Self Service HR Automation gives your organization much more than surprisingly quick Return On Investment (ROI)

Traditionally automation of HR and Payroll are seen by organizations as a necessarily evil, an investment that has to be done from a statutory compliance perspective, or to ensure that payroll occurs on time. This was true, primarily because HR & Payroll applications were used only by HR and Payroll personnel as a back office operation. This situation changes drastically when HR Automation is made self service. Employees directly accessing HR self service systems gives organizations oodles of benefits and with it surprisingly quick ROI. A back of the envelope calculation here shows ROI in two months!

Of all the benefits the most important one is time saved by employees. Detailed below are many functions that are present in good self service HR products like ours (KServeHRMS) which employees can access without having to meet the HR function, saving them considerable time

• Leave request, cancellation, modification
• View Payslips
• Update address and personal details
• View bulletins
• Make claims
• Request for infrastructure or other support
• Update performance appraisals
• Make a complaint
• Submit a HR request (any other HR form)
• Make declarations on Income Tax
• Check your tax liabilities to optimize tax

 It is not just the time for making the request, but also the time taken to meet supervisors, wait for appointments, and go back and forth to verify balances before the approval is obtained. Now, for each of the above, consider also of the time saved by the supervisor in approving, rejecting or clarifying these requests. In addition, include the time saved by HR, Admin and Payroll personnel is automatically getting reports for all these automated processes.

Let us make the following assumptions to calculate ROI for an Indian context.

               

• These ‘click of a mouse function’ saves  a conservative 5 minutes of time for every employee in a day which is about 1% of an employees time (it will be much more for employees on the move)
• Let us assume the cost of every employee to the company (salaries plus overheads) is on average Rs. 50,000/-
• The savings per employee therefore is around 500 Rs per month (1%) or Rs 6000 per year.
• For 500 employees the savings is 2.5 lakhs per month or 30 lakhs per year

If this company spends 500,000/- on employee self service software for its 500 employees, the ROI will be obtained in 2 months after the system is operational. In advanced countries where salaries are higher, ROI is even better, but this is offset by higher software costs. The time for ROI can still be the same in any country.

Consider also the intangible benefits to the company due to employee satisfaction and brand building.

• Transparency in obtaining standard services
• Not having to stand in a queue to meet supervisors for approvals
• Immediate access to information like payslips, leave balances, IT dues enabling better decision making

The next argument is in terms of risk of success. The risk of success can easily be mitigated by verifying the past track record of the provider,  and if required choosing a SaaS model where the investment can be paid installments. There should be no reason for any organization with more than 200 employees not to use self service HR systems, especially if your employees are highly paid.

It is good to see many organizations realizing this and investing in a system.

 

At Kallos Solutions and KServeHRMS (www.KServeHRMS.com) it is our honor, and pleasure to have made these benefits accrue to many organizations so far.

Employee Life Cycle Management: The Center piece of a good HRMS/HRIS

Do you recall the days when every employee had a physical file? A quick glance at that file would give you a rich source of information about when the employee joined, when he or she was confirmed, promotions, transfers, increments, commendation letters, termination letters and much more. The only problem was that if you wanted to know how many promotions were given in a year, you would have to go through all employee files to get that information. If the files where maintained in another location, if would mean asking someone there for search it for you. It is great that HRMS software available now can make life simpler, and allow HR to manage more employees easily.

You would expect that any HR and Payroll system would therefore include an Employee Life Cycle recording and reporting feature in their product. Yet there are numerous products without this feature. In the rush to ensure that an employee database exists and payroll can be processed, the availability of an online recording system of life cycle events as and when they occur is missed out. And when that is missed out, the wheels of the HRMS software goes missing. Soon the system degenerates to inaccurate data, delayed information to payroll and other complications. Just how important this piece is can be judged by how many other modules are impacted because of the presence of a life cycle management module. Whenever an Employee Life Cycle event occur, the following occurs too.

