What are the technology trends for 2011 that HR Managers need to consider as an input to their People Strategic Planning?

If kicking back, sharing the love, looking cooler and eating the right stuff sounds like you for 2011, then read on….

Coming off the back of a pretty tough year, more for less is still the philosophy for HR systems investment.  Vendors are hungry for business, and customers are positioned well to now leverage off some great technology.

The 4 big trends looming for 2011 and beyond are what I would describe as kicking back, sharing the love, looking cooler and eating the right stuff.

Kicking back - Hosted software (SaaS / Cloud)

Cloud Computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) is coming on in leaps and bounds.  The general principal here is that customers lease access to software rather than buying outright.  All you need is a good Internet connection and your good to go.  No software to install, no database servers to set-up and support.  Big advantages include not having to worry about all the technical issues that generally come with in-house software implementations. - Upgrades, software testing, and hardware infrastructure is all taken care of by the provider.

Hosted solutions also offer greater affordability with a pay-as-you-go subscription method, as opposed to an upfront capital payment.

The bean counters will love it as it helps spread the load.

On the down-side what you see is what you get, meaning you generally have no flexibility to customize. Vendors are able to offer more cost effective pricing because it’s a standardized product offering vs vendors trying to support multiple product versions.  If you are still in dial-up land forget it, as you’ll need good broadband speeds to utilize effectively.  The other biggie is around data security as your organisations data is stored off-site (and in some instances in another country).  Data security has vastly improved as proven by the on-line banking models, but still needs to be assessed in line with your organizations data security and privacy principals.

Sharing the love- Shared services

The opportunity for better collaboration and cost sharing will continue to be explored more in 2011 and more so within Government Service Organisations.  Health and Education are leading the charge with non-competing organizations looking to ‘pool the resources’ thereby removing unnecessary waste and duplication. To be successful a standardised approach needs to be adopted and the cultural / organizational fit needs to be right.

The big downside in establishing a shared services model for multiple organisations is that it is a highly complex process that often involves multiple stakeholders.  Generally there will be a ‘master and slaves relationship’ and for some slaves, a loss of flexibility and control needs to be balanced with what’s on offer.  We have seen some very successful shared services models on a smaller scale, on the other hand the ‘bigger than Ben Hur’ approach has provided some big disasters to boot as shown across the ditch.

Western Australia ‘OSS’ project – standardized payroll, HR, Financials –(90 agencies) now three times over budget (now $210 Million) and 3 years late!

Looking cooler - Web / mobile Apps technology

Information on the go from anywhere is now an expectation of today’s worker.  Staff are no longer confined to physical office networks and mobile / remote working is taking more prevalence. Mobile devices are now operating like micro computers with staff and managers expecting to have a connection to business information 24/7 via mobile tools such as iphones, ipads, blackberry’sand Google android devices.

What does this mean for HR technology? Simply, more and more ‘mobile business applications’ will be designed to compliment existing desk-top applications and we will now expect to see on the horizon the ability to access web based portals and self service kiosks via mobile devices with staff interacting with their iphone as they would a desktop portal to apply for leave, check payroll payment details, enter timesheet hours etc.

You take the office with you.

Eating the right stuff – information appetite

HR and Payroll systems have historically underwhelmed the average punter with their information reporting capability.  There will be an increasing movement from the frustrated HR information consumers to get more useful information out of their systems. HR analytics and metrics to better support strategic workforce planning will continue in demand and vendors are finally recognizing (and getting it) that these are important needs to deliver on.

Improvements and innovations are already being seen with Dashboard reporting being served up via web interfaces.  2011 will bring better integration with third party reporting products to mine HR data and hopefully the often aggrieved and suppressed HR Manager will finally start to receive quality information (not just transaction based) from their HR and Payroll systems.

So if you were one to ponder a new years resolution but fail to follow through, then consider kicking back more this year and let others do the hard yakka, adopt a share the love philosophy where the opportunity (and the right partner) presents themselves, look for the cool tools that optimize worker performance and finally, a diet of good information will see you looking sharp, fit, and healthy for 2011 and beyond.