METHODOLOGY:

Evaluating And Preparing For A New HRIS

Configuring The HRIS
Linking The HRIS With Other Systems
Preparing The Organization
Supporting The HRIS
EVALUATING AND PREPARING FOR A NEW HRIS

Companies go through a process of comparing and evaluating several HRIS

packages using a team of analysts or managers from the various departments
affected HR, Payroll, Benefits, Employee Relations, Training and so on.
As this team prepares its evaluation criteria and reviews HRIS features,
much is learned about the goals and values of the various departments. The
HR department is looking for improved reporting of employee data, Payroll
is concerned with the systems paycheck calculations and regulatory
reporting, while Benefits may be looking for a more streamlined enrollment
process. As this team drives deeper into the selection criteria, the members
learn more about each other and may start to see the emergence of some
really messy business processes. It can be a bittersweet process.
The hiring process is a good example. As a person is recruited, hired and
paid each department may have its own specialized system and process for
managing the employee data. As the HRIS evaluation team discovers
redundant processing and data storage, its members start to see ways to
make the process more efficient by aligning their part of the hiring process
with the requirements of the other departments.
As the team evaluates an HRIS software package, it begins to get a better
grasp on what the entire companys business processes are, and therefore
what the company might require in an HRIS. The team will most likely find
that none of the packages are an exact fit and that substantial effort is
required to modify or integrate the chosen HRIS. Or if not enough due
diligence and research have been done, the team may be facing this effort
and not be aware of it. This gap in planning will show itself later in the
implementation phase when the project team realizes there are not enough
resources time, people and money to implement the HRIS.
Perhaps the most critical results of the HRIS evaluation process are that the
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evaluation team set correct expectations for the project and gain executive
management commitment. With correct, or at least realistic expectations and
an executive management team that seriously supports the teams efforts, an
HRIS implementation project has a much greater chance to succeed. Most
often the HRIS evaluation team members spend most of their efforts
building selection criteria and choosing an HRIS, instead of setting
expectations and building executive support.
Configuring the HRIS
There are four primary activities in an HRIS implementation

Configuring the HRIS for the firms business processes and policies,
Interfacing data with other systems
Converting historical data into the HRIS,
Preparing the organization for the HRIS.

An HRIS comes with built-in processes for most HR activities, but firms
will need to customize the system to process according to their specific
needs. For example, every HRIS supports the process of benefits open
enrollment, but the system does not come delivered with a firms specific
benefit providers and eligibility rules. Customizing the HRIS for this
typically does not involve programming; the common activity is to enter
specific data into control tables that then direct how the HRIS operates. The
customizing or configuration tasks then become a process of understanding
the firms business processes well enough to encode that logic into the
HRIS.
This mapping of business processes and policies into system control tables
requires people who understand both the business process and the HRIS
typically the existing IT support and HR business analysts. Due to the large
amount of work, the HRIS project team usually needs these analysts fully
dedicated to the project, requiring the home departments to fill the gaps in
their absence. Having partially dedicated team members may cause tension
since the team members have to maintain responsibilities at the home
department while also fulfilling responsibilities on the project team. Either
way, back-filling resources becomes a big issue if not planned for during the
evaluation
stage.