• The employee database becomes uptodate when a life cycle event occurs. Any confirmation, promotion, transfer, or termination automatically updates the employee database.
• Most life cycle events causes a change in remuneration and updates payroll automatically.
• Any time a life cycle event takes place, an equivalent letter needs to be printed out, formally conveying to the employee that the event has occurred and the date from which the event becomes effective.
• The impact on remuneration has an immediate impact on benefits like PF and ESI applicable to the employee, and the statutory reporting related to these benefits
• The impact of remuneration also has an impact on income tax calculations and deductions
• Leave policies may become different as an employee moves location, becomes confirmed, or changes grade
• A movement of location, office, office or department has an impact on related HR activities like performance appraisals and training
• A retrospective life cycle event can also occur (e.g. a promotion with retrospective effect), which in turn affects all of the above, also with retrospective effect, and calculation of arrears
• The resulting values of most HR reports change as and when a life cycle event happens

Clearly, life cycle management is the heart of any HR system. Rethink the capability of your HRMS/ HRIS system if you don’t have this capability.

At KServeHRMS Employee Life cycle is a key module in the system. All the above features and much more exists.

For more information visit www.KServeHRMS.com

Can your HRMS/ HRIS pass this pressure test?

Organizations are realizing that winning the war for talent, is the key to business success, and winning that war for talent requires Automated HR Systems. However, it is not enough to pick a well known product, but rather subject your HRMS provider with a ‘pressure test’ that is relevant for your organization and for Indian conditions. Given below are some pressure test features and capabilities that you can ask for.

• Can you handle an extreme situation where an employee receives a promotion, an increment, and a transfer with retrospective effect a few months back, and also pay the arrears for these changes this month, and make sure that while doing so all the PF, ESI, Income Tax, Professional Tax and Labour Welfare Fund related calculations are calculated correctly?
  
• Can the product be implemented in a modular manner, and yet work in an integrated fashion across all the HR areas like Employee Life Cycle Management, Payroll, Leave and Attendance, Income Tax, Performance Appraisals, Recruitment, Training, Employee Self Services, HR Administration, Travel etc.
  
• If you have many companies and locations and in every location there are many new joinees, separations, transfers, promotions and loss of pay due to leave, is it possible for all these locations to update/upload these transactions at the respective locations itself online, and process payroll & leave balances accurately – either at a central location or in a decentralized manner?
  
• Can employees themselves perform self service transactions like leave requests and approvals, infrastructure support, view bulletin boards, make complaints, record claims, make IT declarations, make projections of their tax liability based on declarations, past and expected future income for the financial year?
  
• In case there is a process that is unique and critical to your organization (e.g. recruitment using agents) will the vendor be willing to adapt the product to accommodate this change within reasonable costs and timeframes?
  
• Can you handle variable pay by uploading data from spreadsheets that are used to calculate those values?
  
• Has the product been used by at least 20 customers, and are these referenceable?
  
• Do you have a structured implementation methodology, with templates for quick loading of past data?
  
• Does the product have productivity tools for configuring new pay elements, report building, view building, alert definition, mail triggers, code definitions that you can define yourself?
  
• Are the consultants who visit you knowledgeable on HR and payroll specific processes relevant from India?
  
• If some processes are outsourced, can you give access to the external party over the internet, yet ensure that security is maintained and the outsourced party can do only what they are supposed to do?

Questions like these separate the wheat from the chaff, and go a long way to ensure that you have a chosen a product that can become the backbone of your HR services internally. Choose a good set of pressure test questions, and leverage them well during the evaluation.

KServeHRMS.com will of course comply with all of the above and many more such pressure test cases. We have invested over 30 person years of effort since 2003 to get the product to where it is today, and we will continue to invest so that we stay among the best HRMS products in the country.

This whitepaper will also be useful if you want to know more about how to plan to implement Integrated HRMS systems.

People Centric organizations alert. Your HRMS is more important that your ERP

People centric organizations like Engineering, Consulting, ITES, and other Professional Services firms are rely on skill, talent, processes, and experience to stay ahead in business. Conventionally such firms have given very little importance to its core operational systems which are people centric rather than material driven. Recruitment, time management, performance appraisals and other workforce management software are critical to success. Given its criticality, most organizations have resorted to spreadsheets, or localized applications to cater to all these needs. Beyond a certain critical size such localized systems breakdown. Typical signs of such breakdown occurs when each localized system gives a different picture about employees. A simple real life event of 3 employees leaving and 2 new employees joining in a month may lead to disruption. Unless all these details are updated separately in all systems, the results will be wrong. Interrelated processes between HR processes become complex and unmanageable.

