The world of HR technology has undergone several changes in the last few years. Earlier, companies relied on getting major HR implementations at an organization-wide level typically through an enterprise system. Requiring huge investments, and implementation efforts, these systems were difficult to update and tedious to fix. Blame it on their obscurity of adaptation and usage, the genesis of cloud based technology has made the ERPs almost obsolete. And at the same time has changed the way technology is implemented overnight.

So, what’s different in a cloud-based solution that makes it so effective? If we talk about a true cloud solution, being hoisted in a data center is just the beginning. The real differentiator is ease of access, ease to use, seamless upgradation and capability to scale. This makes administration of upgrades easier lower implementation effort and costs. All these benefits have till now and will lead to the migration of whole technology world towards a cloud-based environment. As per a Gartner report (Aug 2013), 80 percent of organizations said that they intend to use cloud services in some form within 12 months, including 55 percent of the organizations not doing so today. This shows how the technology landscape would appear in near future.

Parallel to this move from Enterprise Resource Planning systems to Cloud-based solutions in HR technology space, is the shift from single suite solutions to productized integration. With increasing $ldquo;focus$rdquo; on ease experience and engagement, users of HR systems now are looking for specialized solutions for individual processes which can integrate seamlessly. This has resulted in growth of various individual applications that cater to specialized processes. So the HR Tech market while increasingly fragmented is also very connected. For example, there are smart apps that can seamlessly connect applicant tracking systems, HRMS and self-service portals. Technology providers are also gearing up to build solutions, which can help an organization build its employer brand or impact the lives of employees. This has resulted in solutions which provide high quality user experience, are integrated with social media can be used through mobiles, in short are readily adaptable to changing needs of users.

With this change in the semantics of HR Technology systems there will be a surge in demand of HR Analytics from organizations in India. Currently, not too many organizations have invested in this space, but this will change soon. The usage of cloud based technology systems will help companies to leverage information from the cloud and make intelligent business decisions based on them. At this point, very few organizations are talking about Big Data in HR, primarily because the data is yet to achieve maturity for such usage. But once cloud proliferates more, Big Data will become a game changer. If we look around and see the impact it has created in other business areas like retail, e commerce etc the kind of predictability and maturity of decision making that Big data analytics brings is amazing. For example, retrospective studies and surveys on engagement may not be as useful compared to real-time analysis of employees’ laptop and desktop usage patterns. For example, if one sees an employee’s investment on job portals rise significantly over a period of time, that is a more real measure of engagement and attrition risk compared to retrospective surveys. The emergence of such intelligent human capital technologies, thus, will likely transform the nature of human resource management in the coming times.

Watch out for the next wave of HR transformation, a complete new experience of Human Resources function that it brings with it.