Unless there is an exceptional business case, most organisations now seek software as a service (SaaS) agreements, as the total cost of ownership is much lower. With SaaS you may be paying a subscription, but compare that to the Implementation cost, hardware cost, upgrades every few years, internal support and a large cost of change should you ever need to move away. Software as a Service is typically cheaper in the long term.

If you decide on on-premise you will be limiting your options.  Most vendors are only developing for the cloud and therefore these systems may be better for future-proofing you as a business.  Your IT team will have a cloud strategy that you’ll need to consider but it does seem to be the way the world is going.

This is a tricky one.  SME vendors usually publish their costs on their websites and there is no negotiation.  Larger vendors will want to “engage” you in lots of conversations before you get to understand their costs and, in our experience, can often negotiate.

Be really firm and ask for the typical employee cost per year so you can get an idea of what is affordable before you start.  Because we run selection projects all the time we know this information and, if you are a client of ours, we will help with negotiations because we can benchmark against other customers.

Vendors communicate costs in several ways. Newer players in the market will usually offer customers a transparent, monthly cost with short notice periods. Implementation support costs are either wrapped in, but you will be expected to do the implementation yourself, usually with good remote support and online guidance.  This can be a quick, flexible and cost effective approach for emerging organisations, but you should still consider your own time and capability to take it on such a project.

More established vendors are now offering SaaS (Software as a Service) payment models. You access the software via their server and pay a licence fee (usually by capita) for the benefit of using it. SaaS contracts can vary from between 3-5 years, but you should look to include a break claus in the contract half way through so you have the opportunity to review if the software remains fit for purpose, especially if you’re a fast growing organisation.

Coupled with the SaaS licensing costs, there will usually be vendor professional services fees for implementation support. It’s important to see a proposed implementation plan to underpin this and it should show you where the vendor resource will be deployed during the project – you don’t want to leave yourself short of support during testing, or during a pay parallel run!  It will also give you an indication of how much support you will need to offer internally. A good starting ratio is usually 2/3 hours of internal resource for every 1 hour of vendor resource.

Finally, there may be peripheral costs to look out for, such as additional costs for training the HR team. Other common cost to look out for are integration, both from the HRIS vendor and the existing business system vendor.

This is vendor dependent, but ranges anywhere from a month to 5 years. Vendors are now typically offering SaaS (Software as a Service) payment models. You access the software via their server and pay a licence fee (usually by capita) for the benefit of using it. SaaS contracts can vary from between 3-5 years, but you should look to include a break claus in the contract half way through so you have the opportunity to review if the software remains fit for purpose, especially if you’re a fast growing organisation. 3 years

HRIS solutions are either considered unified or best of breed. Either may be more appropriate for your organisation, but it will come down to your current requirements, short/medium terms goals. Both are explained below.

A “Unified” HRIS solution strategy is one involving an end-to-end suite designed to manage the entire life cycle of an employee within one integrated system. This does not mean that a unified system approach won’t have any additional system touch points (e.g. benefits provders or job boards), but collectively speaking, it is a single system of record for all needs on one platform. To provide some context, a vendor that offers a “unified” solution will likely include at least the following major functional capabilities: HCM, payroll, talent management, performance management, time management.

A “Best-of-Breed” strategy is to acquire and deploy systems offering the best possible capabilities in a specific HCM functional area (e.g. HR, payroll, recruiting, performance, onboarding, etc.) requiring an integration plan to ’bolt together’ each of these point solutions. Best-of-breed vendors typically offer much greater functional capabilities addressing specific business processes vs. any unified solution. The most common “Best-of-Breed” HCM vendor solutions include: ATS (Applicant Tracking System), LMS (Learning Management System), Compensation Management, Expense Management.

There are several ways to integrate business systems, two of the most common methods of exchanging data is either via an API or a data flat file. API’s are more sophisticated and are considered a ‘true’  integration, but are costly to implement. Flat file data transfers are simpler, but data is unlikely to be transferred in ‘real time’, are prone to issues but are more cost effective.

Clocking in solutions usually require both software and hardware and if you have not already made an investment you should plan for this additional procurement and cost.

Some vendors will offer the capability to capture clocking data and will commonly recommend compatible hardware vendors. If you already have the hardware in place that must remain, a conversation with your vendor should be a good place to start on compatible HRIS software solutions, but do also look at the whole of market as integrations are advancing all the time.

Some more advance HRIS software can enable clocking without the hardware and instead relies on GPS to validate the location of an employee. The suitability of this depends on your organisation type and culture One consideration is do you allow employees to carry mobile devices?   Some built up locations can often eschew the GPS data – you don’t want your retail employee clocking in from the coffeeshop next door! Nevertheless its worth investigating to reduce cost and technology is fast evolving.

When taking the HRIS global, it is important not to get too wrapped up in trying to make processes country specific. Typically, about 80 percent of the business processes are the same across countries, 20 percent are different. Make sure that research has been done ahead of time to pinpoint any specific country needs, but then focus on consistency as much as possible.

It is important to make sure that the HR software vendor functionally supports all of the countries that you do business in now and any you anticipate moving into in the short to medium term to avoid system capabilities becoming an issue. Where possible, seek references of other oranisations operating your shortlisted software in your regions.

Maintenance may also become difficult and inconvenient when updates have to be applied all at once for a system that operates across different time zones. Likewise, for day to day helpdesk support, ensure the software vendor offers the ‘follow the sun’ model of support to ensure consistent coverage.

Finally, consider any language differences and how this will be managed for implementation and reporting.

There are obviously some areas where functionality is duplicated ie document management, policies, policy updates, forms etc and holiday booking however our advice is to keep it separate. We advise that you link from the intranet to the HR system using single sign on so the experience is seamless. We also advise to keep HR policies in the HR system for reporting and tracking reasons.