Exciting tale of HR heads technology

Exciting tale of HR heads, technology

HR managers, specially the ones manning the challenging armies of IT and BPO outfits, may find their Man Friday in the very shelves they serve – IT tools and applications. Here's how.

Pratima Harigunani

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

There used to be a personnel manager and today it is the HR manager.

From mere record keeping, number-crunching, hiring, managing and commanding, the attire of the human resource manager has donned new roles that now imbibe strategic stature, high-implications of decisions, tougher training and development jobs, keeping employees constantly ready-happy-productive-hooked and so on.

The journey of transition from a staff function to a critical line function explains the magnitude of significance and challenges that an HR department is today wrought with.

Ask any hands-on HR manager and s/he will vouch for the new breed of problems that have sprung up today.

Competition and attrition are persistent but to top them up there are pressures of operational improvement, stringent resource efficiencies, a 24/7 delivery landscape, virtual work environments and the re-orientation challenges have come as never-thought-of issues.

T for Technology

Unsurprisingly, an analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Asia Pacific On-demand Software Market, reveals that revenues in this market (12 major Asia-Pacific countries excluding Japan) totaled $70.3 million in 2006 is forecasted to grow at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 27.1 per cent (2006-2009), will reach a market size of $144.3 million by end-2009.

And collaboration and HR applications software is right there second in the pecking order here following CRM software that emerged as the dominant solution in 2006.

In another AMR Research survey, 50 per cent of companies expect to increase their investments in HCM applications in 2008. Technology can play a distinguished role in helping HR honchos in various areas they deal with.

Time, communication and efficiency are some prominent ones. Tools and automation have immediate and tangible advantages when it comes to cutting time spent on redundant and duplicate tasks.

Tech toys imbibe a workplace with virtues like reduced response-time, better delivery output, on-demand training, better collaboration on information, customized responses, better information utilization, and cost efficiencies.

They also have ready applicability and innovative solutions when the question of communicating with employees comes. No doubt, IMs, blogs and online communities are part and parcel of many employees today.

Technology has also helped in sprinkling an average employee's, and in turn the HR manager's life, with convenience and comfort.

Had it not been the various avatars of technology, the concepts of 24/7 work, flexible work-schedules and virtual work, would have only stayed as fascinating illusions.

From standard, blanket manifestations of technology like Intranet, web 2.0 and HR ERPs we have a slew of tools, applications and solutions that add customized solutions to the territory of various HR functions.

Interestingly, such tools have also covered a wide enough gamut of HR– from recruitment to training, development to manpower planning, to utilization management to e-functions and to much higher and broader strategic plug-in references.

KPIT Cummins is one such company that has started deploying tools in various HR areas.

Renuka Krishna, VP Talent Search and Recruitment, KPIT Cummins Infosystems Ltd, says that e-recruitment is becoming an imperative because of the sheer volumes and scale to be dealt with.

That becomes all the more relevant, as even resumes, once rejected, come back. Hence, a central pool that manages the flow and tracks it in addition, to taking care of fake CVs is helpful. The company has deployed Ventive, a recruitment tool from UBICS.

"Ventive is an Enterprise Recruitment Automation (ERA) package that helps organizations define, implement and monitor the enterprise-wide talent acquisition processes." describes Sunil Patil, President, UBICS.

"For us hiring is a non-stop activity and we utilized technology for productivity measurement and recruitment effectiveness. This was with a view to get people on time, as per the requirement, reduce the CV lead-time and manage the CV load per recruiter. It helps in better management of the recruitment pipeline, profile-filters and technical matches. The ultimate recruitment engine has to be productive and analytics and metrics on a HR software are a welcome help." Krishna from KPIT Cummins says.

Automation is one such form of technology touch point for the HR domain. First Advantage Offshore Services, for instance, is experimenting and witnessing the advantages of touching some key call center areas after automating helpline call areas, and consequently reducing respective staff strength as well as improving online call levels to 65 per cent.

