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Press Release Contents
Before You Buy an HRIS...
Introduction
This paper was developed, or rather evolved, from dealing with HR
professionals over the last ten years who were trying to find the right
HR system for their company or client. This is not meant to be an
exhaustive monologue on the subject but rather a brief collection of
ideas, concerns, and things to think about as you are involved in the
process of finding the HR system to best meet your needs.
Overview of the HRIS Market
As is true with any product, HR software is designed for an ideal or
target user. Since HR software is basically used for keeping track of
employees, for the purpose of this paper, we will divide companies into
3 categories: Small (fewer than 100 employees), Medium (100 to 1000
employees) and Large (more than 1000 employees). The needs of each of
these company categories are different as are the expectations of the
user within each size company. So, one of the first key questions that
needs to be answered is, "What is the target market for a particular
product?" Not only will the price of the software help position the
product but also the features, installation and training costs and
length of time to be up and running. Don't be fooled by price;
oftentimes a lower priced product will be the "right product," thus
creating a substantial savings in time and money. Don't be fooled by a
long list of features. The "right product" is the one that meets your
requirements, not the one with the longest list. Don't be fooled by a
flashy presentation. The "Right Product" is the one that you or your
staff can easily learn and use day-in and day-out to help you do your
job - not necessarily the one with the coolest screens, etc, etc. Determining what you really need
You know better than anyone what you want and what you need. If you
haven't already done so, make a check list of what you believe is the
minimum set of must haves, a list of what it would be nice to have and
what you feel you do not need. With these lists you will be able to
more quickly determine what you are looking for and know it when you
see it. As you read about products, see demos, etc. continually update
these lists. You will quickly discover that they are a great aid in
cutting through the marketing hype to discover if a particular product
will work for you. Collected Data
Most HR products have either printed or on-ine help listing the
fields of data collected or better yet, screen shots of each screen
used to collect information. Make a copy of each screen and mark each
field on each screen with a colored pen or pencil: green for "must
have" fields; blue for "nice to have" fields; red for "don't care"
fields. While you are doing this exercise, also consider what is
missing and note that on the sheet with the screen. As long as you are
going through each screen on paper, consider the layout, the titles of
fields and the general appearance. Do they make sense? Are they
convenient? Are they comfortable? One item that has often bugged me
about some screens is a field that allows you to, for instance, type in
20 characters but when it is saved you get only 7! Most people who fill
out forms prefer to have visual clues. If the space will hold only 10
characters then I should not be able to type in 11 characters.
When you are exploring a product, make notes about what you like or
don't like such as, how easy is it to find an employee and look at all
the information about them. There are 2 basic paradigms: go to a screen
and then get an employee or find an employee then display the screen
with their data. If you are familiar with one process the other will
take some getting use to. Another item to consider while you are going through screens:
does the software have a control bar with little icons? If they do, are
the icons each different enough to be useful? Some products have very
busy little pictures that all look the same at first glance and can be
difficult to use for their intended purpose. With the !Trak-It
products, we went to a professional to develop icons or symbols, each
of which are distinct in color and shape to make identification unique.
We then reinforced the icon-screen relationship by placing the same
icon on the appropriate screen. It is the little things like this that
often make a product faster to learn and more comfortable to use. Reports As with the screens, spend a good deal of time
with the product's report generator, looking at both the standard
reports, the standard selection criteria, and the custom report writer.
Before you start, again make your list, gather samples of reports and
categorize them: must have, nice to have, don't care. What you will
probably find is that most of the reports you need are standard reports
such as EEO reports, Cobra Billing statements, I-9 lists, Vets-100, AAP
work force analysis, phone lists, etc. If there are reports you need
that are not standard reports, ask about who will create them if you
decide on that particular product. If you are going to be paying
$100,000 for the HR system, expect that all your reports will be
customized to your specs. If you are paying under $500, expect that you
will have to do it yourself. In between, expect that you may get some
of your custom reports as part of the transaction but more than likely
you will have to either learn to do it yourself or pay someone to do it
for you. Custom reports In our over ten years of working with HR
professionals, we have found that, in many cases, certain reports that
are essential to the way the company operates are not included as part
of the standard fare of many HR products. So then the key concern is,
"What do I need to do to get this report?" Sometimes it is just a
variation of a standard report, in which case, can the standard report
be easily copied and customized? In the case of !Trak-It software the
answer is, "Select the standard report and click the Customize button."
