HR System Overview

According to independent HR industry expert, Denis Barnard, the top HR system features that every HR professional should demand from their HRMS are:

• Workflow
• Notifications
• Employee and Manager Service
• Reporting
• Organisation Charting

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Pricing for HR information systems range from £2 to £20 per employee per month, depending on the system you select, the modules you choose, your employee headcount and the underlying technology platform. On top of that, you may also need to budget for implementation, training, support, data storage, and updates.

One of the biggest factors influencing the cost of HR software is the underlying technology platform. Newer HR systems – those developed within the last decade – have been built to take full advantage of the cost benefits of modern Cloud computing approaches and infrastructures. Sometimes referred to as a multi-tenant architecture, these systems are cheaper to develop, deploy and update than their older cousins – a saving that is generally reflected in their pricing.

Another related, and significant cost, is the professional services fees charged by vendors to implement and update their systems. These costs are typically significantly higher for older HR systems, sometimes as much as three or four times the annual cost of the software. This is due to a large degree, to the initial design of the product and an expectation that customers are happy to pay for, and maintain, custom configurations.

With a multi-tenanted Software as a Service (SaaS) HR information system, all customers share the core HR code base, but their data and configurations are stored in separate, secure containers.

This differs from older single-tenant software which, while it may be hosted in the Cloud and delivered on a Software as a Service basis, requires that each customer has their own copy – or instance - of the core code base.

Multi-tenanted software is driving down costs and driving up service quality across every business sector. Benefits include:

• Lower development costs: with only one code base to maintain, vendors can focus all their energies on building out a single system, rather than having to maintain and update multiple instances.
• Lower implementation costs: to keep all clients on the same code base, client-specific customisations are no longer possible. Instead, multi-tenanted suppliers build their systems to enable rapid, easy configuration – often by the client with assistance from the supplier if required.
• Lower infrastructure costs: software specifically developed to run in today’s modern Cloud computing environments can take advantage of economies of scale, and features such as elastic load balancing and fail-over support. This allows suppliers to assure both system performance and cost-efficiency through optimal use of the infrastructure.
• Faster ROI: suppliers should be able to provision a new vanilla “instance” of their system virtually automatically, and will have tools to help with core data upload. Customers can be up and running with their new system in weeks, rather than months or years.
• Supplier accountability: when customers are on different versions of the software, an issue with the system only affects that one client. Where customers share a common code base, one incident will affect all customers. Multi-tenanted vendors therefore have a vested interested in designing their systems for maximum resilience, and in responding to issues much more quickly than would be the case if a single customer was affected.