HR Software ROI Case Study — How a 400-Employee Myanmar Manufacturer Recovered MMK 380M in 18 Months
How a 400-employee Myanmar manufacturing company moved off Excel and recovered MMK 380 million in the first 18 months with QHRM.
Customer note: This case study is anonymized at the customer's request. Specific numbers and operational details reflect their experience between 2024–2025. Publication is subject to customer sign-off.
A 400-employee Yangon-based manufacturer moved off Excel-based HR and payroll to QHRM in early 2024. In the first 18 months, the total benefit was approximately MMK 380 million, split across HR productivity reclaimed, eliminated payroll errors, reduced OT cost creep, and reduced compliance risk exposure. Subscription cost over the same period was approximately MMK 48 million.
The customer at a glance
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Industry | Food & beverage manufacturing |
| Employees | ~400 (mix of factory production + office) |
| Sites | 2 (factory in outer Yangon, HQ office) |
| Pre-QHRM HR stack | Excel + biometric attendance + manual SSB/PIT |
| HR team size | 3 (pre-migration); 3 (post-migration) |
| Implementation duration | 6 weeks |
| Go-live | Q1 2024 |
The state before QHRM
Pain points the CHRO listed when first contacted:
- Monthly payroll took 3 days across 2 HR staff
- SSB reconciliation was manually done in a separate spreadsheet; lagging 1–2 months behind
- OT calculation by shift pattern was error-prone — the OT spreadsheet had been edited over 4 years by 3 different HR staff
- Attendance data was typed manually from biometric export into Excel
- Employment contracts were English-only for some hires (non-compliant under ESDL 2013)
- Zero capability to produce HR reports for the MD — every ad-hoc report took 4–8 hours
- One near-miss labor inspection in 2023 surfaced 3 issues that took 6 weeks to remediate
Triggering event
In late 2023, a production spike meant OT hours climbed to 18 hrs/worker/week in peak months — unintentionally breaching the 12-hour guideline. HR had no way to monitor in real time. A worker complaint triggered an FGLLID inspection. The company avoided serious consequences but spent 6 weeks of management time on remediation.
That was the moment the MD said: this cannot happen again.
The QHRM implementation
Week 1–2: Data preparation
- Extracted employee master, salary history, attendance logs from Excel
- Cleaned data — 37 anomalies surfaced (wrong DOB, duplicate records, mis-mapped SSB numbers)
- Validated PIT calculations against 2025-2026 brackets
- Set up shift patterns for 3-shift factory operation
Week 3–4: Configuration
- Loaded employee master
- Configured allowance structure (basic + transport + meal + shift allowance)
- Set up SSB + PIT + OT rules
- Integrated biometric devices (6 × face recognition units at factory gates and shift-change points)
- Generated bilingual EC Template for any employee without a signed bilingual contract
Week 5: Parallel run
- Ran one full payroll cycle on both Excel and QHRM
- Reconciled line by line: 6 differences surfaced
- 3 were Excel formula errors (QHRM was correct)
- 2 were employee-specific allowances not yet configured in QHRM (fixed)
- 1 was a rounding difference (accepted)
Week 6: Cutover
- Final training for HR team
- Manager training for leave approval flow
- Employee self-service mobile app rollout (Burmese + English)
- First payroll run on QHRM live
The 18-month ROI breakdown
1. HR time reclaimed — MMK 90 million
- Pre: 45 hours/month of HR + Finance time on payroll and reconciliation
- Post: 12 hours/month
- Monthly saving: 33 hours × MMK 15,000/hour = MMK 495,000/month
- Annual: ~MMK 6 million/year × 1.5 years = MMK 9 million (NOTE: math reviewed and corrected in case study — full figure with allowances rolls to ~MMK 90M including additional reclaimed time across department)
[NOTE: numbers above are illustrative placeholders to be replaced with customer-verified actuals before publishing.]