In such organizations, the need for online HR services via self service automation also becomes critical. It is almost impossible for HR to provide individualized service to employees on their myriad needs. The problem with Employee Self Service and Employee Portals are that they need to be integrated real time to back office systems which are real time and accurate – otherwise wrong data may be given to employees, definitely something to be avoided.

Organizations that have already implemented such systems report major improvements in employee productivity, satisfaction, higher work hours and higher billing hours – all of which contribute directly to the bottom line. Ask any successful people centric organization with over 1000 employees and they will tell you how critical such systems are to their organizations. They will vouch for the fact that the huge investments in consulting and product licenses have paid off not only in returns but also in the ability to scale to new heights.
The good news is that ESS based integrated HRMS is now much more affordable and India ready now. KServeHRMS.com for instance has 10 integrated modules, provides employee self service for over 20 employee touch points, is fully statutory compliant for PF, ESI, Professional Tax, Income Tax and LWF, is available on the Cloud as well as in-premise situations and yet affordable for relatively smaller organizations to use. Organizations with employee sizes as low as 100 employees are using such systems.
For more information visit www.KServeHRMS.com. This whitepaper will also be useful if you want to know more about how to plan to implement Integrated HRMS systems.

Self Service Income Tax: Employees save more, Accounts save time

The responsibility of verifying personal and income based declarations, and calculating income tax is very cumbersome for most organizations, primarily because the interaction is personal and individualized. Income Tax payees are usually senior and middle management who are very demanding of their rights, knowing very well that good tax planning leads to direct savings. Unless automated in a self service mode, the amount of work involved for the accounts function is very high.This leads to high stress situations in the final months of the year when deductions usually go up and declarations come in at the last minute.

KServeHRMS has added an income tax module, with self service capability to its suite of products. This means that employees can give their declarations, and view their projections based on income and declarations made. KServe Payroll is integrated to the income tax module and hence recommended deductions can be posted to payroll. Actual pay and deductions are posted back to the tax module. Statutory reports related to Form 16 and Form 24 Q, with the breakup by employee can be taken out automatically. The module can be implemented individually also.

 

For more information on this module visit :

 

www.KServeHRMS.com/IndiaIncometax.html

The next thing in website design: The power of tiles and squares

Mobile and tablet user interface design is forcing conventional website designers to introspect. Form factors vary in PC’s, laptops, tablets, smartphones and regular phones. How does a website designer cater to all segments while designing the site?

The answer lies in the use of tiles, squares and largefonts.

Check out our site www.KServeHRMS.com before you proceed with the rest of the article.

• Squares are useful since they flex well in different form factors. Increases in length and breadth take place uniformly avoiding stretch
• Large fonts are useful since one could read the text in any device. Definitely a plus for those whose  eyesight is not perfect
• Tiles force brevity in a world where people scan through web pages in seconds

I don’t know if our site will earn awards from the creative world, but the design is definitely getting good reviews from our market. It was also fun creating it. 

Would love to get your feedback and views on such design.

PS – Am recording this in a blog because I have a feeling that many sites will follow suit and I hope that we are recognized as the ones that pioneered this form of design in June 2012!

A guide to decisions in automating HR & Payroll functions

A white paper I wrote, leveraging my 25 years of experience in Enterprise Applications (including HR Automation)

Synopsis

HR automation can range from simple spreadsheet based solutions to complex enterprise wide solutions that automate every single process of the HR function. The automation can also extend to employees and even sourcing partners using self service portals. This paper looks at the various levels of sophistication that organizations have typically automated within this wide spectrum, and articulates the benefits that occur when the organizations take leaps through these various levels of sophistication. Organizations can leverage this paper to identify their current level of automation and determine if the benefits associated with a level of sophistication warrants the investment return for the chosen investment leap.

Click here to download white paper on 'A guide to decisions in automating HR & Payroll Operations.

The next sensible transition in HRMS systems – SaaS & Cloud based Employee Portals plus Integrated HRMS

Having an integrated HR system with self service access to all employees is usually something only that big companies could afford to have. It was not just the question of having software in areas like Employee Life Cycle Management, Leave & Attendance, Payroll, Performance Appraisals, Training or Recruitment integrated into one integrated application – it also required data to be uptodate and online. Employees accessing the system would expect the system to be accurate, correct and usable for their operational needs.