Firms may find that the internal resource people assigned to the project do
not have the skills or capabilities needed for the job. Sometimes training can
resolve this, but other times the people lack basic analytical skills required
for the implementation. One of the key requirements for a person to be
successful on an HRIS implementation project is that he/she has excellent
analysis skills. The most analytical people in HR and IT should be assigned
to the project, or else the company should rely on external resources (i.e.
contractors or consultants). The project can get done this way but the more
an implementation team relies on external resources the more difficult it will
be for the company to become self-sufficient in ongoing HRIS support,
maintenance, and operations.
Many HRIS implementations include, to one degree or another, business
process reengineering. As a firm documents, investigates, and discovers its
true business processes, its natural that the firm also takes time to improve
them, or at least integrate the processes across departments. The integrated
nature of most HRIS packages drives this activity. When a process is
reengineered or integrated, once-independent departments become much
more dependent on each other. That dependency can increase tensions on the
project team as representatives from those departments learn to trust others
to do their part of the process. Or, once the project team members become
comfortable with the processes they have designed, they may have a hard
time selling those changes back to their departments.
Most HRIS packages dont handle exception processing very well. As
business processes are designed, the project team customizes the HRIS
around those processes. Users will most likely find that exception cases
require significant manual thought or labor to process since the exception
does not fit into the business process as implemented in the HRIS. HRIS
project team analysts will walk a fine line between generalization of the
process to fit exceptions vs. a more narrowed implementation of the process
to enforce data integrity and accurate application of HR policy. This is a
great time to enforce some standards and clean-up special deals but HR
managers and policymakers must be willing to support these efforts, and to
help implement them.
Finally, as the project team analysts dig into the current business processes,
they may find that the HR users, and sometimes managers, dont really
understand or know the processes well. Users may know what is done, but
not why it is done. Knowing the why part is critical to getting the most out
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of your HRIS implementation. In most every HRIS there are two or three
technical methods of implementing any given requirement knowing why
something is done in a business process helps ensure the project team
analysts select the best method of implementing it in the HRIS.
Linking the HRIS with Other Systems
Most HRIS project teams have a number of people assigned to converting
historical data from the existing HR databases into the HRIS, as well as for
interfacing the HRIS with other systems that rely on HR data. As this group
starts mapping historical data to the system for conversion, most often
group members will find (particularly when combining data from several
existing systems to go into one HRIS) that the existing HR data contains a
significant amount of invalid, incomplete, or contradictory data. As the
HRIS was configured for, reengineered or streamlined business processes
the existing employee data may not fit well into the system. The HRIS will
demand more complete and accurate employee data.
Making sense of these data conversion problems is a skill that falls to HR
analysts, not the programmers writing data-conversion routines. Conversion
and interfacing are not solely technical activities user consultation and
input are required. Many HRIS project teams discover these requirements
too late, thus increasing the demand for time from HR analysts on the
project team time that the analysts most likely do not have. If the firm has
a data warehouse, the HRIS data will need to be mapped to it. If the data
model in the warehouse is based on the legacy HR database, the two data
models may not be compatible. A lot of effort can be spent mapping the
HRIS to an existing data warehouse. Or if the HRIS vendor has its own data
warehouse application, the project team might be tempted to use it, but
theyll still have to contend with converting existing historical HR data into
the warehouse. Either way, HRIS project teams spend more effort than
planned on this issue the details can get very tedious and time consuming.
Replacing HR systems involves any area of the company that reads or relies
on employee data. System implementation may highlight employee data
privacy issues, or increase the scope of interfacing once the project team
realizes just how many systems read employee data from the current HRrelated databases.

Preparing the Organization

Many times it is easier for project teams to focus on technical aspects of the
implementation, which is ineffective. For example, configuring the HRIS to
correctly assign resident tax codes based on the employees address is easier
than getting HR, benefits, payroll, and recruiting to buy into and implement
a reengineered hiring process. The HRIS project team must track progress
not only on the technical aspects of implementing the HRIS, but also on the
softer side of managing the organization as a whole to accept the business
processes that come with the HRIS. Companies typically underestimate this
change-management effort. From the very beginning there must be a focus
on preparing the organization and the employees for the HRIS.
A HRIS, with more integrated work processes, tends to pull related
departments together. Some firms recognize this as they go through the
implementation process, and also implement a organizational structure with
the HRIS roll-out. For example, HR and Payroll may have reported to
separate areas of the company, and parts of HR business processes were
scattered throughout various departments. But as a HRIS is implemented,
the previous organizations are transformed to report to a single authority, and
a shared-services group is established to perform the integrated work
processes that were once scattered.
During the implementation phase, firms should also be determining what
their support model will look like what kind of organization will be
required to support this HRIS? Those who study this task in detail will
realize they need cross-functional support teams containing programmers
(ABAP), configuration experts, and business analysts to successfully
support the HRIS. But this integrated support team does not fit well into the
vertical departments in most companies today. Finding a way to implement
this cross-functional team is a critical success factor for the HRIS ongoing
operation.
All of the items mentioned so far force HR managers to become involved in
what is usually perceived as an IT project. They may be accustomed to
pushing responsibility for such projects onto IT managers, but implementing
an integrated HRIS requires HR manager participation and active
involvement in scoping, implementation, cutover, resourcing and
management.
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Supporting the HRIS

