HRMS, a distressed purchase?

I was provoked by this on Hackernoon, and wrote a little piece on HRMS systems. I have just come back from a Trade Union course on Employment Law and wonder whether the US based systems built for Silicon Valley behemoths are suitable for UK based SMEs. I reference the Gartner MQ which seems to have come on in the last two years; google it, you can get to see it from one of the companies in the top right quadrant but I like their functional breakdown.

I state that a “person” data model is key and finish with the following quote,

HR functions need to define their mission statement, somewhere between “stop the staff suing us”, and “delivering a self-actualising company”; only then can the needs of the software be defined and developed, bought or rented.

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HRMS

I was writing about the need for new systems in the CRM & HR domains to support the new requirements coming our of the GDPR , particularly for mid-range companies. I had found this article that talked about the nature of the HRMS market and snidely commented on the foolishness of focusing on recruitment to the exclusion of other HR functions. I had not considered the big ERP providers because their price tag, both of licence and implementation and operational cost is such that they tend to be inappropriate for SMEs. Despite this I came across this puff piece talking about an HRMS selection exercise between Oracle, SAP and Workday. The last of these offers the product as SAAS , although given it competes with the big two, it comes with a high price tag. …

Compliance

After attending the BCS IS Security Group meeting yesterday, I began to think about how small (or more accurately, medium) companies might deal with the additional compliance actions required of the GDPR. There would seem to be two design patterns, a golden source, or an all knowing switch. The first pattern led me to consider the SaaS solutions, which should be used to dealing with suspects, prospects and customers (CRM), also any employees that might be employed, with the ERP solution catering for personal data located in the supply chain. Over the years I have been made aware of Sugar CRM & OpenBravo (ERP), more recently I have looked at Financial Services KYC problem, and been pointed at kyc.com,  an enhanced CRM system designed for the financial services industry. The gap is an industry leading HR system, and it will surprise none of my long term friends and colleagues, that I think we can assume that fault is in the buying community where the priority would seem to be recruitment and applicant tracking although, of course, payroll was the first SaaS offering by an order of decades. …