What You Need to Know Before You Buy a HRIS

This paper was developed, or rather evolved, from dealing with HR professionals over the ten years who were looking 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 right HR system to meet your needs.

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 (less 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 need 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, often times a lower priced product will be the "Right Product" thus creating a substantial savings in time and money.  Don´t be fooled by 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 and or your staff can easily learn, and use day-in and day out to help you do your job, not the one with the coolest screens etc.

You know better than anyone, what you want and what you need.  If you haven´t already done so make a checklist of what you believe is the minimum set of must haves, a list of what it would be nice to have and what you are sure you do not want.  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 and flashy demos to discover if a particular product will work for you.

Most HR products have either printed or on line 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 is able to have 20 characters typed into in and then when it is saved you get 7!  Most people who fill out forms prefer to have visual clues, if the space will hold 10 characters then I can´t type in 11 characters.

As long as we are thinking about screens, when you are exploring a product, make notes about what you like or don´t like:  Such as how easy is it to find a employee and the look at all the different 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 thus can be hard to use for their intended purpose. It is the little things like this that often make a product faster to learn and more comfortable to use.

As with the screens, spend a good deal of time with the products report generator, looking at both the standard reports, the standard selection criteria, and the custom report writer.  Before you start, again make your list or gather samples of reports and categorize them; Must have, Nice to Have, Don´t care.  What you should find is that most of the reports you want should be standard reports like 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 you specs, whereas if you are paying under $500 expect that your going to have to do it your self.  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.

In our many years of working with HR professionals we have often seen where there are certain reports that are essential to the way the company currently operates and these reports are not usually part of the standard fare of most 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?  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 reports.  If the custom report has to be developed from scratch how long does 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? 

The first time for anything is always exciting, because of "new and different" but with a new HR system be concerned with the ease of learning a system for two real important reasons.  First, you are going to have to learn to use this "System" while doing all the other stuff you do.  So if you´re not a "rocket scientist" or "computer wiz" then 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 hire or have an assistant and so How long will it take them to learn?

Every system is different, every system is the same. 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 around 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.  A well designed system will 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 is a screen that appears after you log on and reappears after you´ve gone to a screen and close 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. 

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 with in the system.  Other than client -server systems the installation should be 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 does it? That is a question to ask.  Who ever does it will need a lot of information from you (if your not the one doing it) like 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 their data not 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 your benefits and their formulae.  The systems for small companies usually have fewer tables and the ones for bigger companies have more and sometimes more complex tables.  in your investigation this is definitely an area to spend some time in each product being considered to be sure you can live with the way they implemented the table creation and maintenance.

"No man is an island" and neither is your hr system.  The two primary interfaces to an HR system is payroll and time clocks.  If these are important to you then be sure that you identify and understand exactly what information in your HR system can be sent to payroll and your clocks and what information they can send to the HR system.  Then find out exactly who has to do what to make it work.  So HR can export but payroll can´t import, so unless you get another payroll, trying to link them to gather 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".

As you will discover there are in all categories several vendors to choose from.  As with any business relationship consider the persons you are dealing with they are the ones that you will be going to for problem resolution questions etc.  If you have 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, because remember you are also buying the people of the organization and if you have a problem with the people sooner or later you will be unhappy with the product.

Your the customer.  How does each vender support you when you have questions, when your system crashes or when your data disappears.  Call Technical support.  How long where you on hold? How knowledgeable was the person you talked to?  How did they make you feel?  Try out a vender 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.

All software of any consequence has bugs and 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 email 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. 

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 "squeak" by you want a business toll 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.

The cost of ownership can be easily overlooked in an evaluation of a new tool which is going to make your life better.  Lets start with the obvious, when you narrow your choices down or even before get a price quote for what you think you want.  Be sure to ask the sales person to suggest what they think you should get.  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 on Multi user systems, some vendors charge by the seat others it is a flat price for unlimited simultaneous users.  Make sure you know which you are being quoted.

As part of the quote 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".

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 get promoted or win the lottery.  How long and what will it cost to get your successor up to speed?

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 un-frazzzzled.  By making lists and knowing what to look for you will find the "right product" at a reasonable price.

Email John at jenyedy[at]trak-it.com

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