Gone are the days when you could go to the book-store and get an HR application suitable to your company. Or at least it should be or will be, pending a couple of factors. If you are in a multi-national company, centralisation effectively removes the chance that a single application can suit your requirements. The complexity of cross-border operations is something even the first tier solution providers are struggling with. And of course, some industries or verticals are simply too complex in themselves.
Most HR practitioners are sharp enough to understand that something installed off a CD can't possibly suit a complex and ever-changing scenario. Such companies almost exclusively need to look at the first and second tier solutions. Historically, second tier providers have not had the adequate geographical reach to deploy and support such projects, even if they did have the right solutions to offer. So at the end of the day, companies have to choose between the highest cost option or nothing at all. Ongoing costs of this choice could usually be managed, as change happens ad hoc.
The boom in technology and global connectivity has expedited sharing of best practices and trends. This turns into constantly changing business processes, and purchasing more time from the solution provider to modify the software applications. It is self evident that this will not be sustainable for most businesses; or at least not cost effective.
With no cost effective alternative available, an influx of companies end up regressing back to MS-Office reliance and super-use.
Fortunately MS-Office offers enormous flexibility, which is exactly what has been lacking in most business applications until very recently.
For these reasons we suggest a shift in the focus of the buying process, from just functionality to overall flexibility. This flexibility should extend into areas such as system administration; modes of support; and level of automation possible.
Let's use a payroll application as example, as it is very country specific. Using most payrolls cross borders usually involves customisation for compliance. Quite a few players offer compliance in a few countries in the ASEAN region, but nobody claim compliance in more than half of them. And customisation is usually not a cheap affair.
So instead of looking for a provider that can cover "the most" of your requirements, the focus should be shifted towards looking for an application that can be configured for any country. If the user is given the ability to take control of more system administration, this reduces reliance on the solution provider and generally improves the ROI for the client.
In this process, we should also not forget that the solution itself is only half the criteria. The provider's ability to deploy and support should be given equal weight. This presents a topic for itself actually, but can be categorised. You can see it in terms of the technology being used in the process; the support options available; completeness of integrated offerings; or specialisation. A specialist is always better than a generalist - though often more expensive.
So if we had to summarise in few sentences, the application would be fairly easy to assess. The solution provider presents a bit more challenge. Fortunately for the buyers in this case, it can become obvious and self-evident fast. If the seller has little or no formal structure in place in the selling process, then most likely it will not look very impressive in the implementation and support stages either. One of the many terms for this is "practice as you preach"; somebody trying to sell improvements to your business processes should also have their own in order.
Jon Skare
Business development manager
GURANGO Software
www.gurango.com
