The strategic challenge with 3rd world emergent economies like India is that most of the global technological or commercial trends do not start here. We are rather happy to follow them or join the bandwagon and only reap the benefits.
The widespread adoption of Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS) is one such trend which started along with the IT revolution in India. However, like all things Indian, innovation and updation of such HRMS or HRIS products with time seems to be lagging behind the global benchmarks and best practices.
Decades ago, some business leaders had the technical foresight of opting for such products. However with time, trends fade and leaders change. But huge investments in HR softwares make them stick. They become the irreplaceable link between the employer and the workforce. However, instead of being updated with time, some HR solutions never evolve to match the changing needs of the time. In this blog post, we pinpoint the 5 tell-tale warning signs of your trusted HRMS turning grey.
- Are you still On-premise with ERP? – Most old HR softwares came with a huge server setup located in your office premises. In most cases, it’s only accessible to your employees when they are at office. Cloud technology on the SaaS (Software-as-a-service) delivery model would make the solution accessible from anywhere, minus the cost & effort of maintaining an ERP setup.
- Are you still printing out forms, reports and letters? – Worldwide research by the Citigroup estimates that each sheet of wasted printer paper costs 6 to 13 cents (60 paisa to Rs.1.30 paisa), depending on the amount of ink, toner and recycling effort. Are your employees still printing documents which could be digitized and shared with all using the latest available technology? Implementing Employee Self Service through a modern HRMS brings alive the myth of a paperless office.
- Does your HR software still look like a 90’s video game? – Chances are that the user interface of your current HR software resembles the look of a computer running on Windows 98 safe mode. There is no easy access to the most useful features and no support for the application on smartphones or tablets that the youth brigade of your workforce are most comfortable with.
- Is your current HR software managing the complete employee lifecycle? – You are paying as much as a complete HR solution would cost, but only using the Attendance and Payroll feature of it. Latest HR softwares are capable of managing all routine HR activities from recruitment to resignation, while freeing up 60% of the productive hours of your HR staff.
- Is your current HR software’s technical support on hibernation mode? – The transition of Attendance data is not smoothly flowing into the Payroll setup. It’s throwing up frequent errors, costing extra man hours for rectification and causing employee grievance. And when you mail technical support for a quick solution, they either show SLA’s of getting back within a week or do not reply until you call in.
Even if three of the five situations mentioned above are proving to be true in your case, it’s time to rethink your Human Capital Management Strategy from a technical perspective. Let alone the cost factor, which is much more rationalized that what you have paid for the last decade.
We are not saying that your existing HRMS is useless and that you should immediately cancel it’s usage license in favor of a newer solution or switch to PeopleWorks immediately. No, we are not in the habit of biting into someone else’s pie. What we want you to do is check the freshness of the stuffing inside your pie. Yes, you read it right. If the tell-tale warning signs of the trusted HR software you are currently using match the ones we found to be most prevalent, we would be happy to help. To know more about PeopleWorks, visit us at www.peopleworks.in or connect through Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