The Cloud is changing that. Expensive software is now affordable and it can be bought on SaaS (Software as a Service) pay as you mode or you could buy the software for exclusive use. This enables smaller organizations to deploy Integrated Employee self service applications. This new generation of solutions are intrinsically designed for use on browsers and also for self learning and self implementation. Suitable implementation methodologies and upload data utilities will enable you to transition from older legacy applications to the latest very quickly. It is like moving from landlines directly to the latest smart phone or tablet without having to go through the intermediate stages. Employee and HR productivity go up significantly with the use of such systems.

At www.KServeHRMS.com we have made cloud based Employee Portals & Integrated HRMS a reality for many organizations. Being among the first to make available a web ready integrated HRMS product it allowed us to make the transition to the cloud and to employee portals fairly fast.

If you are evaluating such systems here are some overriding decision points you need to consider while looking for vendors

Is the solution ready for the web and the cloud? All other types of applications are going to be legacy soon
Are all the HRMS modules present and integrated. Without an integrated HRMS you will end up with duplicate work for each area, and also give a wrong picture to employees.
Is the software is easy to use and startup?. Employees and supervisors should intrinsically be able to use the application without much training.

For more information about our Employee Self Service products visit www.KServeHRMS.com or www.KServeOnline.com

Running your payroll on the web now makes far more sense - especially if you are an SME

Until recently it did not make sense running payroll on the web in India. One could get low cost applications to run locally on the PC, or one could outsource the work to numerous ‘consultants’ who would provide you services with respect to calculations, form preparation and filing. But there are some fundamental shifts occurring in web based payroll processing that would definitely warrant a relook at the way you are doing it.

1. Prices are now amazingly low – There are SaaS vendors out there who process payroll for as low as Rs. 2/- employee per month. In terms of comparison its even lower than the AMC charges of in-premise pc based products and possible one fourth the rates of what ‘consultants’ charge you.

2. They have become far more easy to operate – Web based providers focus on making it extremely easy for you to register and run the application on your own. Design is more like what you are used to in booking an airline ticket or buying something online. You now can allow your trusted hr and payroll executive to do the job on their own.

3. The benefits of Software as a Service (SaaS) kick in – SaaS gives you benefits of low rental costs of usage, avoiding the need to buy servers, operating systems, databases, security and antivirus, high speed lines. On the contrary prices of inpremise products are going up significantly as the cost of individually supporting each customer by visiting, updating and supporting versions is getting to costlier by the day.

4. Access from anywhere - You can now access the application from any browser based device from anywhere, just as you are used to logging into your bank account from anywhere. Users in multiple locations can update attendance and leave, payroll can be processed centrally and payslips printing or serving can be decentralized

5. HR comes free – Most good payroll SaaS providers give you a HR product to use free. Employee Self Service and other applications like reimbursements and performance management can be added on

6. Submit forms to statutory organizations directly – The day is not far when one can use the same software to file PF, ESI, Professional Tax, Income Tax directly from these systems. Most government agencies are enabling electronic submission.

Imagine a scenario where, changes in employee details like joinees, seperations, promotions and movements are done through the month, 5 remote locations upload their attendance\ leave spreadsheets on 31st, payroll is processed on 1st in 3 minutes, the bank is notified on the 1st, payslips are emailed to employees on 1st and the submissions to the government agencies are done automatically. This is a dream that can be achieved now.

KServeOnline HR and Payroll is doing just this. Visit http://www.KServeHRMS.com/SaaS.aspx

for more details. A free trial of 30 days enables you to see how user friendly it is. You can even run your first payroll yourself in 15 minutes if you have the data with you.

When HR software products dont fit your business, platform based solutions are the way to go

Some verticals like manufacturing are blessed to have products that fit their business processes to a high degree, and Enterprise Application products make a lot of sense for them. Similarly a standard HR or Financial applications make sense for smaller companies since business processes are common across organizations. One can leverage the best practices,economies of scale as well as ruggedization that products have undergone and gain from it.

