HR Information Systems Buyer's Guide

Understanding the basics

HRIS systems can cover almost any human resources activity you can name, from recruiting and hiring, to benefits and payroll, to training and development. One of the challenges in choosing an HRIS is deciding what areas to address.

Knowing what pain points you want to solve is a good place to start. Is your HR team swamped with paperwork every open enrollment period? Can your employees easily find their benefits status, such as how many vacation days they have left? Are you able to hire the highly-qualified employees you need? Take some time to review your current HR practices and answer these types of questions before you start talking to HRIS vendors.

Scope
Think about how you want to enhance your HR activities, as well. You may want an HRIS that simply makes your current process faster and easier: one that allows employee self-service to benefits, automates applicant tracking, and handles payroll processing, for example. While these benefits are significant, they're mostly improvements to your existing business processes.

The alternative is to integrate an HRIS that can help make HR a more strategic part of organization. For example, you can incorporate new HR activities, such as talent management, succession planning, and online applications.

Make sure that you're basing this decision on what's best for your business, not what some software vendor tells you. Almost all HRISes are expandable over time, so the best approach may be to tackle administrative issues first, then add more strategic modules later.

Compliance issues
Preparing for an HRIS purchase should also involve a thorough investigation of the record-keeping and reporting regulations that apply to your industry. HR departments face a maze of compliance issues, from basics like EEO and ADA that apply to every U.S. business, to more specific laws and regulations from OSHA to HIPAA to SAS 70 to ISO 9000. International standards, such as European Safe Harbor requirements, add to the confusion.

No HRIS can suddenly bring you into compliance with all of these regulations, as many of them focus on processes, not just technology. Instead, a robust HRIS provides the central data repository and reporting capabilities to allow you to get there.

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