"Earlier this was completely human-driven. Now we have created a technology wherein the software handles the calls and converts them to the required responses. We are much better and much efficient and could reduce the number of people deployed there. That way, we have picked another process from the US and the same staff can be rolled over to the new processes," said the company's director Tarun Jauhari.

For the tool to work

Minoo Dastur, VP and COO of Nihilent, a company that offers performance management and change management tools, challenges the very definition and perception of tool.

"Anything that achieves an end objective is a tool. As per Indian perception, only a software system is a tool. Isn't a building a tool? Budgets are the most strategic tools. Any management lever has a methodology component and if it's good enough to be used, it has to have a process. Unless the process is well-set, it's hard for technology to come into play."

Technology is subliminal, he explains, as it generally just makes a thing faster or helps in data storage or impersonalises the transaction. It's the process where HR enablement actually comes into play. Compensation tools, he illustrates, have usefulness as they cover the many dimensions of a task.

"A task involves not just job output, but also skills, competencies etc. Someone may be good in negotiation, while someone may be good technically. That's why most appraisals fail. They look only at the hard numbers and not at the various dimensions of a task. Our tool works round the year in equipping an employee as per the expectations and skills he is enveloped with. Technology helps in injecting objectivity to the process."

According to Nihilent's Dastur, the domestic market for HR tools is still miniscule.

Performance management specialist Synygy doesn't differ much on the subject.

As MD Chetan Shah says, "For increased efficiency and moreover effectiveness, a system's outlook to routine processes or tasks is a must. It is not just about automating a task but about having a system's approach of looking at what can be automated to save time, cost and increase productivity. Tools like SATS ( Synygy Application Tracking System) helps us track an employee's career at Synygy - right from the time s/he applies until s/he leaves. It helps hiring managers, mentors, HR and senior management to have a complete access to employee information. Many reports and metrics like those related to hiring, training, promotions, attrition, exit, etc are just a few clicks away. Such a tool also helps bringing in a lot of transparency, consistency and agility."

HR still matters

At the end of the day, however, it's up to the HR on how it can extract the best from technology.

As Dastur from Nihilent points out, "An HR manager has to look at the tool output, that's why HRD is so important." Automation for the sake of automation doesn't work, he feels.

"Just deploying an HR ERP will not yield results. A tool has to be supported by an effective process." Krishna rates Ventive as efficient enough.

"They have given good customer support. The bottlenecks, if any, are always in implementation. It is very essential ultimately that the organization squeezes the best out of a system. The parsing engine is a critical component as it can capture the indexes of a CV and help in combating the challenge of fake and duplicate CVs. The work the engine performs is actually a marathon task manually."

She adds that the deployment has also helped in better management of the vendor network. Besides Ventive, the organization is also going into SAP and has started the implementation for HR management system.

"Probably, we will marry SAP and Ventive together," she hints. She is also planning using the tool to help project managers gain a better and faster overview of the recruitment side.

"Individual reports would not be needed." For an HR manager the biggest output, as Shah puts it, is that s/he can spend more time doing the kind of things s/he should be really doing which is spending more time strategizing, innovating and introspecting around the Human Resource.

"It also helps the HR Manager in providing valuable inputs to both the management and the employees and playing the role of a facilitator. It allows HR to function as a knowledge-administrator rather than just as transaction-administrator maintaining employee data. The role is changing to being a business manager and rather than a simple advisor."

So far so good

Ventive has five customers in India so far: Patni, KPIT, Zensar, Otis and Affirm Services.

Biju Nambiar, marketing manager said that the company would now be pitching up its marketing decibels with a 'We-are-back' attitude.

But, companies are decreasing their HCM investments, inching up to 13 per cent as per the AMR Research survey as enterprises seek to gain value from applications already purchased and anticipate much-warranted consolidation among strategic suite players.

Clearly, there is more possible than what probably HR managers have fiddled so far with.

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