Now that is easy isn't it? Many systems do not offer such a facility,
yet in our experience 90% of all custom reports are a variation of one
of the more than 120 standard !Trak-IT HR reports. If the custom report
has to be developed from scratch, how long will it take to learn to use
the report writer and how much do you need to know about the data and
design to get a good looking custom report? Ease of learning - for the first time With a new HR system,
be concerned with the ease of learning a system for two very important
reasons. First, you are probably going to have to learn to use this
system while doing all the other stuff you have to do. So if you are
not a computer whiz and don't have lots of extra time available,, you
want "easy and intuitive" to keep your frustration level to a minimum.
Second, you may not always be there or you may be fortunate enough to
have an assistant. How long will it take someone else to learn the
system in the case of turnover or adding an additional person? Ease of navigating within the system Every system is
different but they all have some similarities. All HR systems keep
track of who your employees are and various data items about them and
their tenure with your enterprise. All systems collect this information
on screens that have places for you to type in the data. All systems
have different ways to navigate between the screens and the fields on
the screen. The important things to check out are: does the software
call things what you would call them? Is a screen called a screen or is
it a window? Or is it a panel? Or is it a refrigerator? This may seem
trivial but it is important when you are trying to learn to use the
system. If the designer calls the pieces or parts of the system by
uncommon or unfamiliar names, rest assured you will find yourself
getting lost and frustrated quite often. In a well-designed system such
as !Trak-It HR, we conform to the system standard conventions for
navigating the top menu bar and drop down menus, but we also
implemented short-cut keys for speedy, direct access to most screens.
And we implemented the Guide screen, which appears after you log on and
reappears after you've gone to a screen and closed it. It's your
friendly assistant screen with buttons that enable you to jump to a
screen or report with one or two mouse clicks. By having more than one
way to get there, !Trak-It HR lets you use the software in the manner
that is most comfortable tforyou. Ease of setting up - how logical is it? All HR systems take
some setting up. There is the installation of the software on your
desktop computer or on your network, and there is the setting up within
the system. Other than client-server systems, the installation should
require simply inserting a disk or two and making a couple of
selections to have it install on your computer. That's usually the easy
part. Setting up all the tables within the HR system can take a lot of
time. but it is time well spent because it will make your life so much
easier later on. Who will do it? Whoever does it will need a lot of
information such as what do you call your departments, what are your
job codes, salary grades, benefits, etc. It is important in any system
to spend the time setting up the tables before entering your employee
data so that once you start you can focus on the data, not on having to
decide what to call something. So in this area of focus, find out what
do you have to do to set up the tables in the system with your names
for things and your business rules for vacations and benefits and their
formulae. The systems for smaller companies usually have fewer tables
than the larger companies, which have more, and sometimes more complex,
tables. In your investigation this is definitely an area where you
should spend some time. Make sure you can live with the way the product
being considered has implemented the table creation and maintenance. Links No man is an island and neither is your HR system. The
two primary interfaces to an HR system are payroll and time clocks. If
these are important to you, then be sure you identify and understand
exactly what information in your HR system can be sent to payroll and
your time clocks and what information they can send to the HR system.
Then find out exactly who has to do what to make it work. For example,
!Trak-IT HR can import and export via our Link option to many payrolls
and payroll services, but we have often discovered that the payroll
can't always do the same. So if HR can export but payroll can't import,
unless you get another payroll, trying to link them together is futile.
