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Executive Summary:

Executive Summary:

Modern workplace has been experimenting with the automation of HR function since General Electric (GE) adopted early forms of HRIS during 1950s. From automating personnel data to the modern HR ERP platforms, HRIS has undergone sea changes. Current experiences and available reviews have established usefulness of HRIS in terms of efficiency and effectiveness despite various challenges organizations face with HRIS. As with any other form of technology, modern IT has gone a complete face lift. Collaborative and smart technologies have made inroads into other business functions such as Sales & Marketing, Supply chain & Logistics etc. The early concept of e-HR is fast getting repositioned as Social-HR. Social technologies are fast re-writing the rules of business of HR in many spheres due to changing demographics at workplaces, nature of collaboration and easy interface among various technology platforms. SMAC stands for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud technologies. Web2.0 has revolutionized business processes through collaboration, co-creation and HR is one of the front-runners which is going to be impacted the most due to the changing demographics of the workforce- it’s estimated that by 2020, 50% of the workforce would be of millennials & Gen-Y. These generations are already the digital natives and have been fed on the staple diet of Apple & Blackberry of the world.

The project intends to review HRIS and the role it has played in making HRM functions more efficient and effective, key challenges and shortcomings in HRIS implementation and then introduce SMAC as the integrating force which can transform HR practices to make it truly social. We will review how SMAC can play an over-arching role in the entire ‘employee-life-cycle’ thereby driving organizational effectiveness, greater employee engagement and at a broader level optimizing human potential.

Key words: Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC), Human Resources Information System (HRIS), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Information Technology (IT), Human Resources (HR), World Wide Web version two dot zero (Web 2.0), Generation-Y (Gen-Y)

‘SMAC’ing up HRIS: A Review of Emerging Technologies

Sadhan Bhattacharya, Shilpa Gothi, Bhupendra Rawat, Vivek Swain, Madhav Singh, Durga R Madasu, Vijeyta Banerji

Background:

HRIS stands at the intersection of HRM and IT. From the traditional record-keeping of employees such as name, address, family status, education, past employer records etc. to more transformational areas such as training & development and talent management, HRIS have impacted the business of HRM in terms of efficiency, accuracy and effectiveness. Existing HRIS applications have helped organizations get better in terms of improved utilization of the most critical resource i.e. human capital through timely responses, accuracy, increased efficiency, improved effectiveness and freeing human capital for more value-added deliverables of strategic importance. Despite these benefits, HRIS practices suffer from serious bottlenecks- more prominent among them would be monolithic structures, data security & integrity, cost of employing HRIS specialists, cost of HRIS systems for smaller organizations and lack of collaboration with other HRM functions.

Problem statement:

HRIS has been successful in bringing efficiency and accuracy to many HRM functions but suffered from some inherent challenges that restricted its scope of impact to other strategic HRM deliverables. We intend to review the benefits of HRIS alongside its shortcomings and then review the emerging collaboration tools (read, SMAC) which can be successfully integrated within existing HRIS platforms. This, we believe, has the potential to transform HR and HRM practices into what can be called ‘Social HR’. In the backdrop of changing workforce demographics, Social-HR will help forge stronger collaboration and engagement within the future workforce.

Project Objectives:

The project intends to critically explore the following two aspects of HRI system and outline the emerging trends of social technologies to formulate recommendations for the HR function with a view to integrate with existing tools for enhanced collaboration and engagement for the changing workforce.

Review the benefits of HRIS for e-HRM and critically analyze the limitations of existing HRIS Explore SMAC technologies in HRM context and review the emerging trends to suggest ways of

integrating these to transform into social-HR Expected benefits of the project: The project is exploratory in nature and tries to analyze the major trends seen in collaboration IT space which are either being used successfully or can be leveraged for HR function in future. One of the expected benefits of the project could be the working guidelines for practicing HRIS professionals. This approach can be truly strategic in nature and integrative in practice- right across the various stages of the employee-life-cycle: Peri-ELC, if you wish to call it! This transformative practice and philosophy of social-HR will see the following major benefits,

Making HR more strategic in outlook and practice; turning focus to non-transactional business that are truly partnering and collaborative in nature

Making many of HRM practices integrative and value-additive in nature Create lean team of super users of HRIS professionals

Research Methodology: The project employs both primary and secondary data points. The group intends to execute fundamental research through surveys, questionnaire and interviews with key stakeholders within our respective organizations or external resources. We will research extensively the available literatures, industry white-papers and existing research on the topic using the web. Since, web 2.0 technologies are breakthrough in nature and of break-neck speed; we could have very little references from any text books even from the latest editions. While bulk of data will be qualitative references in nature, we see the major quantitative data sources as the survey results from our organizations and of course, white papers. Data display using the survey results will be the main approach to analyze and present the primary data. Conclusion: The arrival of various collaborative technologies are redefining and reengineering many business processes and functions. SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics & Cloud) are such a family of collaboration tools that are already being used in many business settings mainly in marketing, supply-chain, finance etc. Adoption and integration of SMAC in HRM practices will transform the workplace of today making it more collaborative, collective and engaging. SMAC when successfully integrated with HRIS platforms wil truly create a Social-HR.

Project Synopsis: EPHRM05 Mumbai group-12