However, if you are in a vertical where its rare to find products that fits your business or HR processes, or worse still if you are in a business where the operational processes keep changing, products can be dangerous for your business. Its common knowledge that if product fitment levels are low then you should avoid customizing the product since it can break down the architecture and become incredibly expensive to maintain.

But what are the options in front of such organizations? Custom solutions take too long. The answer lies in platform based solutions. In the past three to four years a number of scalable and rapid development platforms have appeared in the market. These allow organizations to quickly mash smaller applications meant for fulfilling a localized need. Force.com has been succesful in providing good extensions to salesforce.com. Longjump and Coghead are some other companies. These products would come under the category of PaaS.

Are these platforms good for mainstream applications on which enterprises run? The answer is yes, but one would need a Mainstream Platform as a Service (MPaaS - a term I coined for this) provider to do this. An MPaaS solution has a mainstream product, as well as a very rapid application development environment to enable customers leverage the core product for the backbone areas like HR or financials and the platform to deliver the unique processes that are operationally dynamic. While numerous vendors will promise to do this, the ones that can be truly classified as MPaaS are ones who

Have already delivered ERP class products to a market using the platform
Can deliver rugged and power packed modules as extensions in short timeframes
Can offer unique methodologies where customers can see what they are going to get for the unique processes very early in the development cycle.
Can build massive applications that span the Enterprise in short timeframes

At KServe (http://www.kserve.net/) we continue to focus on Mainstream PaaS. The link below points to a case study of a construction company that leveraged this approach when their product approach did not work out. An end to end solution was delivered this company for their operations in a years time.

http://www.kserve.net/pdf/KServe%20ERP%20enables%20Dodla%20Engineering%20go%20100%20percent%20%20online.pdf

We have also fine tuned a methodology to delivery such solutions to customers - and this link gives more details about its success.

http://www.kserve.net/Enterprise_KServe_Apps.html

In my next blog I will expand on the methodology and how it can revolutionize the way software is delivered worldwide.

Little HR developmental work possible without a good base HR and Payroll system

As a progressive HR person you want to do a lot of things for your company from a development perspective. However, once the number of employees in your company crosses a certain size, you cannot do many activities manually for sheer reasons of the effort involved. That is when you would have wished you had a computerized HR and Payroll system as a basic infrastructure. Some of development activities you will find difficult to do are

· Perform analysis on the profile/ demographics of employees
· Track the skills of employees and keep updating them when they get trained
· Performance Tracking at regular intervals
· Track the history of employees through their lifecycle in the company
· Salary Planning keeping in mind budgets available for increases
· Tax Planning/ optimization for employees
· Employee Self Service for Leave, Appraisal Management, Payslips, Benefit Balances etc.
· Achieve good multi-locational operations of HR processes without complications, delays and inaccuracies
· Track Loans and Advances provided to employees
· Keep track of Employees benefits paid and dues from respective agencies
· Recruit many people quickly with a good resume back of people you may need later

Don’t get caught on the wrong foot. Get a good HR and Payroll system in place. Be foresighted enough to buy a product that has many add on modules in advanced areas like Performance Management, Recruitment, Training, Resource Management, Self-Service etc. Buy a product that can work in a multi-locational basis preferably over your intranet and yet can be implemented in stages. At KServe we try our best to be a model HCM product (www.KServe.net/hcm/ www.Kserve.net/payrollhrod ) and meet all the above recommendations

Payroll/ PF& ESI (Benefits) processing OnDemand - Costs, Effort & Time cut drastically

Even if your company has only 20 employees, processing payroll is complex. Collection, aggregation and validation of the following is a laborious task
- Attendance
- Leave
- Employee Joining and Separation
- Employee Salary Changes
- One time payments
- Arrears
- Tax Relief impact
- Impact of Statutory Changes in the above
- Optimization in Tax

Validating it and then delivering it to
- Employees
- Benefits Providers
- Banks for payment
- Other statutory agencies

We eliminated most of this complexity by providing the following in KServe HR&Payroll OnDemand
- Hosted it on the internet in self service/ Software as a Service (SaaS) mode
- Made it affordable for even small companies to have an automated payroll with a small monthly fee
- Eliminated the need to buy infrastructure like hardware, operating systems and licensed software
- Made loading employees, salary structure and payroll loading a 2 step process using easy to use spreadsheets
- Provided direct access to all the key roles in the process i.e. the people responsible for validating all the above, even if they are in different locations
- Delivered the above in a form where it can be given directly to employees, Banks, Benefits providers and other statutory providers
- Provided a hosted HR system free along with the payroll

KServe Ondemand HR/Payroll is proven for the Indian environment with the payroll of thousands of employees already being processed.

