<i>Canadian HR Reporter</i> sat down with a number of technology experts to find out what's hot — and what's not — in the HR technology realm
Canadian HR Reporter surveyed technology experts to find what trends are shaping the marketplace, what’s hot and what’s not, and what HR professionals can expect to see in the months ahead.
Our experts include: Jeff Koven, executive vice-president, Hewitt Associates; Minaz Lalani, principal with Towers Perrin; Marco Padovani, senior developer PDS software; Frank Rogelj, regional sales manager, ASL Consulting; Gerson Safran INFO:HR HRMS; and Lisa Kumar-Misir president of Intelstep Inc. Here is what they told us:
Is there an HR system feature or tool that is in particularly high demand right now?
Jeff Koven: Self service technology in the areas of performance management, e-learning, leave management, content integration and approval processing functionality are in high demand. Organizations are looking for ways to empower their workforces, and have them be responsible for their data, therefore freeing up HR resources.
Minaz Lalani: In the recent past, the focus was on employee self service (ESS), which reduced calls to the HR department or minimized “key stroking” of data (for example, dependant and address changes) into an HR system.
The current focus is to “automate” some of the key HR processes. A popular example is performance management. Most companies have, with varied degrees of success, experimented at some level with a performance management system or tools.
The lack of success can be attributed primarily to a lack of clear definition of the process and expected outcomes. The tendency has been to force the process into a poorly selected tool, rather than choosing a tool for a well-defined process.
A secondary reason for failure is the lack of buy-in to a performance management process. This is because such HR systems are not simple and effective to use. Rather, they are so complex that the system is no longer practical. Managers want tools that provide them with processes complemented by simple tools that provide effective and efficient functionality and ease of reporting.
Marco Padovani: Workflow processing. Companies have spent much of the last few years automating previously non-automated tasks, including providing self service tools to individuals. So now companies are looking at their processes as a whole, rather than as sets of individual tasks, in order to reduce workloads and eliminate redundant efforts, errors and bottlenecks. Companies are looking for tools to improve workflow.
Frank Rogelj: HR self service and portal technologies are maturing as strategic, comprehensive solutions that support building high-performance workforces. Web-based self service for employees and managers allow HR to significantly reduce the number of transactions and the time involved in maintaining employment information.
Improving services to employees and managers, combined with a focus on cost containment, are the primary objectives behind the significant migration to HR self service solutions. Other objectives would include increased information access, manager access for improved decision making, eliminating process steps, approvals, forms and enabling the HR function to serve more strategically.
There is survey data that shows adopters of HR self service solutions have achieved measurable ROI, cutting transactional costs by as much as 50 per cent.
Gerson Safran: Some things don’t change. The key HRMS feature is still time and attendance and entitlements tracking, although users are looking for improved workflow capability in the area, for example, the incorporation of e-mail messaging and ESS capabilities in the time and attendance/entitlements inquiry area.
With the continuing growth of legislation at all levels related to leaves of absence, benefits continuation during various types of absences and the continued focus of collective agreements in this area, I don’t believe that time and attendance/entitlements tracking will lose its key position.
Lisa Kumar-Misir: Right now, organizations are focusing on employee retention and the monitoring of information. As e-HR continues to be seen as the evolving method of providing human resource management and services, our clients are focusing more on portal technology which allows employees to sort out their HR queries quickly and efficiently, and without the need for extensive form filling... all from their desktop.
Is there an HR system feature or tool that HR departments are not as interested in as they once were?
Jeff Koven: Interactive voice response (IVR) services are no longer in demand. In addition, complex tool sets to support extensive modifications are no longer requested.
Minaz Lalani: HR has already implemented basic functionality which has reduced mundane activities but this does not mean they are not as interested in it as they once were. My view is that HR departments are looking at features and functionality which add significant value to HR.
Most companies have posted their program information and content or enrolment functionality onto their HR systems or portals. The focus now is on how to leverage this information and improve the tools to provide new functionality that fit around very strategic HR goals. For example, what tools do we need to improve the employees’ line of sight to the employer’s business objectives?
Marco Padovani: Few organizations are interested in centralized processing of individual and managerial information. More and more companies want to empower employees to perform these tasks themselves using self service functionality.
Frank Rogelj: There is not as much interest in recruiting-oriented applications as there has been over the last couple of years. This year we see a significant increase in demand for applications related to staff development, skills management, succession planning and workforce planning applications.
