Is Your Organization Ready To Consider An HRMS Essay Example For Students

Is Your Organization Ready To Consider An HRMS? Essay Before you look at acquiring an HRMS, look inside your organization. How intrinsic to your companys strategic direction is the acquisition of an HRMS? What is the meaning of an HRMS to your executives? Are they convinced of the strategic importance of HR? Or will your executives views be limited to an HRMS with only basic record keeping functions (such as demographics data or payroll information)? Your success in obtaining strong executive sponsorship will dictate where you look and what package you will select. You will need to consider the overall budget. Who needs to be on side to develop a credible business case?What about technology? Is your organization ready to consider solutions that allow widespread web access? What impact would technology have on external organizations like employee groups? Should they be brought on board early in the cycle?Finally, competing projects may impede your executives consideration of thisproject. Your companys resources may be fully engaged in other initiatives. This will affect your overall timeline. What Functionality Do You Need?There are many options. Basic HRMS include payroll applications with little or noHR functionality. Comprehensive systems include payroll and may include compensation, benefits, positions, health and safety, training and development, and time and labour. In addition to raw function, some packages make it easier to do your job by offering workflow capability. For example, an email message can be automatically triggered to a benefit administrator to enroll an employee on benefits when an applicant ishired. Others have non-traditional ways of accessing information: for example, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) married to workflow can trigger actions like job scheduling. Alternatively, your organization may want to use a kiosk to enable employees to access and update their own personnel information. To determine your scope, your organization should go through a requirements. study or needs analysis. Consider where the payroll system fits in. Should you track detailed payroll records in your financial system? Do you have extensive requirements in the areas of pension administration?Considering both present HR activities and future directions of HR in your organization, list ten case studies that will give you the greatest return on investment. For help with creating the case studies, obtain the HR Matrix available from HRMS Directions or the International Association for Human Resource Information Management (IHRIM). By relating your case studies to return on investment, you can avoid being distracted by insignificant items in vendor demonstrations. Remember to consult with individuals within and outside of the HR functional area to develop your detailed case studies. Other users across the organization may have systems or even desktop applications that will be replaced by this package. If needed, hold facilitated sessions to draw on the experiences and ideas of individuals throughout your organization. Finally, consider whether your case studies rigidly mirror current practice, or area reflective of ways you might consider addressing the target business processes.You want the latter. But What About the Technology?Involve your information technology (IT) group early in your requirements discussions. While they may not be interested in the detailed case studies, they will be interested in the application usage. For example, how many potential users will be accessing the software at the same time? What platform will the software run on? How compatible is it with current technology? If you are considering web access to information, this may mean significant changes to your IT environment. What are the interfaces to the system? Will the HRMS package need to supply data to or receive data from any other systems?Still Is an Implementation Feasible? The Hot Buttons:Resources Based on the application you choose, look at your companys resources to determine whether you are likely to have both the people and the skills available in-house when you will need them. Senior staff who best understand the business area and individuals with implementation experience will need to b e part of your team. Project roles will depend on project size and scope and will include, for example, project manager, sponsor, functional experts, technical experts, database administrators, change management and business process improvement experts. If you do not have the required resources in-house, you may be wise to look externally to one or more consulting organizations that specialize in project implementation to partner with you or lead the project. Young Goodman Brown - Losing Faith EssaySite Visits Optimally, visit organizations in your industry that have already implemented some of the products under consideration. Remember, however, that the organization you visit may not want or have time to communicate less than pleasant experiences. Try to ensure that the benefits will outweigh the costs. Short List Once initial responses are analyzed, develop a short list to consider further. Based on your case studies, request at least one scripted demonstration of the system. This is your chance to see the software and delve further into areas of concern or interest. Subsequent Information Gathering Based on your analysis to this point, you may request additional demonstrations from potential vendors. This provides you with an opportunity to ask additional questions regarding functionality, and will enable you to examine in greater depth questions regarding vendor support, future versions, etc. In addition, interviews with the sales team, technical support staff, and vendor executives may give you valuable insight to determine whether your company should embark on a long term relationship with a particular vendor. Contracting Prior to signing any agreements, make sure a lawyer, knowledgeable in software and ideally HR systems, reviews the contract. Consider incidental costs that may not be included in the initial costing, for example, training, support, or additional resources. Finally, remember that HRMS are complex systems. To derive the greatest value, implementation will take time, planning and energy. Set realistic goals. Your organizations ability to absorb change will directly drive and impact the overall implementation schedule. By taking the time to assess your organization, you can feel confident in answering the key question posed at the outset of this article: Does your organization really need an HRMS and is it ready to step up to the implementation?Recruiting and Staffing:The entire recruiting function is undergoing a virtualrevolution. Self-service systems are being installed on both the supply side forapplicants and the demand side for hiring managers, using the Internet not only tohelp provide the match, but also to help handle the hurdles along the way, such asapplicant testing and background screening. Companies can search thousands of resumes, internationally, either throughproprietary databases or those of vendors such as The Career Connect,CareerMosaic, CareerWeb, The Monster Board, or SkillsScape. Most resumes stillcome to companies on paper but whatever the media, paper, e-mail, the Web or fax,they can be scanned and re-formatted according to corporate specifications, andthen made available to the hiring manager or HR manager anywhere in a company,anywhere in the world. Improvements in optical character recognition have played an important part in thisnew capability, as have improvements in expert systems that providecategorizations and recognition of terms and rules. Systems can make inferencesabout skills and potential based on the words and phrases used in a resume. Newtechnology not only helps with the review of a large number of resumes, but it alsogets them to the right people quickly, using a variety of media and vendors. Thenext generation of recruiting software is incorporating skill-based questionsenabling the hiring company to pre-screen applicants. In ConclusionThe HR function, being one of the most data-intensive in any organization, is one ofthe leading beneficiaries and exploiters of these new achievements in technology. Now, HR professionals are more computer literate. They know how to use thetechnology to their advantage and to the overall benefit to the company. Utilizing thepower of new computers and software applications, notably the web, coupled withthe reengineering process, many organizations have started capturing self-servicedata for all personnel actions, such as new hires, salary changes and transfers,enrollment for training, as well as recruiting and staffing. All of this means more time for employees to do their job and it has meant valuableinformation for line management.