Looking to buy and HCM solution? Read our take on the top three features to look for in a modern HCM solution
HR leaders today are faced with a unique challenge – that of driving business growth while optimizing costs. Add to that the shortage of talent across key industries, a tight labor market, and the growth of the gig economy. While digitization has been underway in HR for some time now, HR is yet to catch up to its other business counterparts such as finance, marketing, and IT.
In the face of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), HR leaders need complete and clear visibility into how the function is contributing to business growth. And that is exactly where technology can help. As technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning, make inroads into the world of HR, leaders today have the opportunity to tap into these smart systems and build the HR function of tomorrow.
By automating repetitive, high-volume tasks, AI and ML can help HR departments and teams add more value to processes, talent management, and the business.
Human Capital Management in 2019: How Smart HCM is Driving HR Transformation
While HCM solutions aren’t exactly new to the world of human capital management, they certainly have the potential to drive HR’s transition from a transactional function to a more strategic function. One of the major benefits of embracing human capital management (HCM) software is its ability to record and consolidate data from across the HR spectrum. This data includes HR data that is collected from various business touchpoints, employee touchpoints, candidate touchpoints, and lastly, from external agencies.
The enormous value of HR data today can be attributed to the increasing need for business leaders to make data-informed choices. As HCM solutions become more intelligent and advanced, this data can be easily manipulated to get the most elusive of answers about HR’s direct impact on the business bottom line.
While data lays the foundation of modern HCM solutions, it is in reality, just a means to an end. The end is improved business performance. So, whether you’re a first-time buyer or are looking to upgrade your current HR technology stack, it is essential that you understand the key features you need to look out for in an HCM solution.
3 Essential Features to Look for in an HCM Solution
AI, Machine Learning, and Data Analytics
What do all intelligent technologies have in common? They all rely on massive amounts of data to make recommendations and predict outcomes. A robust HCM solution will help HR teams consolidate and centralize all data from across the organization into a single software solution. As mentioned in the section above, this data then becomes the foundation for advanced HCM capabilities such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics. As organizations look to solving talent challenges of tomorrow, today, AI, ML, and analytics can help HR leaders predict future talent needs, improve productivity, and boost the employee experience. Think virtual assistants, data dashboards, and predictive analytics.
Core HR Automation
While payroll, benefits, onboarding, and compliance may not seem as prime areas for innovation, they play a crucial role in employee engagement and defining the employee experience. HCM software that automates payroll, compliance, benefits and onboarding is essential to delivering a better employee experience and improving HR productivity. Imagine if your HCM solution served up personalized benefits recommendation to employees based on specific family and health needs. Such a solution could help organizations stand out as employers of choice amongst prospective candidates. Employee onboarding, for instance, is also a high-impact HR function that will determine how efficient and effective your new hires are. Similarly, payroll and compliance can be a big headache for HR teams in larger organizations with multiple employee types. How do you pay your consultants, full-time-employees, and contractors fairly and in accordance with state and federal laws? Worker classification is a key area of concern for most organizations having a large workforce that includes multiple employee types. Therefore, core HR automation is perhaps one of the most important features in a modern HCM solution.
Recruitment and Talent Management
Recruitment and talent management are [perhaps the first things you’d think of when evaluating an HCM solution. Nearly two decades after McKinsey consultants coined the term “war for talent,” we can safely say that the war is over, and talent has won. So, where does this leave HR professionals? Well, today HR professionals need to snag talent from where they live – social media. And the recruitment process begins way before an HR professional approaches a candidate with a job profile. Recruitment marketing, employer branding, and communication will play a decisive role in ensuring that candidates pick a certain employer over another. And HCM solutions that offer end-to-end recruitment capabilities can help recruitment and HR professionals tap into a wider pool of qualified candidates and hire better. Next, inbuilt talent and career management systems will help recruits get up to speed and take control over their careers. In a time when learning and career development opportunities are important considerations for employees when choosing a potential employer, talent management capabilities can enable HR teams to build a future-proof talent pipeline that will benefit the business in the long run.
The right HCM solution can transform your business by making it easier for your HR team to target the right people, make more data-driven decisions, and increase retention. However, choosing the best-fit HCM solution is not always easy, which is why we’ve created the Human Capital Management Interactive Buyer’s Guide to help you make the decision. Our buyer’s guide features an extensive list of capabilities you need to look for in HCM solutions, vendor profiles, pricing models, and our proprietary TechFunnel Best-of-Tech grid that objectively evaluates each HCM solution on the basis of price, feature-richness, and vendor support.
How are you leveraging your HR technology stack to build the people function of tomorrow?
