HR needs to “get smarter” with technology if it is to succeed in adopting a more strategic role within the business, according to a panel of experts at the Business Cloud Summit in London on 30 November.

 
But when introducing new technology, HR also needs to give higher priority to the wider goals of the business than just its own specific requirements. Paul Musson, director of people and organisational development at Colt Technology Services, explained: “You have to put the business first. If you’re not solving a business issue, you have to ask why you’re doing it, which means not just looking at it from an HR point of view.”
 
His organisation replaced an Oracle 11i HR system, which was “not state of the art” and had been implemented differently in each of its 13 subsidiaries resulting in none of them being able to talk to each other, with a software-as-a-service-based offering from SuccessFactors.
 
The aim was not only to introduce “performance excellence” in relation to transactional administrative tasks, but also to provide managers with the necessary talent-related information and reporting capabilities to undertake effective organisational change.
 
At the time, the telco was in the process of consolidating its 13 operational country units down to six and needed to identify in which areas of the business to cut and boost headcount, while not losing talent that it was keen to keep. As part of this process, it was also decided to reduce a ratio of 1:55 HR personnel to other staff members down to 1:25 over the following 18 months.
 
“Too many people were involved in transacting in the HR space. So we had to make a smart move to still fulfil HR hygiene requirements, but also provide management with the information it needed to drive the business forward, while also releasing 35 HR individuals. To do that, you have to be smarter about using both individuals and technology,” said Musson.
 
As a result, the decision was made to go down the SaaS route, which resulted in implementation times for the first phase of the project that were “10 times faster” than any he had experienced before, not least because the firm did not go down the customisation route. The second phase of the initiative is being undertaken now.
 
Musson said: “It stops you from over-elaborating systems to comply with your business processes, which raises the question of ‘do our processes need to be as bureaucratic?’ So rather than force-fit the system to adhere to your processes, see if those in the system are fit for purpose.”
 
Upfront costs were also a major consideration. Not only were these reduced because it was no longer necessary to purchase software licences as the service was paid for on a subscription basis, but consultancy fees were lower due to the quick implementation time.
 
Moreover, as a result of offering “smarter solutions to the workforce and management, we can withdraw 30 plus recruiters. Managers now recruit at the first point of access rather than through HR,” Musson added.
 
Ciara Hassan, an independent HR consultant, who was former HR director at Landmark Hotels, had a similar experience. The organisation likewise deployed SuccessFactors in an attempt to improve its performance and talent management activity during the recession and understand what it was doing well or not.
 
A further aim was to move HR from being an admin-focused to a more “strategically-aligned” function.
 
“It was about speed of implementation. We couldn’t afford extra resource for years, but this was done in weeks and there was a cost saving from that phenomenon,” Hassan said.
 
Nonetheless, Shaun Dunphy, a senior manager at HR, IT and business process outsourcing consultancy Alsbridge, warned that there were certain pitfalls that HR departments should bear in mind if going down the SaaS route.
 
The first was the need to undertake risk management. “If you do it, you have to think about what safeguards are in place. It’s all about contract management and some people assume that no safeguards are necessary, but it’s not true,” he said.
 
Another important activity was to look carefully at the business culture of the organisation. “I’ve seen very good services implemented badly because people hadn’t considered the change management aspects,” Dunphy explains.
 
A third consideration was understanding what the organisation was committing to and what it wanted out of any service. “The information becomes employee-owned so it’s not really an HR system any more, but a socially-aware one that’s used for the benefit of the business,” he said.