Article: Waking to Social Media: Vishal Saha

Technology

Waking to Social Media: Vishal Saha

Vishal Saha, Vice President Technology, PeopleStrong
Waking to Social Media: Vishal Saha

HR Technology space has evolved from being a pure Information system to being the enabler for productivity improvement, predictability in HR processes and collaboration. The wave to move from on-premise Human Capital Information System to SaaS based - modular approach and now HR on cloud solutions is a significant step in that movement. On demand - real time predictability in hiring, retention, absenteeism and managing reward & recognition, employee engagement through collaborative tools.
SaaS HR technology is no more a fringe technology, there is a clear movement from having to live with the burden of legacy systems with monolithic maintenance and upgrade challenges. Customers are sensing a freedom with e-modules which bring in more flexibility and have no-or very limited maintenance, data storage and management hassles.
HR is waking to social media. Collaboration through intranet and internet is the new power driving very softer aspects as employee engagement and employee recognition.

HR is valuing data and connectivity to business information. HR will continue to move on the journey of making streams of information and data relevant, integrated and to give actionable and concrete analytics about their people and Insights such as positive profiling, data for skill mapping internally and externally, Zip code based workforce decisions. The analysis is going to move towards inferences, insights and storytelling rather than Information dumps that make no sense.

The HR technology will move to "my space, my time" zone for an employee. The connect and information will have to be through more collaborative interfaces as Mobile and Smartphone rather than hardcoded technology interfaces.

The different players in the HR technology space can be easily categorized into the following broad segments:

• On-premise HRMS/ERP - provides an integrated enterprise-wide solution and typically opted by large organizations. However, they lack in depth from an HR perspective. Employee self service portals of such solutions are pretty expensive and customers more often than not use these systems for backend database management and development something in-house or take a third-party solution for employee front end.
• Payroll Software - caters specifically to one of the most important Human Resource requirement of Payroll processing and provides a basic Employee Database Management solution also.
• Recruitment Software - typically caters to medium to large organizations with multiple locations and having high recruitment needs
• Talent Management - caters to Organizations with fairly mature Human Resource practices who probably have basic HR systems in place and now want to focus on strategic HR systems of Performance, Succession, Learning, Recruitment
• SaaS based HRMS - An integrated human capital management system will all HR modules in place and delivered on cloud.
The following parameters will help in choosing the right vendor for any organization.
• Modular Approach - The functional requirements should certainly be one of the prime focus areas while evaluating a product. The ideal Product should have has both breadth & depth. An Organization may not need all modules at the beginning but the product should have the capability to seamlessly fulfill the needs of the Organization as it grows. It should be possible to add modules
• Scalability - It’s important to see how robust and scalable the product is. Organizations should look for vendors who have sufficient experience and capability of delivering on Cloud. The product might be on cloud but it may not be scalable to handle the employee transactions.
• New Age users - A product may have the best of the features but if is not good from usability and user experience perspective, the adoption is going to be a challenge. Lot of times, we underestimate the importance of user interface but it can make the product a success or a failure.
• Data Integrity and Confidentiality
• Integration capability with other best of breed applications and products.

Following things should be taken into consideration while evaluating the ROI of HR Technology

• Direct Costs - Acquisitions & Implementation Costs, Capital Expenditure & Recurring Operational Cost
• Scalability Costs
• Efficiency Improvement Cost - Directly Converted to FTE savings
• Predictability and Business & Talent Savings
 

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Topics: Technology, Strategic HR, #Outsourcing

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