The French Air Force has chosen Atos Origin to develop and implement a major personnel management system known as Orchestra. The project entails the design, development and deployment of a single unified SAP HR management system covering all HR and payroll applications for French Air Force military personnel. The four-year contract is valued at €9 million.

As part of a broader inter-ministerial move to revamp France’s public sector human resources information systems, the Orchestra project addresses the Air Force’s HR needs in terms of payroll management, manpower and career planning, consolidation of the restructured human resources function and support for the Air Force transformation process. Its objective is to rationalise, automate and simplify management tasks by the second half of 2009, while ensuring a seamless transition from three standalone applications to a centralised human resources information system, independent of any changes in the Air Force’s organisational structure.

As prime contractor for the project, which involves extensive organisational and functional content, Atos Origin is supporting the French Air Force in its comprehensive quality and resource pooling process. Deliverables cover all phases from development to operational deployment of the system. The systems integration project impacts more than 70,000 Air Force personnel (active and reserve, 2nd section general officers) at 40 air bases and Air Force units stationed in mainland France and French overseas dependencies.

“In addition to complying with the NCI’s functional and technical foundations and seamlessly integrating the Orchestra NCI solution in a global SAP environment, Atos Origin offered us a solution tailored to our project management environment,” said Lieutenant Colonel Roland Cauvin, Deputy Director of the Orchestra project. “This includes a mirror organisation and joint task groups of HR and technical experts. What’s more, the deep integration and collaboration across Atos Origin and Air Force teams is guaranteeing optimal sharing of critical issues and effective knowledge transfer.”