HR Management Solutions: Are you choosing the right one the right way?

9:00 A.M. — You enter the office gate after steering your sedan through the heavy traffic and finally take a sigh of relief seeing the guard hand you over a much awaited token ensuring you your day of occupying that one of the few limited parking slots available on rotational basis by the HR to the employees. Smiling you walk down the reception aisle to enter your working area swiping your attendance smart card at the door. You just got an SMS alert of your salary being credited; and you login to your office intranet to check your salary slip details. While you still silently grumble over some unexpected annual deductions, an automated e-mail drops in the form of your proposed upcoming professional training schedule asking your confirmation for the same. Indeed, how connected you are to the HR, which manages information about you and a pool of your fellow colleagues. But then, who helps manage HR? Not completely, but significantly, it is your HR Management (HRM) ­solution.

Challenges in the existing HRM Landscape
The existing HRM landscape faces the challenges on the front of various goals it tends to achieve. As shown in the illustration, the major barriers emerge in the form of non-uniformity of the workforce data; the reason being the use of multiple platforms and data models for storing information. Another challenge is the performance of the workforce and scalability of work being gauged by independent bodies. The major challenge, of course, comes in the form of non-amalgamation of departmental functioning. A need for a unified HRM solution that takes care of all these issues is clearly foreseen.

Mistakes while choosing an HRM Solution
Be it any upcoming small enterprise or a well established medium/large size organization, choosing an HRM solution requires an equally well researched and in-depth requirement portfolio as is the case while choosing a CRM or an ERP solution. But at the same time, you are bound to land-up in some common pit-falls that one should try to avoid. A few of them creep-in on the grounds of ignorance while others accrue due to the prevailing myths about deploying an HRM solution.

The first and the foremost mistake is the inability to quantify the short and long-term benefits of an HRM solution. This is possibly because there are quite a few benefits that would be difficult to quantify, viz higher productivity, better information management and lower employee attrition rates. The next most common mistake is of not analyzing your wish-list of desired features from the package carefully enough. Simply going by word of mouth from your peer enterprises is not sufficient. You must take their feedback, but don't base your final decision on it. Identify your requirements carefully and check how well would the HRM system integrate with your existing operational systems. Finally, just like an ERP package, even HRMS requires top management involvement, because it's going to impact each and every employee of the company. You need to ensure that they're involved from day one.

A common myth is that an HRM solution only benefits the HR department. Besides managing recruitment and controlling attrition, which in a way decides the quality of your peer intellect, HR is very closely integrated with Payroll and Finance departments.

Checkpoints before finalizing an
HRM ­Solution
While finalizing an HRM solution, there are lots of parameters that should be kept in mind. Besides features, these can be broadly classified under solution architecture, operation and provider. If an HRM solution is already in place, check whether a simple upgrade to a newer released version from the developer can provide you with the same benefits and desired features, than to go in for a completely new product that retires or sunsets your legacy application.

Talking about architecture, the foremost point to consider is that how well the application can integrate with your existing application systems. That makes you analyze as to what is getting customized; your existing applications to the HRM solution or vice-versa. To start, check the platform on which it can run; whether it is Windows-based or runs on Linux? What database platforms (MS Access, SQL Server, MSDE, Oracle) does it support? Whether the data in the form of spreadsheets, word documents, pdfs, etc be imported into and exported from the application? Another aspect is whether you can generate reports as per your requirement or is it the pre-defined report formats that get populated. The integration with payroll software is another vital check-point on the architectural front. This helps you decide the amount of effort required to maintain either two independent applications (payroll and HRM solutions) or manage one.

On the features front, besides checking against the wish-list as incorporated in the requirements say a module for report generation to analyse employee data, check on some basic features expected of an HRM solution, say, a module to maintain employee directory; manage pay-roll, performance reviews and appraisal cycles; and employee attendance-tracking functionality.

Coming to the operational aspect of the solution, check if the solution can enable automated features like e-mail alerts about review time, payroll changes, etc and alerts about your date and time sensitive events. If not going for an in-house solution, a con that is common to web-based solutions is the dip in performance during peak load depending on server capabilities; say during the time of your appraisal cycles, when multiple employees access the HRM dashboard, the performance is expected to dip. Thus, check on how many multiple users can access the application without experiencing any compromises on performance.

Lastly, the solution provider should dominate your back-of-mind thinking while choosing any HRM solution. What use is the best featured product if it is not backed up by a good after sales service/support? Check on the vendor's history to gauge his expertise on timely deployment of the solution. Also trace down the frequency of product updates from the provider and quality of technical support to their existing customer base.

HRM Solutions
Besides a variety of HRM applications available in the market, the option clearly comes as per the investor's requirement. Whether you want an open-source HRM solution or as a SaaS (software-as-a-service) model, you want a Windows-based or one that runs on Linux environment, options are at your disposal. We discuss a few good HRM solutions that can well suffice the basic needs of your organization.

OrangeHRM
OrangeHRM is an HRM solution that offers the flexibility of both, an open-source solution and a SaaS model, in the form of recently

launched Orange HRM Live version. It is based on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) architecture. The added features include Audit Trail module which keeps track of changes the user makes, and HR Policies and Bulletin Board which stores HR policies and forms in the system for employees to access and also holds information on passport/visa, ­license, membership and contract expiries. On the other hand, the flagship product, Orange HRM 2.6 stable release for Windows also comes bundled with Apache, MySQL and PHP software, all installations being implemented in a single click.

SimpleHR
Another HRM solution is the SimpleHR, which provides some good features like employment equity, safety and security modules, confidential document storage and over 50 report generation

capability besides the standard modules offered otherwise. The system requirement for a single user is also standard precisely, a 600MHz processor with 512MB recommended RAM, and 500MB + 100MB of free disk space. The disk space, however, varies with the number of employees and documents stored. The multi-user version is optimized for Windows 2000 server, Server 2003/2008 client-server networks and Windows XP/Vista. MS Word and Excel 97 (or higher) and MS Outlook 2000 (or higher) can be integrated with the solution.

People-Trak HR
People-Trak HR is a good option to start-off an affordable HRM solution. However, increasing workforce and adding functionalities makes it a bit more noticeable on your pocket. The comparatively newer version of the product, People-Trak Strategic HR gives you the option of customizable tools like advanced workflows and process triggers. The HR Web Add-On allows you to upgrade the former versions by adding features like Employee Self-Service (ESS), Manager Self-Service (MSS), and Candidate Self-Service (CSS). These are basically multiple data entry screens which allow the employee and manager to view and change information.

EmpXtrack
EmpXtrack comes in multiple versions, the major ones being starter, performance, professional and enterprise. Also, the flexibility is enhanced by it being deployable on both Windows and Linux platforms. The solution can be used organizations with as low as 20 employees all the way up to 2000+ employee organizations. The solution offers all the basic requirements under HRMS, self services, application tracking, employee appraisal and data storage. Also, up to 4 HR manager licenses can be issued for every 250 employees. The starter edition is the most preferred version for a small enterprise. Advanced configurations like expense reporting and time-sheet functionality are good features which a medium-sized enterprise can look forward to in EmpXtrack.