Business Case for HR Self Service Systems

Table of Contents

Executive Summary 3
Project Overview 3
Business Case for Proposed Project 4
Conclusion 5
References 5

Executive Summary

This paper addresses the business case for implementing self service in the IT industry with the aim of gaining higher efficiency for a majority of HR functions and other benefits that can be derived from improved information access. The paper also discusses the various challenges an organization might face while attempting to implement self-service.

The business case for self service revolves around reducing administrative costs and gaining better efficiency. It also aims at improving the overall performance and other benefits such as information management, trend analysis and also operational efficiency. The chief argument presented here is that a self-service initiative allows the HR to concentrate more towards the core functions such as people management instead of getting burdened with administrative tasks.

While self-service has the ability to improve the service expectations from HR, it may also result in some of the savings being consumed in order to meet the higher quality expectations. However, on the long run, it is bound to reduce expenses to a great extent while enhancing the quality. Self-service also enables an organization to implement flexible work and helps employees to remain connected with the organization through a centralized HR system aimed at remote employees. The cost involved to implement self-service can be divided between the the software license, implementation, maintenance and support. However, since a majority of these systems are offered on a hosted environment, the setup cost is almost negligible.

Project Overview

Implementing HR self-service is something that can be achieved easily today with minimum cultural and political opposition. The aim of self-service is to eliminate any administrative bureaucracy from the HR department by providing access to the managers and employees the systems and provisions that were accessible only by HR personnel. By implementing self-service, the employees can make changes to details such as change of address, bank details or anything else through a secure portal online. This eliminates the administrative overhead for the HR department and can also reduce any chances for errors.

This type of system is widely accepted today as majority of the employees have grown in an environment dominated by easy access to information every where. In such an era, the idea of filing paper forms and waiting a prolonged period for the changes to take effect is not acceptable. As a result, the capability of these HR self-service systems now offer a wide range of services from viewing outstanding leaves to instant access to payslips to applying to applying for an internal vacancy online. Self-service once introduced, can quickly become an integral part of the day-to-day activities in an organization. As a result, self-service evolves as an effective tool for people management, enhances the capabilities and efficiency of the HR while also generating an intelligent workforce.

Business Case for Proposed Project

← Financial value analysis

The cost reduction from implementing self-service system can be derived from several sources. One of the major areas where cost can be reduced involves the elimination of data processing time. Using self-service systems employees can directly enter their data to the central HR system and any paper work is eliminated. This results in fewer errors and also less data processing on the part of HR.

Cost reduction can also be achieved through standardizing and streamlining the HR procedures. The various departments in an organization employ different methods to gather information for the HR department. This results in a lot of paper work that could be easily misplaced and different methods can also translate into inefficiencies. Through a self-service system, this can be avoided and a standard procedure and data consistency can be established resulting in higher efficiency and productivity while keeping the costs low.

← Non-financial value analysis

While reducing the costs is the primary aim of a self-service system, there are other long term benefits in implementing self-service system. A self-service HR system helps in improving and streamlining the core HR functions such as people management. Automation helps in generating certain key data that can be used for business intelligence and also determine the trends of your workforce. Since, self-service improves the accuracy of the data collected over traditional systems, it also enhances the quality of any analysis that could be conducted using this data.

Flexible working is something that is quickly emerging as a leading industry trend. This trend is something that would grow in the future as talent acquisition would lead the organizations to telecommuters, freelancers and part timers. In such a situation the demand for a flexible working system would only grow. A self-service system would help to provide all the employees with the same benefits and access to information as any other regular employee would enjoy. Self-service systems would connect all the employees through a centralized system and reduce the HR work while also increasing the efficiency.

← Impact of project and time frame

While self-service offers a wide range of financial and non-financial benefits to an organization, the initial costs for implementation of the system can be high. This could be attributed to the software costs that include license and maintenance fees in addition to cost of implementation including installing and configuring the systems to the organizational environment, any necessary modifications to the software package among many others. However, on the long run, the costs associated with the project are almost negligible compared to the benefits that can be derived.

As far as the time frame required for implementing the project, a phased rollout approach is favorable as opposed to a full fledged rollout. The phased approach allows the organization to identify any problems that may arise from the system and rectify it during an early stage on implementation. Key aspects that hinder the productivity and efficiency within the organization can be scrutinized and short-term benefits can be instantly derived.

Conclusion

Self-service is one of the most efficient and cost reducing systems as far as HR systems are considered. It outweighs the conventional hierarchical model for people management with a great margin. It may be expensive to implement but, it offers myriad benefits that include streamlining and standardizing a majority of the processes in an organization as opposed to the challenges of the traditional systems.

References

Computer in Personnel. http://www.computersinpersonnelhr.com

Guide to Rolling Out Self-Service HR Systems(2009) http://www.ncc.co.uk

Employee Self Service (2000) http://www.hrrevolution.com