I don’t know if we’re fully recovered from the HR technology Conference, but as of six o’clock last night my expense report is finally done! So, I’m going to call that the marker of recovery, particularly because surviving our expense reporting process is a merit badge in and of itself.
I think I could pass a basket around the floor and collect a huge offering to bribe a Concur rep to come calling on Lockton, but I know there’s little hope for a change right now. Alas, perhaps we should re-frame this as this strategic decision: if we daily experience the worst HRIS systems out there, we can better commiserate with our clients!
My particular frustrations in putting my reports together got me thinking about how software is constructed, and I thought I’d share with you the way we think about software architecture and perhaps use this as an opportunity to talk about HR Technology in general.
A very common way we use to illustrate software is a three-tier architecture. My IT counterparts know that the true software “stack” is considerably more complicated, but for our discussions, a simplified three-tier model works best.
User Interface: this is the most visible portion of the software for end-users. In fact 80% of our team’s “Ease-of-Use” Critical Factor evaluation is user interface driven. After all, what good is a system if the users get frustrated and confused or don’t understand how to use it? This is what Apple has done so well with their products. The first computer that I ever worked with (just to date myself, it was an IBM PC 5150 without a hard drive!) came with multiple three-ring binders of operating instructions. Nowadays, there seems to be a challenge to design a system so easy to use that all documentation is irrelevant.
Business software will likely never get to this level of intuitiveness, but we see some vendors really making large strides. In the Performance Management or Compensation space and especially with Benefits Administration, this is absolutely critical. After all, employees typically only visit an open enrollment session once a year for likely less than 30 minutes. There just simply isn’t time enough for extensive training. The scary thing is that an employee’s decisions during open enrollment may be the biggest financial decision they make for their family during the year, unless they happen to also be buying a house or a car.
The user interface tier is the easiest for our employer clients to evaluate. They can see how well a system can tailor to their culture during a system demo or by talking to other companies. The important questions to ask include: How easy is it for us to configure the system the way we wanted to look? Is extensive training required to use the system? What do I have to rely on my service provider for and what am I able to do myself? Other considerations include: multilingual, decision-support and ease of reporting for infrequent users or executives.
Database: I’m going to skip to the bottom of the tier stack and talk about the other end of the system next. The database is simply where and how the data is stored and organized. There’s been a lot of transformation over the last 10 years as vendors integrate separate data stores to form a comprehensive HR technology database. ADP’s Workforce Now customers are going through an upgrade cycle to version 5.0, where there’s truly an integrated database. A lot of their clients on the older 2.0 version are working from a non-integrated platform. Most of the “Swiss Army” systems (all-in-one products) that house HR, payroll, benefits and time information are now integrated─ although this hasn’t been the case until recently. Often the systems have been cobbled together by the parent vendor as they buy different point solutions to fold into their comprehensive structure, so there’s a lag as that integration effort happens. This is most likely where a vendor has grown their product scope through acquisition (ADP) as opposed to developing them internally (Ultimate Software, Ceridian.)
On our team, we actually have a high sensitivity to the word “integration.” A lot of brochures overpromise around this software tier. “Integrated” gets thrown around by vendors way more often than it is actually deserved. If data is in separate databases then it is “interfaced,” not integrated. Where this really matters is in the ease of reporting. Complex reporting requiring payroll, benefits and time data ─ such as that required by the Affordable Care Act to actively manage a workforce ─ is a nightmare if the data is spread across multiple databases or, even worse, multiple vendors’ systems. We will tackle this topic a little deeper in future posts.
Business Logic: the middle layer is the true engine of the system. Everything that is displayed in the user interface is calculated or rendered in the business logic layer. All calls to the database layer for reporting of data are generated by the business logic tier. In addition, most of the security is managed here, although the best systems have security at all layers.
This is actually the hardest layer for our employer clients to evaluate and ─ in our experience ─ the layer where there is the most differentiation among the vendor options. Unlike the user interface that they can see or the database layer that is easier to understand, the business logic layer is that black box where the magic happens. Most of our annual vendor research is focused on the business logic tier. We want to see proof that the system can accurately handle dynamic workflow, complex reporting and secure access to data before we even mention a vendor in front of a client.
This is the layer that killed the old ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. Too many firms heavily customized their ERP’s and client-server solutions so that future upgrades were incredibly difficult. That’s the dangerous lure of the business logic tier: we can use it to personalize your system as much as we want, but we always have to have an eye towards future upgrades and uses. The move towards Saas (Software as a Service) is a direct reaction to the frustrations experienced with the business logic layer.
So, you may be asking yourself: which of the three tiers is destroying my zen when completing my expense reports? I hate to say it, but all three! We have a trifecta of terror. The database lookup calls take so long the system logs out, the user interface will only render in Internet Explorer (not Chrome) and the business logic layer couldn’t add 3+3 and get the same answer twice in a row. Okay, that last snipe is me blowing off some steam. But if you saw how many clicks, screens and lookups I have to touch, you would agree that a much simpler process must exist.
Well thought out software enables efficient business. As a manager, I’m only as good as the tools I have to run my team. If I can’t get to the data, I can’t make good decisions. If I end up using workarounds, or having approach avoidance to required tasks, then my effectiveness is throttled. This is a passion that is shared among our team. We know there are good systems out there, and if we can help our employer clients find the best system for them then we’ve made the world a little bit of a better place.