HCM Platform Transformation: Proven Growth with 80+ Engineers

Australian businesses are operating in an increasingly complex workforce environment, where attracting and managing talent efficiently is becoming more important as organisations grow and digitalise their operations. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics, 35% of Australian businesses reported experiencing skill shortages, with 16% of businesses experiencing shortages citing recruitment being too slow as one contributing factor in 2024-2025. At the same time, 12% of Australian businesses reported using AI, highlighting the growing role of technology in business operations and workforce management.

These pressures are particularly relevant for Human Capital Management (HCM) platforms, which need to bring together recruitment, employee management, performance, remuneration, attendance, analytics, and self-service while maintaining consistent and reliable HR data across processes.

Against this backdrop, an APAC HR technology company faced a similar challenge as its HCM platform expanded across multiple modules and markets. HR data and workflows had to support complex recruitment processes, external integrations, sensitive employee information, and multi-language and multi-region operations. At the same time, parts of the platform relied on legacy reporting technology, tightly coupled components, and disconnected data handling, making continued product growth increasingly difficult.

GEM joined as a technology engineering partner to help evolve the HCM platform and establish a scalable offshore engineering model. Over more than five years, the engagement grew into an 80+ engineer squad supporting 13 HCM projects, while continuously modernizing the platform without requiring a full rewrite.

Operational efficiency 

• Streamlined HR operations through automated end-to-end HR and recruitment workflows, reducing manual hand-offs, process bottlenecks, and reliance on disconnected processes.
• Centralized HR data and reporting through a unified database, ETL pipelines, and Power BI, enabling faster and more consistent access to workforce information.
• More efficient talent acquisition through SEEK and Broadbean integration, automated vacancy publishing, application flows, recruitment tracking, and interview scheduling.
• AI-enabled HR support through a Gemini AI chatbot providing 24/7 responses to HR policies and queries, reducing reliance on manual HR intervention.
• More scalable and maintainable operations through modular architecture, higher test coverage, multi-region capabilities, RBAC, and data anonymization.

Business transformation

• Lower HR workload and operational costs by automating recruitment and HR processes and reducing manual intervention.
• Faster time-to-hire and stronger talent acquisition through improved recruitment workflows, greater candidate reach via SEEK, and AI-enabled HR support.
• Faster, data-driven decision-making through real-time, self-service HR analytics and improved data accuracy, integrity, and governance.
• Greater scalability for business expansion through multi-language, multi-country, multi-entity, and multi-region capabilities, enabling expansion with less system rework.
• Reduced technology risk and stronger long-term sustainability by replacing unsupported legacy reporting technology and modernizing the platform without requiring a full rewrite.