inches or more,” Förg
explains. “We provided very comprehensive training — product-specific
content, sales techniques, even where to place the TV sets in the home. Our
unit sales in Austria for 40-inch televisions showed a double-digit growth.”

2. Case Study
n
Media-Saturn Group
Single Platform for People Systems Delivers Real
Business Value
Because Saba offers a complete people management platform
that incorporates learning and development, performance
management, compensation, talent management, and even
enterprise social networking, Media-Saturn knew that Saba
could help them transform their HR from merely a function into
a unit that provided true business value.
That’s why in 2009, after the results that the company
garnered by using Saba Learning, Media-Saturn then
implemented Saba Succession, Saba Performance Reviews,
and Saba Goals Objectives to help identify the top
performers or employees with special abilities, and more
effectively develop and retain key employees and manage the
company’s talent pool.
“We originally chose Saba because we knew they would
give us a strategic advantage because they have integrated
modules. Once we deployed Saba Succession and Saba
Performance Management along with the LMS application
we had deployed earlier, we could then have a learning goal
correlate to a performance review and a performance goal be
a learning objective,” says Förg.
Förg, who came to Media-Saturn from Hewlett-Packard, says
that he had seen the value of using a people management
platform and knew that it would help Media-Saturn meet
their expansion and retention goals — especially because
performance management was handled via spreadsheets or
word processing documents, if it was managed at all. The
company wanted to develop a single performance and talent
database for its 1,500 top executives in order to help with
hiring and succession planning.
“There was considerable head room in the success rate of our
external hires,” Förg says. “We really needed to get the right
people in place and make sure they had the right skills and were
good entrepreneurs, but we also had to understand their skill
sets. Additionally, Media-Saturn needed a way to develop the
talent of their employees, helping them move from a shop-floor
assistant up the ladder to country manager if they so desired.”
“We needed to demonstrate that if we identified our internal
people correctly, and then developed them with individual
coaching, training programs, job rotation, and even international
experience, we could easily build our own leaders so that we
wouldn’t have to go external. With the Saba system in place, we
will be able to know what our employees can and cannot do.
And that dramatically reduces our risk,” Förg explains.
While it’s still too early to report results, anecdotal evidence
points to increased employee retention, a clear path to
promotion for internal candidates, and decreased fees to
headhunters looking for external candidates.
“An external hire is always a risk. It’s a financial risk at first
because you most likely are paying search firms. Then it
takes at least six months to a year for an external hire to
get acclimatized within the company because of our special
culture. So anything that can help reduce these risks is a good
thing,” Förg says.
A Pathway to the Future
One of the features that Media-Saturn really appreciated was
the availability of Saba solutions in the cloud.
“In my opinion, I think the software-as-a-service model is a
good deal because it means we don’t have to have Saba
expertise in-house, which is challenging to find in Europe,”
says Förg. “But with cloud computing, if something is not
working or I need a database backup or there is an integration
issue with our legacy software, I can just call Saba and it’s
fixed. It’s that simple.”
Media-Saturn started first with Saba Learning in the cloud and
then implemented Saba Succession and Saba Performance
Management solutions, and Förg foresees a time in the near
future when more Saba solutions are deployed.
“Being able to deploy modules gradually lets us ease the
company into a complete HR platform as we are ready,”
says Förg. “It gives us a pathway to the future, allowing us to
move up to any level in the next five years. There is nothing
that I see us doing in the next five years that Saba would not
be able to handle.”
Saba enables organizations to build a transformative workplace where they can leverage their people
networks to become more competitive through innovation, speed, agility, and trust.
© 2012 Saba Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Saba, the Saba logo, and the marks relating to Saba products and services referenced herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Saba
Software, Inc. or its affiliates. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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