Clearly organizations are focusing attention on making the most of existing resources and making sure employee skills are developed in alignment with corporate objectives.
Gerson Safran: There seems to be less demand for products to include all the features that could possibly be used by HR. Practitioners are looking for HR management systems that offer excellence in core areas with interface capability to other applications, for example, links to Web-based recruitment tracking functions, to specialized performance review products and to payroll systems that are already in place and working well.
Interfaces need to provide single-source data entry in some instances (payroll, time and attendance swiping) and accept and maintain data from others (performance review products, selected applicants from recruiting systems). As long as these interfaces are well-designed, the need to have a single, all-encompassing HRMS is reduced.
Lisa Kumar-Misir: There appears to be less interest in career development and more interest in online training. In the past a lot of our clients saw value in creating a central repository for online employee development.
However, employee feedback has shown that computer-based training must be one of a few options available to them as opposed to the sole or main source.
What technology has had the greatest impact on HR management systems in the past two years?
Jeff Koven: The Internet and related Internet technology have had the greatest impact on HR management systems over the last few years. With the Internet, HR transactions and management have moved online. In addition, HR portals may be customized for the user. Now, for example, a user’s desktop may be personalized according to his or her role — employee, manager, HR professional or line executive — and this personalization is built into the HR delivery process. The result is that users have one place to go for easy access to the resources they specifically need to manage human capital.
Minaz Lalani: The “e” technology has had the greatest impact on HR systems. I define “e” as the enhancement of employee experience in accessing tools, systems and functionality. The simplicity of Web browsers, integration of HR sub-systems and accessibility of data and information through a portal have had significant impact.
Marco Padovani: Web processing. This has enabled companies to distribute self service and managerial functions to employees, regardless of where they are located, whether around the world or in the home office.
Frank Rogelj: Over the last two years, Web technologies have had the greatest impact on HR management systems. The significant benefits associated with Internet/intranet service delivery of HR applications, have been proven in both mid-size and large organizations over the last few years. This trend is consistent with increased executive focus on the concept of a portal to bring together all enterprise applications into a single view.
Gerson Safran: There is no question that the Internet has affected HR management systems more than any other technology over the last two years. Internet use in the area of applications (Web-based recruiting systems, employee self service functionality, Web-based payroll systems) and the incorporation of e-mail into HR management systems for people-to-people messaging (vacation requests and replies, course selection and followup notifications, notification of terminations, etc.) have altered and will continue to change the way HR runs its business.
Lisa Kumar-Misir: As much as we’d like to think that e-HR reduces the flow of paper around an office, hard copy documents and forms are still a necessity in any business area. Improvements to systems that give users the ability to create customized yet robust reports as well as provide a variety of forms available for online completion or desktop download continues to be a highly influential force in many of our clients’ decisions to use technology over the last two years.
The ability to have online forms or reports that pull in pieces of information from a variety of business areas, specifically finance and administration, is their godsend when moving or improving on their HR system. SAP and PeopleSoft continue to dominate in these areas.
What will be the “next big thing” in HR management technology?
Jeff Koven: Internet technology has evolved from a simple publishing vehicle, to a more robust compilation of programming utilities, most notably XML — an evolved form of HTML Internet language.
XML information can now be structured in a standard format, and messages can be composed to facilitate conversations between various Web applications and services. Various HR applications can share information between systems, streamlining HR processes and making it easier for different applications to share a common database of information. This technology will continue to evolve and allow organizations to create their optimum human capital management solution that promotes single security sign-on capabilities and one source of data.
Minaz Lalani: The customization of employee experience via a “portlet” (a portal at an individual employee level) will be the next big thing. This would ensure an employee has all personal and associated information available at a one click of the mouse. This will be possible if XML transfer and sharing protocol become commonplace and widespread as it will allow the integration of internal subsystems and external systems.
As an aside, HR departments have failed to make a business case for additional investments for HR and related systems. This is primarily attributed to a lack of return-on-investment measurements for the HR systems implemented over the past few years. Increasingly in a tight economy, HR departments will have to compete with other core business divisions for investment dollars — the lack of such investments in HR may dampen enthusiasm for any significant growth in HR technology.