IT support analysts may be accustomed to, and only skilled for, flat-file
processing techniques. Most HRIS packages rely on relational data models,
higher-level programming languages, and interactive data management
presenting technical requirements for which some IT analysts may not be
ready.
The new HRIS may have proprietary languages or facilities, requiring new
IT skills. Often these skills will be in high demand, driving a premium rate
of pay. Internal resources may opt to leave the company for the higher pay,
or they may demand higher pay at the company. The higher pay might be
outside the HR guidelines for fair salary. The resulting dilemma can create
retention problems.
HR users the analysts in HR, payroll and benefits must take a more
active role in ongoing support and system changes. Since business rules are
often coded into the HRIS instead of resting in manual processes, the
business analysts are necessarily drawn into this activity. Some firms may
push this business rule knowledge to their IT support analysts, or rely on
consultants who help with the implementation. Although either of those
scenarios can work, HR business analysts and managers have the most to
lose if the HRIS does not process transactions correctly. Placing HR analysts
in system support and change roles will help ensure that the HRIS processes
transactions correctly.
Some companies depend too much on consulting firms or contractors to
perform an implementation. Many times this happens because the firm can
pay a consultant to do precisely what the firm wants to do, which is often
easier than getting internal resources to do the same thing. It takes some of
the pain out of change management. This can lead to a continued
dependence on external resources and might be acceptable for firms that
have historically relied on external resources. For others it may generate
substantial internal conflict in the way of higher IT budgets or continued
presence of non-employees in the HRIS support organization.

MODULES
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The HRIS system is composed of the Administration System and five

modules namely, 201, Benefits, Assets, DTR and Payroll.
Administration System is a module used to manage common data found in
the other 4 modules
The 201 module handles the functionalities for employee's employment data,
disciplinary actions, performance appraisal transaction. It is through this
module where basic inputs on employees data such as hiring, termination,
promotion, change of name/civil status, change of address, among others are
carried out.
All in all, the HR function is still to a large degree administrative and
common to all organizations. To varying degrees, most organisations have
formalised selection, evaluation, and payroll processes. Efficient and
effective management of the "Human Capital" Pool (HCP) has become an
increasingly imperative and complex activity to all HR professionals. The
HR function consists of tracking innumerable data points on each employee,
from personal histories, data, skills, capabilities, experiences to payroll
records. To reduce the manual workload of these administrative activities,
organisations began to electronically automate many of these processes by
introducing innovative HRMS/HCM technology. Due to complexity in
programming, capabilities and limited technical resources, HR executives
rely on internal or external IT professionals to develop and maintain their
Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS). Before the "client-server"
architecture evolved in the late 1980s, every single HR automation process
came largely in form of mainframe computers that could handle large
amounts of data transactions.
In consequence of the high capital investment necessary to purchase or
program proprietary software, these internally developed HRMS were
limited to medium to large organisations being able to afford internal IT
capabilities. The advent of client-server HRMS authorised HR executives
for the first time to take responsibility and ownership of their systems.

These client-server HRMS are characteristically developed around four

principal areas of HR functionalities:
1) Payroll
2) Time and labour management
3) Benefits administration
4) HR management.
Payroll Module
The payroll model automates the pay process by gathering data on employee
time and attendance, calculating various deductions and taxes, and
generating periodic paycheques and employee tax reports. Data is generally
fed from the human resources and time keeping modules to calculate
automatic deposit and manual cheque writing capabilities. Sophisticated
HCM systems can set up accounts payable transactions from employee
deduction or produce garnishment cheques. The payroll module sends
accounting information to the general ledger for posting subsequent to a pay
cycle.
Time and labour management
The time and labour management module applies new technology and
methods (time collection devices) to cost effectively gather and evaluate
employee time/work information. The most advanced modules provide
broad flexibility in data collection methods, as well as labour distribution
capabilities and data analysis features. This module is a key ingredient to
establish organisational cost accounting capabilities.
Benefits administration
The benefit administration model permits HR professionals to easily
administer and track employee participation in benefits programs ranging
from healthcare provider, insurance policy, and pension plan to profit
sharing or stock option plans.

