Project : Implementing Total HR Solution at Refah Bank

What it was

Over two years I implemented comprehensive HR solutions for Refah Bank, an organization of about 10,000 people. The work covered personal systems, timekeeping, and retirement management. It was one of the client engagements I ran at Chargoon, an Iranian enterprise software company, where I worked from 2009 to 2016.

What I led

I ran this from 2010 as part of my Software Implementation Project Manager role at Chargoon. At Refah Bank I led a digitization initiative that converted paper HR files into digital formats: the team digitized 760,000 personal files, decommissioned the bank’s old mainframe computers, and streamlined HR workflows in over 10 departments.

This was implementation and delivery leadership on a large-scale enterprise rollout: coordinating a multi-department client organization, scoping and sequencing a systems migration, and managing the transition off legacy infrastructure. It sits alongside the roughly 35 other B2B software implementation projects (spanning HR, finance, and logistics) that I managed during that period.

The outcome

The digitization and workflow streamlining reduced paperwork by 40 percent. The old mainframe computers were retired. The engagement is a concrete example of the client-facing B2B implementation work I did before my later move into AI product and systems work: running a large, multi-stakeholder enterprise deployment to completion.

What made it hard

Refah Bank ran a mainframe that was over twenty years old, and exactly one person in the building could operate it. Every personnel record the organisation had was inside it.

We spent six months on analysis before touching anything. What came out of that was a rulebook of the personnel law and everything that had been hard coded into the old system.

Some of those rules could not be changed by software at all. Changing them needed the bank’s board to meet, so we asked, and they met.

The project moved 760,000 personnel files, held across different versions on that mainframe. It changed the procedure, the rule and the software together, which is the only reason it worked.