Marco Padovani: Although one might perceive HR systems as an area without much potential for future change, there is actually quite a bit of change taking place and that will continue to take place, as a response to both changing technologies and work environments.
Possibilities include items from self service functionality to hand-held PDAs; and an increase in the delivery of functions (such as payroll calculations) as Web services, so there is never a need to download update patches. Another item that is already a big thing, but will be getting bigger: single-source login and account management. Although this is not just an HR issue, it is especially relevant to HR because the HR system is the central repository of personnel information.
Frank Rogelj: Web-enabled, balanced scorecard-based performance systems will be the next logical step for strategy-focused organizations.
HR scorecard measures organizational performance across four balanced perspectives: financial, customer, internal business processes, and learning and growth. And an automated solution for implementing a balanced scorecard-based performance measurement and management system enables HR to demonstrate its true value through more than short-term financial outcomes.
Gerson Safran: Over the last couple of years, we have seen a fair number of buy-outs and amalgamations of HRMS providers. I think that this trend is coming to an end, and what we’ll now begin to see is the formation of alliances between best-of-breed application providers. These alliances will offer the HR market a full complement of HR-related applications that are all tightly interfaced, that have common technology in terms of databases, and report writers that, for example, use common nomenclature. The development people in these alliances should keep each other informed of key changes to their products so that those products remain tightly interfaced.
Users can select best-of-breed applications as needed and be confident that the end result will be a total set of applications that work together. Developers can continue to produce creative solutions with their own staff who know their applications and user needs extremely well.
Lisa Kumar-Misir: It’s always difficult to say what the next big thing will be in HR management technology but if I was to put my money where my mouth is, I’d feel comfortable saying succession planning. Most HR systems feature online recruiting, employee self service, career development, job evaluation and performance issues to address employee retention. The next logical step is to have a system feature that turns this data into a live and ever-changing succession plan that ensures the safety of the organization.
A system that allows senior management to select from a variety of business challenges, such as a workforce reduction or even pay cuts, and have a report that helps them meet those challenges from a good HR perspective would be priceless.
I also believe in the next decade we will see businesses expand their systems to take into consideration language issues (service in the “mother tongue” of all employees), succession planning and a focus on inter-company systems — subsidiaries and so on. The key to any effective HR system is aligning it with the business strategy. When strategy changes, the system must be adaptable enough to change with it without sacrificing its robustness and effectiveness.
Our experts include: Jeff Koven, executive vice-president, Hewitt Associates; Minaz Lalani, principal with Towers Perrin; Marco Padovani, senior developer PDS software; Frank Rogelj, regional sales manager, ASL Consulting; Gerson Safran INFO:HR HRMS; and Lisa Kumar-Misir president of Intelstep Inc. Here is what they told us:
Is there an HR system feature or tool that is in particularly high demand right now?
Jeff Koven: Self service technology in the areas of performance management, e-learning, leave management, content integration and approval processing functionality are in high demand. Organizations are looking for ways to empower their workforces, and have them be responsible for their data, therefore freeing up HR resources.
Minaz Lalani: In the recent past, the focus was on employee self service (ESS), which reduced calls to the HR department or minimized “key stroking” of data (for example, dependant and address changes) into an HR system.
The current focus is to “automate” some of the key HR processes. A popular example is performance management. Most companies have, with varied degrees of success, experimented at some level with a performance management system or tools.
The lack of success can be attributed primarily to a lack of clear definition of the process and expected outcomes. The tendency has been to force the process into a poorly selected tool, rather than choosing a tool for a well-defined process.
A secondary reason for failure is the lack of buy-in to a performance management process. This is because such HR systems are not simple and effective to use. Rather, they are so complex that the system is no longer practical. Managers want tools that provide them with processes complemented by simple tools that provide effective and efficient functionality and ease of reporting.
Marco Padovani: Workflow processing. Companies have spent much of the last few years automating previously non-automated tasks, including providing self service tools to individuals. So now companies are looking at their processes as a whole, rather than as sets of individual tasks, in order to reduce workloads and eliminate redundant efforts, errors and bottlenecks. Companies are looking for tools to improve workflow.
Frank Rogelj: HR self service and portal technologies are maturing as strategic, comprehensive solutions that support building high-performance workforces. Web-based self service for employees and managers allow HR to significantly reduce the number of transactions and the time involved in maintaining employment information.
