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Tuesday, January 1, 2013

New Year, New Post, New HRTech


It's that time of year again. In the coming days many of us will reassess personal and professional goals,  lament over prior year's resolutions not kept and swear to ourselves we're going to commit to those we've made for 2013. 

Maybe one of your 2012 resolutions was to make better use of your HRTech. Unfortunately, your day-to-day job probably put a wrinkle in any hopes you had of taking advantage of all the great technology you invested in. Or did you just wrap up a new hrtech purchase and are preparing to dive into the activation process? Maybe you just finished your implementation and have a 1/1 live date. 

Whether your hrtech is already well ingrained within your organization or your just starting out with a new system, here are a few hints to help you make the most of your technology investment in 2013.

Move beyond the core
For many of us, just making it through the first live check date is an important enough milestone. However, at some point during the selection process, you chose the solution because of the value added it provided outside of just managing employee information and processing payroll. Unfortunately, feature roll outs outside of the core functionality are typically reserved for later phases of the project and don't see the light of day for quite some time. Maybe it was the performance management module or succession planning functionality that really caught your eye during the vendor demos. Extending the capabilities of your hrtech by leveraging the talent management features included is a great way to help your organization gain efficiencies and get a leg up in the war for talent in the new year.

The more the merrier
Family and friends are finally packing up and leaving. You invited them into your home, whether just for the night or an extended stay,  to help celebrate the holidays and ring in the new year. However, just because the holidays are ending, doesn't mean we can't continue to extend that same hospitality into the new year. In this case, I'm referring to welcoming your existing or new hrtech into your corporate systems family. Your hrtech undoubtedly came with a slew of integration options and an ever expanding partner ecosystem that can further help solidify the value of your HR technology within the organization. Perhaps it's time to finally build that integration which will keep other corporate systems up to date with the most current employee data from the HRMS. Maybe your hrtech vendor has a new partnership with another provider whose solution you already use. Taking advantage of included functionality such as web services API's or a pre-packaged integration available via a partner relationship provides another opportunity to get the most from your hrtech in 2013.

Data is data, regardless of size
Data doesn't have to be big for it to be useful. All organizations, regardless of size or complexity, can leverage the data from their HRMS to gain valuable insight into their business. Of course your hrtech comes with hundreds of pre-delivered standard reports that you can not live without for day-to-day tasks. However, vendors have focused a lot of attention on delivering true analytic capabilities with features such as custom report authoring, dashboards and drill-down options. If you're not leveraging these tools you mine as well be running your business blind. Your people data holds the keys to important aspects of your organization such as employee retention, hiring practices and labor costs. If one of your hrtech resolutions for 2013 is to be more strategic and gain that all important "seat at the table," there's no better time than the present to start using the business intelligence tools delivered as part of your solution.

So, what will your #hrtech resolution be? What areas of your HRMS are you going to make better use of in 2013? Whether it's one of the recommendations above or something not mentioned, share your ideas below in the comments or via twitter by sharing this post. 

Hope everyone had a wonderful holidays and happy new year. Here's looking forward to another outstanding year for #hrtech in 2013.

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