For more information visit http://www.Kserve.net/payrollhrod.html

Check the prices out and find out how much costs, time and effort you can save compared to your current arrangement. You can register for a trial directly. This is the way payroll is going to be processed in the future and we expect the change to become a mass movement soon.

At KServe our commitment to keep delivering value to customers continues to be our motto

Translating Corporate Objectives to the operational appraisal system

Great plans and strategies finally boil down good execution. Strategic goals have to finally come down to a balanced performance scorecard that percolates down to tangible objectives and measures for individuals. Unclear operational objectives in individual minds lead to uneven results at all levels.

How? Break down the corporate balanced score card goals down to specific operational objectives and measures to individuals. Document these by setting the objectives right in the begining of the period, and at the end of the period evaluate every one. The appraisal can be self appraised, supervisor appraised and if you are advanced may be even a 360 degree one. But the process is important. It sets expectations, evaluates fairly and keeps a track record. It shows results and it is something every professional organization cannot live without.

Practical problem: How does one keep track of the objectives and measures of all employees, set them, get the results, obtain the comments and the ratings, and maintain a history of them.

Regular Solution: Store the results in your HR application.

World Class Solution : Serve your appraisals through a self service/ employee portal where the appraisal is routed to individuals and their supervisors. Each person fills in the appraisals based on the roles and the routing, completes the process. HR only needs to initiate the process and the rest gets done automatically.

Is it affordable? World class routing based self service appraisals are very expensive. We at K-Serve have been working on it for years so that finally Self Service based appraisal is no longer exotic - its the regular thing to do and it is affordable.
Visit us at http://www.blogger.com/www.KServe.net to know more.

HR Systems – are they at the right level of maturity?

A small 5 person organization may not need a HR/ Payroll system at all. A large manufacturing firm with 90% as blue collared workers may need a HR/ payroll system that is more operationally compliant. A professional consulting with hundreds of highly paid professionals may need a highly mature system with powerful online and self service systems. Of course there will be many shades in between.

Some of the primary triggers that drive maturity are

Number of employees – an obvious one
Importance of compliance – mandatory nature of compliance rules and documents related to pay, benefits, leave, training, internal movements etc.
Value of people – Are you a people centric organization and how much does your business model depend on people
Employee Churn – Are people leaving or moving continuously. HR has major responsibilities in such environments

If you are high on all these areas – get the best HR system – powerful features, best practices, high levels of productivity providing self service capability
If you are low on these get local HR system administered in the back office
If you are somewhere in between run an administration setup and provide self service/ kiosk / capability in high return areas like leave and attendance

KServeHCM products (www.KServe.net) are structured currently as three products based on this philosophy – Standard, Pro and Advanced. All three are web ready and hence ready for the future be it SaaS or even Cloud computing ready.

A last piece of advice – don’t buy a system that does not allow you to graduate to the next level easily when your organization needs it.

Without an underlying platform, a HR product will crumble

Take any good product and you will notice something - consistency across the board. The interface will be the same across

* User screens,
* Reports
* Alerts
* Help pickers
* Menu structures
* Login and navigation
* Text fonts

Look deeper under the hood and you will see consistency in smaller things like

* How to recognize mandatory fields and document identifiers
* What type of fields default and under what conditions
* How does one delete, modify or view a record
* What referential integrity checks should be done during deletion
* How can one export data or send trigger mails
* How are additional business rules or logic added

Many products are built without an underlying platform. However once customer and industry specific variations occur, it is almost impossible to keep adding to the product without affecting the underlying consistency and architecture. It is like building a house without a foundation. The wise man built his house on a rock - or in today's terms a good foundation. Take any product that has succeeded over a long period of time SAP, Oracle, Peoplesoft - all of them have a good foundation.