The same holds true with time clocks. If this is an important issue to
your search for the "right product" then make your lists of fields in
common between the systems and verify that the data can be imported and
exported as you desire. The "gottcha" in this area is often the
difference in data formats and the logic built into the data. For
example, in a payroll an exempt employee might have a "1" in a certain
field whereas in the HR system the field will more than likely be
called something else and have an" E" instead. So then the question is,
how does the "E" get changed to a "1" Vendors As you will discover if you haven't already, there
are several HR software vendors to choose from. As with any business
relationship, consider the persons you are dealing with; they are the
ones you will be going to for problem resolution, questions, etc. If
you have a personality conflict or you feel you can't trust them or
they don't interact with you in an acceptable, businesslike manner,
don't buy the product. Remember, you are entering into an on-going
relationship with the people in the organization. If you have a problem
with the people, sooner or later you will be unhappy with the product. Customer support How does each vender support you when you
have questions, when your system crashes or when your data disappears?
Call their technical support department. How long were you on hold? How
knowledgeable was the person you talked to? How did they make you feel?
Try out a vendor's technical support more than once; people do have
"bad hair days" and there are always new tech support people being
trained. The things to look for are: Did you get right through to tech
support or, if you left a message, did they get back to you in a timely
fashion? Did you get the help you needed? Did you feel good in the
process? Be aware that some companies will give you a "special"
pre-sales tech support number or code so you get priority before you
buy, but once the sale is made, you get queued up while the cobwebs
grow. Bug fix policy All software of any consequence has bugs from
time to time, so you need to investigate for yourself how a vendor
handles the problem when you encounter a bug or other glitch. Is there
a work around? Is there a patch? Can they e-mail it to you? Do you have
to wait for the next release? When will that be? How much will it cost?
Each vendor has their own policies in these areas. Usually the small
companies can turn around a fix and get a new version out to you faster
than a large company. Your hardware The computer you plan to use the software on
should be the one you test it on. Find out what the recommended
configuration is, not the minimum You don't want to just squeak by; you
want a business tool to help you become more productive and less
frazzzzled. So if your computer does not have enough memory or disk
space or speed, then upgrade your hardware as part of getting a new HR
system. If you plan to run the system on a network, test it on the
network before you buy. Cost of ownership The cost of ownership can be easily
overlooked in the evaluation of a new tool which is going to make your
life better. When you narrow your choices down, even before you get a
price quote for what you think you want, be sure to ask the sales
person to suggest what they think you need. This "double quote" can
sometimes point up something you overlooked or did not clearly
understand about a vendor's configuration and pricing. You might also
quickly discover that you are comparing peas to watermelons. After you
get a quote, go over it to be sure you understand each item and what is
included and more importantly, what is excluded. The items to watch for
are options; some vendors have an initial low base price and then have
all kinds of optional modules that can take the cost way up. The other
item is in the area of MultiUser systems. Some vendors charge by the
seat; with others it is a flat price for unlimited, simultaneous users.
Make sure you know which you are being quoted.
Ask for quotes, preferably separated out, for someone to come in to
help set up all the tables, transfer data etc. And find out about
training: where it is held, how often, how much. There is a big
difference between systems in this area. On the low cost end there is
usually no training available, while on the high end vendors expect to
bill 3 to 5 times the cost of the software license in training and
installation charges. This can be a real big "gottcha". Recurring expenses So you have your dream system up and
running. What is it going to cost you to get the latest updates,
upgrades and bug fixes? What is it going to cost you for access to the
technical support group? Remember, as new release come out, things
change and you may need help to adjust or understand the changes.
Technical support is your life line to keeping your HR system
functioning in your environment without adding any gray hairs. Another
possible cost to consider is that of training a new person. You could
win the lottery. How long and what will it cost to get your successor
up to speed? Conclusion HR software is a wonderful invention that has
made the lives of multitudes of very nice but overworked people less
frustrating and more productive. You too can enjoy the benefits of a
new HR system to help you get the right product at a reasonable price.
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