OrgPlus Succession Planning Webinar

Tuesday 31st August, 12:00pm

Join us for a quick overview and discussion of the new features of OrgPlus Enterprise Succession. We’re now fully up to speed and supporting this new technology, with implementations now live at client sites in Australia.

The potential of this software cannot be overstated:  It’s a very slick software solution which supports a streamlined succession planning process. The ramp up time is small indeed. For all Australian and New Zealand organisations missing a succession planning technique, this webinar is a must-see.

Register for the Webinar

OrgPlus Public Training, Brisbane and Auckland

Brisbane: Thursday 16th and Friday 17th September, all day

Auckland: Thursday 14th and Friday 15th October, all day

Invest a little time, and we’ll show you how to save a lot more. Public training is the cost-effective way to up-skill yourself on OrgPlus.

Remember, seats are strictly limited to 10 people per session to ensure the best learning environment. These sessions will be the last in their respective cities this year. Please be sure to register early so that you don’t miss your chance to attend.

Register for OrgPlus Public Training

OrgPlus User Group, Melbourne

Wednesday 22nd September, 4pm

Join us at the first ever Australian OrgPlus User Group and have a fun, productive afternoon, learn from and network with other active members of Australia’s growing OrgPlus community.

Hosted by Andrew Westerman at Jemena, this first user group promises to be a great afternoon to meet other OrgPlus users, discuss solutions for common challenges, hear real life case studies, and share ideas on how to use OrgPlus is new, creative and more efficient ways.

RSVP online

AHRI HR Tech Conference, Sydney

Thursday 14th October, all day

Are you prepared for the next technology wave? At the 2010 AHRI HR Technology Conference you’ll hear from experts on the innovations and applications that are driving this change, and the implications for HR professionals, IT people and senior management.

Navigo will be there, presenting on OrgPlus with Andrew Robb from UWS, and highlighting their use of organisational charts as a business intelligence tool. We will also be taking pre-registrations for the Australian HR Tech Report 2011.

Now in it’s second year the HR Tech Report is the only dedicated research report into Australian HR technology, and we’ll be there seeking input from the industry on which ways to expand.

Learn more about the conference

OrgPlus User Group, Sydney

Wednesday 27th October, all day

The second ever Australian OrgPlus user group will be held in Sydney on this date… Details are yet to be confirmed, but watch this space and we’ll have them for you as soon as they are released.

Today we released the Australian HR Tech Report 2010, the latest primary research into HR systems and technology in Australia, including the uptake and satisfaction with HRIS and HR systems, motivators and roadblocks for improvement.

We’ve conducted this research with the aim of giving a little something back to HR in Australia. Many of our customers helped us by submitting their responses to our HR tech survey – to them a huge a thank you.

The report is 40 pages long with commentary, conclusions and recommendations from Peter Forbes, our co-founder and chief HR technology expert. Analysis is divided by industry category and organisation size (in number of employees) to allow you to benchmark your HR organisation against those with similar requirements.

The report is free to download, and we encourage all of our customers and followers of this blog to help themselves to a free copy and see how they compare with their peers in Australian HR.

Download your free copy of the Australian HR Tech Report 2010.

Have you read the report already?

Let us know what you thought of it in the comments below:

It's rare to be happy with out of the box functionality.

It’s a rare occurrence when an organisation is happy with out of the box HRIS functionality.

During  implementation, it may be that HR/Payroll changed their practices to fit the features of the HRIS. But over the life of a system new information is required to be stored and processes change.  The HRIS will need to be customised to meet these requests.

Knowing the right way to approach customising and extending the functionality of your HRIS is critical as the downstream impacts can be expensive and time consuming.

Most organisations have learnt the perils of customising a core vendor product: expensive modifications that can only be performed by the vendor, re-doing the custom work to roll into the next release, or even worse, stuck on a version of the software unable to upgrade.

Only when there is no other alternative should you consider customising your core HRIS.

Another way of adding site specific features to your HRIS is to leverage off existing structures and create new functionality (screens, reports, transactions) that act as extensions not customisations.  Extensions, when done correctly, leave a lighter change footprint on your HRIS reducing the ongoing cost and effort required to look after more traditional customisations.

Here’s a couple of points to look out for when planning your next HRIS extension:

Look for current HRIS functionality

Are you sure the new feature the HR Director says she needs is not available in the system?  Make sure you read all the documentation you can lay hands on including user guides, release notes, whitepapers.

Talk to people in your user group, and check out any vendor forums.  Talk to other organisations in similar industries – chances are they have come across the same issue and already have developed a solution that you can use.

Leverage off current interfaces and data structures

The complexity of a customisation is impacted by the number of screens, business logic and storage objects required to enter, transact and store for the new piece of functionality. To reduce complexity, look at existing tables and functionality to find ways to hook off core functionality.

Examples:

• storing affiliates or contractor information in the employee and job tables creating new codes to distinguish them from salaried employees
• using the survey functionality in Employee Self Service to accommodate performance reviews of employees
• using flex/custom fields to store additional information rather then creating a new table – most HRIS have this functionality

Be sure to consider data volumes and the impact of storing your data in these existing structures as the system grows.

Planning HRIS customisations

Avoid hardcoding – Use codes and config data to keep the HRIS flexible

There seems to be a school of thought that because you’re developing a customisation it’s OK to hardcode that department or employee status code into your program.  Not only is this lazy design, but it prevents business users from having any configuration or control over the customisation.

Keep your customisation flexible and future proof by driving key features – employee applicability, department scope, trigger conditions etc – by leveraging off system codes and setup configuration (example/ codes, CON_DEF’s and code rules in the Alesco HRIS).

Create a framework for building and managing HRIS extensions

Consistent packaging and managing of customisations prevent common issues like moving between non-production and production, identifying customisations and re-applying patches for new releases of the software.

Use consistent naming scheme for your tables, views, screens and reports.  Consider using a prefix like your company name on your new objects.  Has the HRIS vendor provided a developer pack or customisation guidelines? Make sure you follow them.

Maintain a register of customisations and extensions listing the modules/programs affected and why it was developed.  The register comes in handy during upgrades to determine what impact your customisations have against the latest release and whether you still need it.

As organisations recognise the benefits in having the HRIS as the single source of record for employee data using Self Service as the delivery platform, it makes sense organisations will want to extend the capabilities of the HRIS.

Vendors are recognising the need for customers to extend the system and I think we will soon see an explosion of more frameworks, API’s, web services, business rule frameworks that allow more extensibility in HRIS – without the headaches and disadvantages of traditional customisations.

After the chaotic cutting of the latest recession, many employers are looking at workforce planning software to provide more stability in meeting both their short and long-term talent needs.

Read more in this great whitepaper, re-published with permission from Workforce Management.

Download the PDF