Technology for Managing Your Most Valuable Asset.

The benefits that finance officers derive from installing new enterprise systems to handle accounting, purchasing, and other key financial functions have been wellpublicized. But technology also has provided new opportunities to reduce administrative overhead and attain information for strategic decision making in the human resources management area. Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) combine functionality related to Human Resources/Benefits Administration, Payroll Processing/ Administration, and Time and Attendance Systems. This article highlights 10 ways that finance officers and others can harness the power and capabilities of HRIS to improve an organization's strategic and financial planning processes.

Broaden the Scope and Reach of HR

The traditional role of human resources (HR) in the public sector usually consists of maintaining employee records/data, hiring/retaining/training and terminating employees, and making other personnel decisions. In some organizations, HR and Payroll are entirely separate. By embedding HR into business processes such as Payroll and Budgeting, this function can support departments from an operating! service delivery perspective.

Facilitate Process Improvement

While HRIS can automate standard tasks such as personnel hiring, benefits enrollment, and changes to an employee's pay or personal data, database integration in HRIS provides additional value because such tools can be used to improve the underlying business processes. Thus, it is critical that technology is not implemented to automate current processes--HRIS can simplify work processes, eliminate redundant work, bundle work for related tasks/ processes, provide feedback that allows for in process correction, and reduce cycle time for the process. Correspondingly, document management functionality in HRIS--such as scanning/retrieval and PC forms entry--makes it easier to store, organize, and access vital information (such as resumes) once it is in the system.

Single Source of Employee Data

A major weakness of legacy HR systems is that they fragment decision support due to the numerous stand-alone! shadow systems that reside throughout an organization. By utilizing a common and relational database, an HRIS can provide a single source of comprehensive and accurate information for each employee- such as standard employee demographic data, education/skills information, emergency contact information, and any equipment/tools assigned to that employee.