HR Management
The HR management module is a component covering all other HR aspects
from application to retirement. The system records basic demographic and
address data, selection, training and development, capabilities and skills
management, compensation planning records and other related activities.
Leading edge systems provide the ability to "read" applications and enter
relevant data to applicable database fields, notify employers and provide
position management and position control.
While using the internet or corporate intranet as a communication and
workflow vehicle, the HRMS/HCM technology can convert these into webbased HRMS components of the ERP system and permit to reduce
transaction costs, leading to greater HR and organisational efficiency.
Through employee or manager self-service (ESS or MSS), HR activities
shift away from paper based processes to using self-service functionalities
that benefit employees, managers and HR professionals alike. Costly and
time consuming HR administrative tasks, such as travel reimbursement,
personnel data change, benefits enrolment, enrolment in training classes
(employee side) and to instruct a personnel action, authorise access to
information for employees (manager's side) are being individually handled
and permit to reduce HR transaction time, leading to HR and organisational
effectiveness. Consequently, HR professionals can spend fewer resources in
managing administrative HR activities and can apply freed time and
resources to concentrate on strategic HR issues, which lead to business
innovation.

HRIS as a system provide followings functions through various

modules, some of the functions are as follows:
*HR strategic planning system

*human resource planning system

*manpower planning system
*job profiling system
*recruitment &selection system
*performance appraisal system
*performance management system
*people development systems
*career planning and development system
*succession planning system
*job enrichment system
*compensation planning and packaging system

Relevance
HR Information Systems (HRIS) have a profound effect on firms that
implement them. Most often these firms are replacing several related
systems, such as a personnel database, payroll system and benefits system,
with one HRIS that does it all. Many people focus on the improved reporting
and processing that will be realized from the system, and those are the
reasons most firms choose to implement a HRIS. But what many people
dont focus on is that the HRIS will most likely affect the company much
more deeply it will challenge the operating structure and principles of all
the HR-related departments.
HRIS provides organizational functionality, ease-of-use, flexibility
and unmatched customer service to give you the power to choose how
to best manage your HR and Benefits processes.
Reduce benefit costs.
Improve productivity.
Improve service and communications with your employees.
Elevate manager effectiveness.
Focus on more strategic activities.
Most importantly, HRIS don't stop at the HR department's front door. It
provides full connectivity between their payroll, benefits and other
providers. Less paperwork, errors or constant follow-up means you can
focus more on your core business.

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Other benefits

On Demand Flexibility
Easy to Implement
Rapid ROI
Easy to Use
Proven Results
Easy to Customize
The Power to Choose
Easy to Audit
Rapid Development
Easy to Integrate
Automatic Upgrades
Straightforward Connections
Secure Transactions
First-class Customer Care

By connecting your employee information with all entities that require this
information, you extend the strategic value of human resources beyond the
four walls of the HR department. HRIS allows you to focus on people, not
paper, helping you improve service to employees and managers and
positively impact your organization's bottom line.

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OUTCOME
HRIS can help you project the potential impact of HR applications and
services in your company. This process has helped many companies build
the business case for senior management to gain comfort with an eHR
investment.
Using ROI analysis and benchmarking, one can evaluate their real world
results from using the HRIS Network and HRIS outsourcing services.
Measuring ROI involves valuing time saved, applying insight from
experience and observation, and differentiating between hard (cash) and soft
(opportunity) savings at the HR, manager, employee and IT levels.
Whether your goal is reducing costs, playing a more strategic role, providing
better service to employees or improving productivity, HRIS Best
Practices can help you realize returns that meet or exceed those found by
other customers areas of ROI impact HRIS customers have experienced:

Human Resources impact

Employee impact
Manager impact
Specific strategic opportunities
Explore total cost of ownership

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Human Resources Impact

Forrester Research estimates that the average HR department devotes 60%
to 80% of its time to the administration involved in benefits, HR and payroll
management. HRIS Customers calculate and average 47% reduction in this
administration time after using HRIS. Some customers reduce the time HR
spends on administration by as much as 65%.

