by Michael Krupa on April 20, 2010
Guess what? The rumor on the street is that HR leads the industry in using the Software As A Service (SaaS) delivery model. Surveys say that customers still prefer best-of-breed solutions over integrated solutions so that means more HR applications instead of less. Guess what also is true about many of these SaaS applications? They still use flat files as the main vehicle to shuttle information into and out of the application. In this model the customer is still required to develop an interface to the SaaS vendor. Wait, what? As a customer you still have to do custom development even though you are using a SaaS application.
There are several other more state of the art options such as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) or SOAP messaging. I don’t know about you but when an employee gets hired into my core HR system, I would love to have the employee information zip over to my SaaS based Learning Management System within a couple seconds instead of sometime that evening when the flat file interface gets run. When I push the button to fill a requisition in my recruiting application, wouldn’t it be great to have the new hire in my core HR system right away. Sorry SaaS Recruiting vendor, sending me XML files via FTP multiple times a day doesn’t count.
All is not lost fortunately. The HR SaaS application vendors are starting to incorporate messaging or ESBs into their offering. The most prominent example of this is Workday purchasing ESB vendor Cape Clear back in February of 2008. Since then Workday has embedded Cape Clear into their application to allow end users to create their own real-time inbound and outbound interfaces.
For those other SaaS vendors who are still stuck in the flat file interface, you better get it together soon. We are wising up and will be requiring state of the art real-time interfaces in our vendor selection criteria.
by Michael Krupa on March 17, 2010
On episode 45 of the Bill Kutik Radio show, Bill Kutik interviewed Jason Averbook and Jason Corsello regarding the HR year past and coming up. During the show the topic turned technical and Bill Kutik brought up the topic of whether SaaS will become the dominant delivery method for HR applications. In answering the question, Jason Averbook discussed the myth that you do not need IT help when implementing SaaS application. Spot on commentary by Jason until he says:
Software as a Service requires just as much IT support as any of these other solutions. It’s a different kind of IT support, a different skill set.
Sorry Jason but I am going to have to disagree with you on this point. SaaS applications do not require as much IT support as on-premise solutions. Let take a look at the typical IT tasks for supporting on premise vendor application and note the tasks that are also needed for SaaS applications:
| IT Task (performed by customer) |
On Premise |
SaaS |
| Perform capacity planning for new servers in company datacenter to host on premise software |
X |
|
| Purchase and install servers in Datacenter (install operating system, power, networking, monitoring, fail over, disaster recovery, security) |
X |
|
| Install application on servers |
X |
|
| Install database software, load database and manage ongoing database needs (space, performance) |
X |
|
| Customize application per business processes |
X |
|
| Create inbound and outbound interfaces |
X |
X |
| Apply application Tax updates, New features and patches |
X |
|
| Apply technology upgrade and patches |
X |
|
| Test tax update, new features and patches |
X |
X |
| Work with IT Change Management organization to implement changes into Production |
X |
|
My experience with SaaS applications show that you no longer need IT Datacenter support, Database Administration support, Application Infrastructure support and Application Development support (with the exception of interfaces). Poof. Gone. No longer needed. Depending on the number of resources either partially or fully engaged to support your on-premise application, this could be a sizable reduction in the resources needed as you shift to SaaS.
Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment and let me know.
by Michael Krupa on February 1, 2010
One of our top notch HR Bloggers and HR Technology instructor at RIT, Steve Boese, asked the HR blogosphere if we would host some guest blogs for his students. I raised my virtual hand as fast as I could and I sure am glad as one of Steve’s students sent me a fabulous guest post.
Today I am hosting a guest post from RJ Nicolais. RJ is just getting into the Twitter thing so if everyone could please follow him and give him encouragement to update his BIO and avatar and maybe add a couple more tweets, that would be great. I don’t want to embarrass RJ by mentioning all the wonderful things he said about my blog but lets just say he will go far in life if he keeps up the compliments. RJ and I share some similar thoughts about HR and technology and all kidding aside, please give RJ your full attention for this great post about being afraid of change.
______________________________________________________
To Change or Not to Change?
I’ve worked at several different organizations throughout my career in human resources and have noticed that they all have one thing in common: they are afraid of change. Not just any change, but a special kind of change. As HR professionals, we are supposed to be the “champions of change” and yet have difficulty changing ourselves. We can take on wellness initiatives and change whole benefit structures (not to mention that we shoulder the responsibility for broader company culture shifts) but when it comes to technology we’re just plain frightened. I would have used another colloquialism to tell you how I feel about it but that would be inappropriate.
The rate at which “technology” changes and evolves is totally insane – but that is the nature of the beast. You can learn to accept it and embrace those changes or you can choose to resist and get left the in the proverbial dust. I should probably tell you that I don’t think I’m really frightened, so I make that correction to the statement I made above. There are those of us who truly embrace technology changes and get downright excited about them. So we demo software and the newest (SaaS) solution for HR and we start to drool thinking about how much we can accomplish in so little time. We may even start to sweat a little when we see the pretty interface we get to look at every day.
Then we talk to our bosses about it and our dreams are shattered.
“It’s too expensive.” “There is too much at stake in a change.” “It’s just not possible this year – maybe next year we can talk about it.” Or, my all-time favorite: “What we have now works just fine.” Those are all valid answers to valid fears. I think that we need to get past those fears. HR needs to spend the money to get the right solution at the right time. Get the product that will be the most use to the company right now when growing the business is more important than ever.
Trying to work within the constructs of old software that doesn’t support the business any longer isn’t productive. Excel isn’t a means to an end. That is what scares me – outdated software and massive Excel spreadsheets. It’s the stuff nightmares are made of.
If I have not sold you on attending the HR Technology Conference & Expo by my witty Old Spice satire then you should know that the HR Technology Conference & Expo is THE HR Technology conference to attend. Each year the conference has a shootout session where multiple vendors demo their live software to a scripted scenario. The shootout has been so successful that this year there will be four separate shootout sessions with only 2 vendors per session. I’ll be hosting one of the shoot out sessions this year so how better to spend your money except to come see me live and in person as sheriff making sure the shootout vendors stick to the rules.