I had the opportunity to spend the day today with an organization that has fully bought into a ERP HR product that would fulfill all of their HR and talent management needs if implemented and deployed to meet their needs. Just like many of the customers and community members that Knowledge Infusion works with, the question that comes up over and over again is, is this the product we should use since we already own it and are paying maintenance on it? The answer - IT DEPENDS....on what you might ask? Here are 5 key areas.
- What kind of internal support the organization has for the software it already owns. Deploying any software solution requires a great deal of support both from a HR functional standpoint as well as from a IT standpoint. If the organization either DOES NOT have this skillset in-house or it continues a trend in IT that it will only focus on areas of the business in 2010 that give it a "competitive advantage"; this raises a big red flag as to whether a successful deployment can be had.
- What functionality is already deployed within the HR function using "best of breed" software and is the function willing to replace its existing solutions with the solution from the ERP vendor. This is a major question as it becomes necessary to look at what portions of a complete ERP HR solution will a company deploy, If the answer is only Core HR since it is already outsourcing payroll, benefits and many other functions; is a full-blown ERP truly needed as a system of record?
- What level of integration is needed between HR data and other applications within the enterprise. While we aspouse the fact that HR should be a single source of the truth and data should not be "re-entered" anywhere else in the enterprise, in reality, this is a vision that not many enterprise IT organizations share with HR in todays world. What are the true integration points? Is a "integration" needed or will an "interface" suffice? Are the systems we are looking to "integrate" to also run by the ERP vendor in house? Each of these is important and has a weight when making this decision.
- A simple answer from many is "we are already paying for this, so why would we not use what we already own?". The fact of the matter is what you are paying for maintenance is likely only one-fifth to one-eighth of the total cost of ownership after deployment, change management and ongoing upgrade maintenance. It very well might make sense to use what you "already own". But you must understand that even though you already "own" the software, this cost is minimal compared to what it will take to implement, maintain and deploy the solution.
- Is the vision of HR/Enterprise from the standpoint of reporting and analytics (Workforce Information Management) supported by the ERP application already owned? Will we build all integrations back to the ERP HR solution? Do we have a data warehouse in place that means we do not need to the ERP HR application to be a overall data store for all information? Is there "pre-built" integration between the HR application and the other components fo the ERP that actually integrate the way you need them to in order to meet your reporting needs?
There are many areas that I did not discuss here such as overall usability, ongoing support to maintain the applications as well as the overall vendor vision and committment to the HR and talent management space.
What is most important to take away from this read is that the answer is NO, just because you own software does not mean it is the software you should deploy. It very well might be the right fit, and in that case, great and you will more than likely be successful. If it is not the right fit, and you go ahead with deployment anyway, you will find yourself spending a great deal of time, money and resources that will more than likely fail and result in some form of "re-implementation" in a very short timeframe.
These decisions have cost many their jobs over time. Be sure to ask yourself these questions and more before making this large decision.
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