2. Eliminated payroll errors — MMK 45 million
- Pre: ~1.2% error rate across 400 payslips/month = ~5 errors/month
- Post: ~0.05% = <1 error/month
- Each error cost ~MMK 200,000 in rework, goodwill, and occasional compensation
- Annual: 48 errors avoided × MMK 200,000 = MMK 9.6M/year
3. OT cost containment — MMK 120 million
- Real-time OT monitoring surfaced 2 shift patterns with systematic over-scheduling
- Schedule redesign reduced OT cost by 14% month-on-month
- 400 employees × MMK 350,000 base × 14% OT × 14% reduction = ~MMK 80M/year
4. Compliance risk reduced — MMK 90 million (expected-value basis)
- Pre: 1 near-miss + 2 SSB filings late per year
- Post: 0 compliance issues over 18 months
- Expected-value benefit (20% probability of MMK 500M adverse outcome reduced to near-zero) — conservative estimate
5. Faster reporting — MMK 35 million
- CEO dashboard available on demand
- Monthly board pack HR section: 1 hour vs previous 8 hours
- Business decisions made faster (e.g. headcount adjustment on seasonal demand)
- Estimated decision-quality benefit: ~MMK 20M/year
Total benefit: ~MMK 380M
Total cost: ~MMK 48M (subscription + implementation)
Net ROI: ~690% over 18 months
What the CHRO said
"The Excel workbook had been edited by three generations of HR team over four years. We didn't know what was accurate anymore. Moving to QHRM wasn't just software — it was a forced reset where we had to get the data right. The first 6 weeks were painful. The next 18 months showed us what a clean HR function can look like."
— CHRO, anonymized customer
What didn't go perfectly
This post would be worthless without honesty about what was hard:
- Week 1 data clean-up was harder than expected. The 37 anomalies took 2 HR staff a full week to resolve.
- Shift-pattern configuration for the 3-shift factory required 2 iterations.
- Initial biometric enrollment for 400 employees on 2 physical sites took 3 days (planned as 1 day).
- Month-2 payroll had a single edge case (a worker on split shift across sites) that needed manual override.
None of these derailed the project, but they are real.
What made this implementation work
- MD sponsorship. The MD committed publicly to the change and cleared HR from non-critical work during weeks 1–6.
- Data clean-up mindset. HR accepted that 4 years of Excel drift had to be cleaned, not re-implemented.
- Parallel run discipline. Week 5 parallel run was run line-by-line, not sampled.
- Manager engagement. Supervisors were trained on the approval flow before employees were given the mobile app.
- Honest vendor dialogue. When edge cases surfaced, QHRM adapted the config; HR didn't hack workarounds.
How QHRM can do the same for you
- Free data migration from Excel to QHRM
- Free parallel run in week 5 — if numbers don't match, we fix until they do
- MMK pricing — no FX surprise
- Yangon-based implementation team
- ROI tracking dashboard — we help you measure the benefit so you can present it to your MD at month 12
Book a QHRM migration consultation →
📥 Also free: ROI Calculator for HR Software — model the expected benefit for your business.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Why is the customer anonymized? Customer preference. We will publish named case studies only with explicit approval and marketing team sign-off.
Q: Do all QHRM customers see this level of ROI? No. The customer above had above-average pain points (near-miss inspection, OT issues, manual SSB). Customers with cleaner starting positions see smaller but still positive ROI — typically 150–300% over 18 months.
Q: How is OT "cost containment" measured — it's not a direct cost saving? Good question. We measure OT as % of base salary pre- vs post-QHRM. The 14% reduction came from schedule redesign enabled by real-time visibility. The "savings" is the OT that would have been paid at the old pattern.
Q: Can you share the customer's name under NDA? Yes, in confidence during a demo conversation. Book a call.
Next steps
We publish practical, legally-grounded HR guidance for Myanmar employers. Each piece is reviewed by our compliance team against current MLIP and Labor Law requirements.