Expert Tips for Evaluating HRIS Systems

    

Expert Tips for Evaluating HRIS Systems

A Human Resources Information System (HRIS) is a valuable tool to improve the productivity of your HR department. Such a system can help you automate many common HR services. This, in turn, gives your HR team more time to work directly with employees and add to the strategic planning for the company.

Although HR professionals have probably been involved in choosing department software at some point in their careers, HRIS brings that software to a whole new level. The more complex the system, the more choices you have, and the more considerations there are during the evaluation process.

To make that process easier, we’ve assembled a series of expert tips for choosing an HRIS system. Use these tips as you plan your HRIS selection team and process:

  1. Plan first. Instead of jumping right into vendor sourcing and selection, sit down with your HR team and company managers and write out a strategic plan for the HRIS. Talk to others and discover what people in your company really need from an HRIS and what your HR department hopes it will accomplish. Then, write a strategic plan, with goals and milestones for using the system. How you plan to use the system can then guide you through the feature list of what you’d like to see in a system and that will help you with your vendor selection.
  2. Create a road map. In addition to the strategic plan, build a timeline and road map for the entire HRIS process. Starting with today’s date, add to your road map the data by which you plan to have all of the requirements documented, who will find potential vendors, when you will make your choice, and when you plan the launch and training. Adding dates sets goals that give people on the team something to work towards and prevents the project from drifting.
  3. Build strategic teams. Although it is important to include the right people in the selection process, not everyone needs to be involved in all meetings. Choose a core team and an extended team so that the core team can take the lead with inputs from the extended team. This maximizes everyone’s time, gives all a voice in the process, but doesn’t bog people down with an abundance of meetings.
  4. Focus on new technology: Look for leading-edge technology from companies that have a good reputation for service. Companies such as Sage offer Sage HRMS that offers flexibility along with a family of related software that can work together or independently for the best system that meets your needs. Sage looks ahead to build into their software leading-edge functionality so that you are never playing catch-up with your software.
  5. Always keep goals in mind: Software must make it easier to achieve your goals. By listing out your goals first for the HRIS project, adding a road map and timelines, and then delving into the desired features of the software, you’ll be able to keep your goals at the forefront of all vendor selection meetings without skipping a beat.

An HRIS system is a time-saving software that can add great features to your system to help your HR department and employees. It can help reduce turnover rates, identify compliance and regulation gaps, and much more. This discovery process outlined above can help you choose a great system such as Sage HRIS that will make your workplace more efficient.

For more information about HRIS: The Ultimate Guide to HRIS

BAASS Business Solutions

At BAASS Business Solutions, we seek to help our customers improve processes to become more profitable. We take the time to understand the needs of your business and help you select software that will improve efficiencies, service, and profitability. For more information, please contact us.

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Nancy Pearce

About The Author

Nancy Pearce

Senior Business Consultant, HRIS Practice Leader - Nancy is our HRIS Practice Leader and has over fourteen years of experience with BAASS. Nancy started as a Senior Business Consultant with Sage 300 ERP (Accpac) with emphasis on the Not-for-Profit sector specializing in Payroll & HR Management Systems. She became certified in Sage HRMS in 2006 and eventually moved her focus to strictly Human Capital Management consulting and development of the HRIS Practice at BAASS.