Improving services to employees and managers, combined with a focus on cost containment, are the primary objectives behind the significant migration to HR self service solutions. Other objectives would include increased information access, manager access for improved decision making, eliminating process steps, approvals, forms and enabling the HR function to serve more strategically.
There is survey data that shows adopters of HR self service solutions have achieved measurable ROI, cutting transactional costs by as much as 50 per cent.
Gerson Safran: Some things don’t change. The key HRMS feature is still time and attendance and entitlements tracking, although users are looking for improved workflow capability in the area, for example, the incorporation of e-mail messaging and ESS capabilities in the time and attendance/entitlements inquiry area.
With the continuing growth of legislation at all levels related to leaves of absence, benefits continuation during various types of absences and the continued focus of collective agreements in this area, I don’t believe that time and attendance/entitlements tracking will lose its key position.
Lisa Kumar-Misir: Right now, organizations are focusing on employee retention and the monitoring of information. As e-HR continues to be seen as the evolving method of providing human resource management and services, our clients are focusing more on portal technology which allows employees to sort out their HR queries quickly and efficiently, and without the need for extensive form filling... all from their desktop.
Is there an HR system feature or tool that HR departments are not as interested in as they once were?
Jeff Koven: Interactive voice response (IVR) services are no longer in demand. In addition, complex tool sets to support extensive modifications are no longer requested.
Minaz Lalani: HR has already implemented basic functionality which has reduced mundane activities but this does not mean they are not as interested in it as they once were. My view is that HR departments are looking at features and functionality which add significant value to HR.
Most companies have posted their program information and content or enrolment functionality onto their HR systems or portals. The focus now is on how to leverage this information and improve the tools to provide new functionality that fit around very strategic HR goals. For example, what tools do we need to improve the employees’ line of sight to the employer’s business objectives?
Marco Padovani: Few organizations are interested in centralized processing of individual and managerial information. More and more companies want to empower employees to perform these tasks themselves using self service functionality.
Frank Rogelj: There is not as much interest in recruiting-oriented applications as there has been over the last couple of years. This year we see a significant increase in demand for applications related to staff development, skills management, succession planning and workforce planning applications.
Clearly organizations are focusing attention on making the most of existing resources and making sure employee skills are developed in alignment with corporate objectives.
Gerson Safran: There seems to be less demand for products to include all the features that could possibly be used by HR. Practitioners are looking for HR management systems that offer excellence in core areas with interface capability to other applications, for example, links to Web-based recruitment tracking functions, to specialized performance review products and to payroll systems that are already in place and working well.
Interfaces need to provide single-source data entry in some instances (payroll, time and attendance swiping) and accept and maintain data from others (performance review products, selected applicants from recruiting systems). As long as these interfaces are well-designed, the need to have a single, all-encompassing HRMS is reduced.
Lisa Kumar-Misir: There appears to be less interest in career development and more interest in online training. In the past a lot of our clients saw value in creating a central repository for online employee development.
However, employee feedback has shown that computer-based training must be one of a few options available to them as opposed to the sole or main source.
What technology has had the greatest impact on HR management systems in the past two years?
Jeff Koven: The Internet and related Internet technology have had the greatest impact on HR management systems over the last few years. With the Internet, HR transactions and management have moved online. In addition, HR portals may be customized for the user. Now, for example, a user’s desktop may be personalized according to his or her role — employee, manager, HR professional or line executive — and this personalization is built into the HR delivery process. The result is that users have one place to go for easy access to the resources they specifically need to manage human capital.
Minaz Lalani: The “e” technology has had the greatest impact on HR systems. I define “e” as the enhancement of employee experience in accessing tools, systems and functionality. The simplicity of Web browsers, integration of HR sub-systems and accessibility of data and information through a portal have had significant impact.
Marco Padovani: Web processing. This has enabled companies to distribute self service and managerial functions to employees, regardless of where they are located, whether around the world or in the home office.
Frank Rogelj: Over the last two years, Web technologies have had the greatest impact on HR management systems. The significant benefits associated with Internet/intranet service delivery of HR applications, have been proven in both mid-size and large organizations over the last few years. This trend is consistent with increased executive focus on the concept of a portal to bring together all enterprise applications into a single view.
