Cloud solutions for Human Capital Management

HCM Cloud

HCM Cloud

Everybody is currently talking about the Cloud. And nobody is forgetting to mention that "your" business has to go to cloud. And there is no alternative!

Much more important than to move to the cloud is the fundamental need that the HR business of your organisation has to be mobile. More and more people are always online with their mobile. And there is no need to start your laptop to approve an interview appointement or a salary increase. That could be done on a mobile or tablet. Everywhere at every time. The mobile infrastructure for that is the cloud.

But there could be other more urgent reasons to move to the cloud. What about the existing infrastructure or your organisation?

Is the support for your applications still available and for how long is that still the case?

What about the costs to keep your systems running?

Are your applications ready for mobile devices like smart phones and tablets?

How secure is your IT infrastructure?

Are the applications still fulfilling the needs of the business? And is that also the case for the coming years?

And many additional questions.

If your are already doubting about the answers of some of the questions above it is maybe time to think about a cloud solution. Or an update to an on premise solution which allows your business to be mobile on every device.

What is behind the HCM Cloud?

To transfer employee data in the cloud produces most of the time some concerns. Are the data safe? Or where is the Cloud? And where are the big benefits for the organisation?

With the HCM Cloud your organisation will share the infrastructure and the HCM application with other organisations. The data are for most of the vendors (Workday, SAP and Oracle) stored in Europe. Because of the principal of sharing your organisation is not free to customize the HCM application. It is only possible to configure the application. But for most of your HR business needs the configuration opportunities are more than sufficient.

What are the big benefits?

The vendor takes care on the infrastructure and the upgrades

The latest version of the HCM application available for employees and the HR business

No costs for the infrastructure or licenses. A fee per user makes the life for the pirchase much easier.There are many additional advantages of the HCM Cloud. They are depending on the HR strategy of your organisation.

On premise or cloud? Or both together?

There isn´t only one answer for this question.

For organisations that are in highly regulated industries, or have very complex privacy and security issues, an on premise environment is often the preferred model. In this environment, the company invests in their own server and storage devices, and manages them within the confines of their own network. Users can access files while they are mobile or offsite, but only through a private portal that is highly secure.

With a cloud model, network services, applications and data storage are all hosted offsite and made available to users over the Internet. Public Clouds are appealing to many businesses who want to minimize upfront capital expenditures and reduce overall cost, complexity and lead times for mobile access.

The Hybrid Cloud model (On premise and cloud combined) empowers organizations to realize the benefits of both the cloud as well as on premise. In this environment, the cost-effective cloud would be used for high volume business applications which need to be accessed by multiple locations and/or a large number of mobile employees. Data that has a higher degree of privacy and security concerns would be hosted on premise.

This short discourse shows that some investigations concerning the HR and IT strategy are required. A hybrid solution with Taleo (cloud) as recruiting application and PeopleSoft (on premise) as HR application< could be an option. Or Workday as a pure cloud solution.

The big vendors

In 2007 Workday was founded by the former founder of PeopleSoft Dave Duffieldand Aneel Bhusri. They developed a new HCM application from scratch:

Pure cloud application

Accessable by all desktop and mobile devices

Extremly user friendly

Workday is currently the most progressive vendor for HCM application. The founder said:"I started Workday to bring passion and customer focus back to the business of enterprise applications." And that is it what they are doing.

If an organisation decides for Workday it isn't possible to say "Let's start e.g. with performance management with an output interface from our Core HR system. The core data have to be stored in Workday. Means for the organisation: You go with Workday as a core HR system or you don't. Not an easy decision because the use of Workday will change your organisation.

SuccessFactors was founded in 2001 by Lars Dalgaard. He had the same approach like the Workday founders:

Pure cloud application

Accessable by all desktop and mobile devices

Extremly user friendly

The user interface of SuccessFactors is intuitive like the Workday solution and well designed for all mobile interfaces. The big advantage of Successfactors compared to Workday is the modular structure. Your organisation could start with SuccessFactors performance management and the core HR data are staying for example with PeopleSoft. It is not required to move the Core HR data to SuccessFactors.

Oracle was pushed by his competitors like Workday and Successfactors to move to the cloud. They still thought that the HR applications will stay on premise for a while. This attitude has dramatically changed and Oracle has delivered a huge package of HR applications to the Oracle HCM cloud.

And they did a excellent job. Oracle HCM cloud applications are intuitive, accessable on all desktop and mobile devices and supports and maintains local operations for more than 200 countries and territories. A big advantage for global companies.

The innovative vendors

Beside the big vendors exist many innovative organisations which are delivering applications and services which can improve the dialy HR business.

Applicants are not really happy if they have to fullfill huge surveys during the application process. They prefer to send the CV by email as an attachment. The recruiter would prefer a quick scan of the CV to compare the skills of the applicant with the requirements of the job offer. Here joins Textkernel the game. A CV extraction converts an unstructured CV or social media profile into a structured format that can be integrated into any HCM application and made it searchable. That eliminates a lot of manual work.

During an application process the interview phase is essential. Spark Hire is offering an online video interview tool. It's a cloud solution which offers video interviews with all devices at any time. The interview can be supported with attendant surveys. And a collaboration tool makes the results (inclusive the recorded interview) for the relevant audience.

For the annual review employees and managers have always to leave their comfort zone. First both sides have to think about the objectives and the proposed results of the last and the set the new goals for the coming year. That could be a proper solution when there are no changes during the year. But everybody knows that this comfortable period is history. We are living in a period of permanent changes. Objectives managers and employee agrre today can be obsolete next week. A cloud solution which supports the process of permanent changes is Betterworks. BettwerWorks allows your employees and managers to set the goals constantly. These goals and their progress are transparent across the organisation. Dashboards are making the progress visible. Managers can see easily (alos on mobile devices) what is on track or on risk.

More or less every week new impressive HCM solutions are coming on the market. And they are cloud solutions. The challenge is the integration with the existing infrastructure (on premise or/and cloud). And get your employees ready for the new opportunities.

What can I do for your organisation?

The items above are making it obvious that the procedure to find the best fitting HCM solution for your organisation is much more complex than in the past. The solution has to be

Mobile

Fitting to the HR strategy - now and in the future

User friendly

Secure

working together with other cloud or on premise solutions

and many additinal requirements

With my 15 years experience with Human Capital Management systems and the permanent reviewing of existing solutions I could be your consultant to find and implement the best fitting HCM solution for your HR business.

Please contact me for any further information.