What else do they realize?

47% reduction

47% reduction in time spent on HR and benefits

administration.

56% reduction

56% reduction in time to process new and

terminated employees

52% reduction

52% reduction in administrative time spent on

open enrollment

$2.24 savings

$2.24 per employee per month savings in printing

and distribution costs (forms, policies, procedural
manuals, summary plan descriptions, pay checks,
etc.)

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Employee Impact
By comparing with previous levels of resource use, HRIS customers have
found (average):
57% reduction
enrollment issues
8.96 hours saved

57% reduction in employee time spent on open

8.96 hours per employee per year in productivity

gain
55% reduction
with HR

55% reduction in employee time spent dealing

Manager Impact
By comparing with previous levels of resource use, HRIS customers have
found (average):
48% reduction- 48% reduction in manager time spent on HR issues
9.14 hours saved- 9.14 hours per manager per month in productivity
gain
109.4 hours saved- 109.7 hours per manager per year in productivity
savings

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Strategic Opportunities
By comparing with previous levels of resource use, HRIS customers have
found:
Increased shareholder value
Improved customer service
Extended reporting access to management
Reduced reliance on IT resources
Financial contributions to budget
Increased value of benefits
Corporate growth facilitated
Overpayments to carriers reduced

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CASE STUDY
Glaxo SmithKline Consumer Healthcare: Revolutionizing the concept of
HRIS
The company: Glaxo SmithKline Consumer Healthcare manufactures and
markets popular consumer healthcare brands like Horlicks, Boost, Viva,
Maltova, Eno, Crocin and Iodex. The company has over 3000 employees
scattered across 4 factories, various regional offices and branch offices
across India
The challenge: Lack of automation in HR processes had resulted in
bottlenecks within the HR system. With the growth of the employee
population and multiple sites across the country communication and
interaction with employees had also become an issue.
The solution: GSKCH opted for a comprehensive, centralized and
integrated HR Information System (HRIS) that covered all planning
modules and created automated HR workflow to address the planning and
operational needs. The GSKCH team used an IT evaluation matrix and after
careful evaluation and sitting through many presentations where the best of
the best in the IT industry showcased their skills and capabilities, zeroed
down on Wipro for the HRIS implementation.
The HRIS covers functions like performance management, training and
development, compensation, manpower planning, recruitment etc. The
solution also includes an employee Intranet that covers all employees. The
HRIS solution is closely integrated with the Intranet as well as the back-end
ERP. The Intranet offers various other workflows like leave management,
travel management, on-line meeting rooms/guest house bookings and a host
of other features. The entire project was completed in 9 months and
implemented across 8 GSKCH sites covering 1200 employees and 12 HR
processes.
Through this HRIS model one HR process interacts with its complementary
HR processes within the GSKCH HRIS. This 'talking' of various HR
modules allows the free flow of relevant decision making information, takes
care of routine follow-up through its in built system of reminders and all
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workflow of approvals are automated in the system leading to speed and

transparency.
The HRIS application at GSKCH has automated all internal HR processes
enabling HR personnel to spend maximum time on analysis and decisionmaking and play a more strategic role in the organization. The impact on
employees, management and HR personnel has been significant. Reduced
paperwork, enhanced productivity, improved planning and decision making
are the singular benefits that GSKCH has reaped. It has also helped in
information sharing across employees in the GSKCH. The integrated
architecture of the solution as provided by Wipro has clearly delivered the
benefits of automation - giving employee and HR productivity a tangible
boost.

Some other leading Companies who have implemented HRIS.

Cendant
Louis Vuitton
Motorola
Pepsi Americas
Southwest Airlines
LG
Phillips LCD
Xerox
BMW
Coca-Cola
Dow Corning
Ericsson
Hershey
Nokia

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