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