Millions Wasted On Systems Integration for HR Department

Some of the human resources managers for several major organizations have mentioned during a conference that they are concerned with how suppliers have been unable to create advanced systems that are compatible. There are well over a hundred HR systems available but the main concern is that these systems do not seem to work well with one another.

The head of HR-IT for ING, Rob Visser, has said, “I feel I am part of the vendor community, because a large amount of my budget is spent getting different vendors to work together.” The group head of HR technology at HSBC, Richard Mutter, has said, “As long as HR technology vendors treat the data model as a unique selling proposition, we are going to continually waste money trying to get those applications to integrate data.”

The main problem seems to be that separate systems do not work well with other systems and many changes need to be made to fix this issue. For example, one popular phone company faced several challenges with the system. The head o HR global services for Nokia says, “The two systems are not necessarily fully synched together.” The HR systems need to be integrated but it seems to be a bit of a challenge to get this to happen.

The vice presidents for Research at Gartner, Thomas Otter, says that being able to integrate the separate HR systems is comparable to placing a tail back onto a dog. When making this comparison, Otter has said, “Integration is easy if you know which is the god and which is the tail.” He also says, “But you run into problems if you try to switch two dogs together. The problem is that the vendors all think they are the dog.”

Strategies are being designed to help create a way for separate HR systems to become compatible with one another and those of competitive suppliers. Some of the users do not believe that the strategies designed will become a quick resolution for the issues at hand.

The head of CHR at Siemens, Jos Kayaerts, has said, “I don’t believe it will come in the next couple of years.” Kayaerts has also said, “I do not trust vendors to deliver this functionality. We as end users have to pay to integrate.”

Meanwhile, Mutter says, “If you buy compensation management point solution and you want to bring performance rating into it, typically that is not something the vendor wants to do.” Mutter also says, “Over the past four years, we have deployed a global learning management system, a global resource system, and global reward, help desk and mobility systems. We have got the number of HR systems down to 300 now. I would class that as an achievement.” While some will not expect a fast solution for the current problems with the HR systems, Mutter is hopeful that changes will be made shortly.