Has your organisation invested in a digital HR system yet? Business analysts, heads of finance, IT directors – plenty of organisational stakeholders beyond the head of HR can have good reason for wanting an HR system. Ultimately, however, you need to put together a business case for the person at the head of the table. Here are five solid reasons that could persuade your MD to try out a new HR platform.
1. Savings
All managing directors keep a sharp eye on their organisation’s costs – both direct financial costs, and broader resource costs. After all, costs directly affect the business bottom line.
An integrated HR system unites multiple different functions, from staff training and development, to the mechanisms for booking holidays, to submitting time sheets and expenses, to managing recruitment. This not only saves time and therefore money directly; it also drastically reduces incidents of duplication and manual error, which saves further time and money indirectly.
2. Intelligence
All MDs want to feel confident that they are making the right strategic decisions for their business, which means they want to feel confident that they have access to comprehensive and accurate business intelligence. A digital HR system provides them with a single source of that intelligence in relation to the organisation’s workforce. From the performance of individual staff members, teams or departments, through to the time spent on different projects, through to the impact of particular training and development initiatives, HR software can provide granular insight into a wide range of valuable business areas.
Furthermore, by integrating the HR system with other business software such as those used in finance and accounting, an even more enhanced foundation can be developed for making smart, informed management decisions.
3. Productivity
Productivity is a crucial goal of all organisations, and HR systems can improve it in myriad ways. Clearly, the HR department in itself will be made more productive with the introduction of greater automation and process consolidation. But the software can also make individual staff members across the business more productive, by providing them with a self-service option for tasks like submitting timesheets. And, by providing insight into the time spent on different tasks by different departments, or the costs of training and recruitment in different teams, an HR system can enable more intelligent strategies for improving the productivity of those departments, teams and projects.
4. Scalability
Thanks to innovations in cloud-based and open-source HR applications, such a system can now be as stretchy and scalable as the business itself. There is no need to agonise over whether to purchase something far larger than your current needs; instead, a system can be selected which fits your requirements today, and can scale seamlessly as your business grows.
5. Talent
Perhaps more importantly than anything else, it is worth dwelling on the core goal of any HR system – attracting and retaining the best talent. From smoothing and streamlining the recruitment and candidate assessment process, to making it easier to track employee performance and therefore set measurable goals which help staff members to improve and develop their own careers, the right HR system will offer a truly end-to-end means of maximising your organisation’s most important resource – its people. Surely a tempting proposition for any managing director.
Want to put together a business case for an HR system in your own organisation? Get in touch with Smart IT today.
Five reasons an HR system will keep your MD happy