Gerson Safran: There is no question that the Internet has affected HR management systems more than any other technology over the last two years. Internet use in the area of applications (Web-based recruiting systems, employee self service functionality, Web-based payroll systems) and the incorporation of e-mail into HR management systems for people-to-people messaging (vacation requests and replies, course selection and followup notifications, notification of terminations, etc.) have altered and will continue to change the way HR runs its business.
Lisa Kumar-Misir: As much as we’d like to think that e-HR reduces the flow of paper around an office, hard copy documents and forms are still a necessity in any business area. Improvements to systems that give users the ability to create customized yet robust reports as well as provide a variety of forms available for online completion or desktop download continues to be a highly influential force in many of our clients’ decisions to use technology over the last two years.
The ability to have online forms or reports that pull in pieces of information from a variety of business areas, specifically finance and administration, is their godsend when moving or improving on their HR system. SAP and PeopleSoft continue to dominate in these areas.
What will be the “next big thing” in HR management technology?
Jeff Koven: Internet technology has evolved from a simple publishing vehicle, to a more robust compilation of programming utilities, most notably XML — an evolved form of HTML Internet language.
XML information can now be structured in a standard format, and messages can be composed to facilitate conversations between various Web applications and services. Various HR applications can share information between systems, streamlining HR processes and making it easier for different applications to share a common database of information. This technology will continue to evolve and allow organizations to create their optimum human capital management solution that promotes single security sign-on capabilities and one source of data.
Minaz Lalani: The customization of employee experience via a “portlet” (a portal at an individual employee level) will be the next big thing. This would ensure an employee has all personal and associated information available at a one click of the mouse. This will be possible if XML transfer and sharing protocol become commonplace and widespread as it will allow the integration of internal subsystems and external systems.
As an aside, HR departments have failed to make a business case for additional investments for HR and related systems. This is primarily attributed to a lack of return-on-investment measurements for the HR systems implemented over the past few years. Increasingly in a tight economy, HR departments will have to compete with other core business divisions for investment dollars — the lack of such investments in HR may dampen enthusiasm for any significant growth in HR technology.
Marco Padovani: Although one might perceive HR systems as an area without much potential for future change, there is actually quite a bit of change taking place and that will continue to take place, as a response to both changing technologies and work environments.
Possibilities include items from self service functionality to hand-held PDAs; and an increase in the delivery of functions (such as payroll calculations) as Web services, so there is never a need to download update patches. Another item that is already a big thing, but will be getting bigger: single-source login and account management. Although this is not just an HR issue, it is especially relevant to HR because the HR system is the central repository of personnel information.
Frank Rogelj: Web-enabled, balanced scorecard-based performance systems will be the next logical step for strategy-focused organizations.
HR scorecard measures organizational performance across four balanced perspectives: financial, customer, internal business processes, and learning and growth. And an automated solution for implementing a balanced scorecard-based performance measurement and management system enables HR to demonstrate its true value through more than short-term financial outcomes.
Gerson Safran: Over the last couple of years, we have seen a fair number of buy-outs and amalgamations of HRMS providers. I think that this trend is coming to an end, and what we’ll now begin to see is the formation of alliances between best-of-breed application providers. These alliances will offer the HR market a full complement of HR-related applications that are all tightly interfaced, that have common technology in terms of databases, and report writers that, for example, use common nomenclature. The development people in these alliances should keep each other informed of key changes to their products so that those products remain tightly interfaced.
Users can select best-of-breed applications as needed and be confident that the end result will be a total set of applications that work together. Developers can continue to produce creative solutions with their own staff who know their applications and user needs extremely well.
Lisa Kumar-Misir: It’s always difficult to say what the next big thing will be in HR management technology but if I was to put my money where my mouth is, I’d feel comfortable saying succession planning. Most HR systems feature online recruiting, employee self service, career development, job evaluation and performance issues to address employee retention. The next logical step is to have a system feature that turns this data into a live and ever-changing succession plan that ensures the safety of the organization.
A system that allows senior management to select from a variety of business challenges, such as a workforce reduction or even pay cuts, and have a report that helps them meet those challenges from a good HR perspective would be priceless.
I also believe in the next decade we will see businesses expand their systems to take into consideration language issues (service in the “mother tongue” of all employees), succession planning and a focus on inter-company systems — subsidiaries and so on. The key to any effective HR system is aligning it with the business strategy. When strategy changes, the system must be adaptable enough to change with it without sacrificing its robustness and effectiveness.
