New platform can improve HR efficiency by 42% and see an uptick in ROI of 136%
This article was produced in partnership with Rippling
Small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) have a lot on their plates, having to deal with exactly the same logistical challenges and people management concerns that an enterprise would but without the same large-scale tech support – often down to disparate HR systems.
Speaking to CHRR, Alex Goncalves, Managing Director at Rippling Canada, explained that traditionally all departments handled their operations on entirely different platforms – meaning that functions such as payroll, annual leave, attendance, performance management, recruiting and scheduling were handled separately. Today, however, there’s a whole new world of supportive technology that can streamline unnecessary admin, leaving more time for HR leaders to focus on the important things.
“For example, when you're onboarding a new hire companies use separate tools which [means that] new employee information has to flow into multiple platforms - creating very repetitive work for HR and finance teams,” explained Goncalves.
“When an employee is offboarded, that process has to be repeated again across a multitude platforms – it’s super time consuming and increases a lot of manual error risk. With an integrated platform like Rippling - which prioritizes employee data - teams only need to operate and update information in one place. The platform handles the rest.”
How to onboard a new employees in 90 seconds
And the proof is in the pudding – with Goncalves revealing that Rippling is able to onboard a new employee in under 90 seconds. That includes all payroll and document signing, account accesses and provisioning permissions – all seamlessly integrated into the company database without the fear of human error.
“That’s saving teams upwards of 30 hours a week,” he added. “Payroll data analytics have become increasingly more important for executives and HR teams in driving decision making across the business. With an integrated platform, that employee data lives in one place - making it a lot easier to glean insights on human capital trends and share reports with the right personnel to drive that decision making.”
When it comes to adopting new technologies in the HR space, the key to success lies in questioning what your organization needs before you invest in the tech. All too often leaders fall prey to ‘shiny toy’ syndrome going for the most expensive, newest tool out there without considering whether or not it will actually help their people and processes. For Goncalves, there’s a few key considerations that leaders should take into account when looking to adopt a new HR tech solution.
“[Firstly], does the solution actually consolidate disparate systems and tasks all into one viable solution for the business that's easy to maintain, manage and use? Is it seamless?” he explained. “Are the modules and products across the different use cases – whether that’s payroll or HR performance, time and attendance - integrated? Or are they duct taped together through acquisitions? That's one of the key areas I would always implore HR professionals to look at – is it natively built within that platform?”
From there, Goncalves recommends that HR practitioners look at ease of product, paying particular attention to user experience for both admins and employees alike.
“Does it represent a ‘best in class’ user experience? How self-serve is the product? Are you having to rely on customer support for small things that they shouldn't necessarily need to? And then there’s return on investment (ROI). Does a solution have a verifiable, quantifiable ROI cost savings to the business and time spent? That could look like count reduction or efficiencies within how the business operates. Does it support compliance? Is it extensible into global markets or is it very niche?”
Finally, Goncalves advised executives to look at data comprehensiveness and accessibility – considering how useful and integrated the reporting and the analytics capabilities of the actual product itself are.
‘From an ROI perspective, that's a lot of savings’
“Is this self-serve? Or does it require reliance on customer support or professional services to generate custom queries and reports?”
The main goal of integrated tech like Rippling is to create a streamlined, efficient, time saving strategy, centralizing all HR functions into one single platform. And it’s something they’ve enjoyed incredible results with so far. A recent report from Forrester investigated the total economic impact of Rippling on several organizations over a three year period – finding that those organizations saw an efficiency lift in HR, payroll and finance of 42%, an uptick in ROI of 136%, 22 hours saved annually per senior manager, and an overall payback in less than six months.
“When you put that all together, from an ROI perspective, that's a lot of savings,” added Goncalves. “That's a hard cost to the business they would be saving simply by implementing an HR technology platform that’s an end to end business operation system. [Rippling] is pinned and underlined by the most important thing that most systems within any business need to operate on - employee data.
“Employee data is at the centre of everything that any business needs to run any sort of system on. If you have a centralized location for that data, where you can run all these different areas of the business, you can do that a lot more efficiently from one spot.”