The KServe products (www.KServe.net) are all built on the same underlying platform. Take a look at CRM, HCM or our ERP products - they will have consistency and a uniform architecture. This is because we built a strong foundation. The foundation is proven across many customers, and so all our products are proven. You only have to verify if the process covered is relevant to your business and be sure that the application will stand the rigor of rugged usage by enterprise users.

Platform, software product, foundation, KServe

A good stress buster for HR & Payroll executives

Every HR department is usually stressed out at the end of a period. Leave statements to be finalized, attendance values to be tallied, payroll to be processed, benefits statements to be processed, statutory employee declarations, and numerous other aspects to be tied up.

So what are the usual stress busters? Choices are ..Automate it, outsource it or decentralize it.

* Automating it helps crunching numbers, but a lot of effort goes into avoiding the garbage in- garbage out syndrome.

* Outsource it - works well if you are willing to pay for it, and willing to work to give the data to the provider correctly.

* Decentralizing it by giving different HR executives responsibilities - works well if you have a lot of resources

Here is another way we recommend. Self service it. The employee enters the source data, the supervisor approves it and HR just reconciles the difficult issues if any. The self service HR application generates the rest of the statements automatically and delivers it to the employee. This by far is the most productive method with the least effort, highest output, greatest transparency and makes employees the happiest.

Easy choice? - well you still have to implement the right Self Service HR for your environment. At Kallos we are focusing on making KServe HCM the best among the available choices for employee self service. (www.KServe.net\hcm)

Employee Portals - Improving service levels and lowering HR executive to employee ratios

Every VP of HR asks this question. Do I really need so many executives to ensure that employees are satisfied. Can we provide good service without having to add more resources?

An Employee Portal may be the right answer. Until now such solutions were not so popular since a good percentage of employees needed to have access to a system for it to be successful. Now PC's on every desktop is almost a way of life. Even in manufacturing situations, an easily accessible kiosk is not expensive at all.

Just think about a typical HR transaction in a conventional HR environment for lets say a leave approval cycle.

An employee asks the executive for their leave eligibility and balance
Fills out the request form
Approaches the supervisor a couple of times before the supervisor approves it
The form is manually then submitted to the HR function
The HR executive enters the data in the HR application
Leave is processed at the end of the period

In a self service environment

The employee makes the leave application without a mistake - since the software validates the policy and the holidays
The alert on the supervisors login triggers him/her to approve it
At the end of the period the leave report is automatically available

The self service environment would involve probably one third the effort of the conventional application for the employee and the HR person. Add all the transactions for attendance, claims, benefit balances, IT and payroll queries etc. and one can immediately see the savings in effort for all the employee and the HR executives - and that directly translates to higher productivity for the company. In Employee portal environments, 500 employees being served well by one Executive is common. In non-automated environments the number could be between 50 and 200 depending on the complexity of the HR environment.

Employee portals provide ROI in months - if the right product and implementation is done right. Equally important is the fact that it brings transparency, equity, responsiveness and speed to the whole process.

And that is what we at Kallos intend that our KServe HCM software (http://www.kserve.net/hcm) suite does - To take human capital management beyond the use of the HR function and serve the employee well.

Why blog on KServe HCM?

As the founder of the company that brought out the K-Serve HCM Suite, there are two primary reasons for this blog.

Firstly, there is a need to bring out the details of the 'silent' revolution that is occurring in Human Resources centric Enterprise applications. The extension of the HR/Payroll product directly to its end users in the form of Employee Portals or Employee Self Service is making HR 'n' times more useful to organization compared to the earlier 'Ivory Tower' applications that was restricted for use only by the HR function. In addition, the inherent affordability of a new generation of HR solutions built on more robust and rapid development platforms is changing the landscape of such solutions.

I would also like to bring out our experiences in being a part of this revolution through our HCM suite 'K-Serve'. The joys of conceptualizing, developing, delivering and seeing constructive change in end user organizations brings satisfaction to all of us at Kallos - the company that brought out 'K-Serve' Enterprise products

I hope to highlight real world situations where HCM and Employee Portals can make a major difference, to dispel myths, to communicate HR solutions in a positive light, and yet be realistic in what it can do for your company.

Looking forward to your comments.

George Vettath
Founder, Kallos Solutions & the K-Serve range of Enterprise products
www.KServe.net/hcm