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 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.