Integration of HRMS with other systems – The Practitioner's Guide

BENGALURU, India - May 16, 2017 - PRLog -- Implementing an HRMS system is a strategic decision most organizations make today to help them improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their HR processes.

While implementing an HRMS system it's equally critical for organizations to consider the various integration points and capabilities and experience of the HRMS vendor on the same.

With an ever evolving technology world, integration is going to remain a reality as multiple organizational processes continue to use different technology tools which could be at different stages of technology & process evolution.

Integration with other technology solutions within your existing environment is a very critical part of any technology evaluation process and more so in your HRMS evaluation and implementation.

As per Sierra-Cedar HR Systems survey 2016-17, 20% of the large organizations surveyed are focusing on all systems integration while 27% of large organizations are looking at integration of all HR applications.

The trend to integrate all HR applications is seen across Large, mid & Small organizations. The same report states that 87% of high performing organizations have an Enterprise Integration Strategy thus indicating the importance of this aspect in overall organization performance.

We recommend you consider the following aspects while evaluating and implementing an HRMS solution especially from the lens of integration capabilities & experience.

Why Integrate

The need for integration of multiple HR systems or particularly to integrate an HRMS system with existing systems like ERP, CRM etc. arises from the need to avoid data duplication and creating a seamless user experience.

In case you are using multiple HR applications, both these aspects become very critical as you want to ensure a single sign-on kind of approach for various HR related applications like payroll, performance management, learning and development, etc.

Other integrations efforts are largely focused on ensuring data fidelity and creating superior analytics capabilities by combining data sets from different IT systems in different parts of the organization.

Such integration efforts need to be carefully defined and HRMS vendor capabilities need to be clearly evaluated before you sign up with the vendor.

Focus on what business problem would you solve if you integrate multiple data sources, identify potential areas of conflict, and value creation and lastly stay focused on the ROI of integration.

What to Integrate

Once you have defined the why, defining what is much easier. Here you would map out various other systems that you want to integrate with your HRMS. The choice of these systems is primarily derived from your business case for integration.

Here you would have to look at what integration capabilities exist in the applications like ERP, CRM etc. and how those protocols would interact with each other.

You would also have to evaluate the HRMS vendor capabilities on the same. While it might be difficult to find an HRMS vendor who has integrated exact same applications in exactly similar context as yours, an HRMS vendor with some experience of handling complex integration requirements would be a better bet.

Here the discussion would get more technical and hence it's advised that you are accompanied by a competent IT person while discussing these aspects with the HRMS vendor.

How to Integrate:

Typically here you would identify a combination of following integration approaches:

a.       Baseline Integration – Here you would take the data extract from system A in an Excel format & then push that data into system B at a pre-defined periodicity.

b.      Simple Integration – In this approach you are likely to use Vendor supplied application program interfaces which helps you create one way integration from system A to System B

c.       Two-Way Integration – This is typically created either by using a vendor provided solution or using a middleware or service oriented architecture (SOA) to facilitate the integration.

Source: CedarCrestone HR Systems Survey 2013-14

The choice of integration type would determine both the cost and the timeline required for integration efforts. Hence the actual choice would largely depend on your business case and your IT person recommendations on the best approach to meet those requirements given the current budgetary constraints.

However, one needs to understand that just like technology, integration is an evolutionary journey, and you may take up different type of integration projects throughout the life cycle of your HRMS product. Thus selecting a vendor who can support such journey becomes more critical for your success in terms of achieving the stated business objectives.

Importance of Governance

One of the often ignored aspects of integration efforts is the data governance structure and efforts. As you start the journey of data integration defining your data governance and audit mechanisms becomes very critical as more and more integration efforts will fail if the underlying data is not governed properly.

At the heart of integration is data and unless you get the data right the integration efforts are unlikely to provide you with business benefits envisioned with such integration efforts.

A good HRMS or technology vendor would always recommend and advise you on such protocols and even present you with some mechanisms for the same. Getting your existing HR related data audited before beginning the integration effort would be a best practice.

Conclusion

Integration of HRMS with other existing systems is an important parameter of selection of your HRMS vendor. If you have a clearly defined objective of your integration efforts it not only helps in selecting the right HRMS partner but also ensuring that you are able to deliver on the business benefits of such integration efforts.
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