You've decided to buy HR software to streamline your business and keep you up to date with legislation. As expensive as it can be, it's a lot cheaper than paying out for tribunals and solicitors. This still leaves a massive market to choose from. You know why you're buying it but before you open your wallet, here's a checklist that you should go through in order to buy the most appropriate software or service for your company.
Firstly, you need to decide what you expect from this resource:
Well, there are two types that you will be looking at:hosted and licensed software. Hosted software solutions are web-based and together with a subscription, usually month-to-month they provide an online service. This means the company you use holds all your data on their servers in a secure environment and you access your data over a web browser.
If you choose licensed software, then you pay a one-time fee and your IT department install and maintain the data on your servers and the software is installed locally. You then pay a yearly subscription for online support.
So, licensed and hosted software is very similar in the fact that both are configured to your individual needs, only hosted software is 'hosted' in a secure facility and with licensed the data storage is down to you.
Once you've made your decision, you now need to look at your budget for this resource: this should definitely be more thought out than you might first imagine. Hosted software can be cheaper on the initial outlay but the ongoing back office support can be expensive. On the other hand, you will pay more at the outset for licensed software. However, you should still consider that there will annual support costs involved.
Know what and why you want it: before you go spending oodles of cash, consider your business' needs. Most software provides similar capabilities. There are a variety of standards that nearly all businesses require within their HR departments from birthday alerts to sickness and absence reports. You need to research thoroughly the differences and single out the priority needs of your business. The list you need to concentrate on is the added extras that your individual business needs. Once you have these you can filter out much of the software on offer and come down to a shortlist.
Make sure you get standardised demos from the companies you try and be very specific as to your needs within your budget; otherwise it's very easy to be bowled over by clever demos. If you need the software to integrate with your payroll software be very clear that you expect this. The same goes for any custom reports that you need - see the demo and then discuss the individualisation.
This is by no means a complete checklist but it will help you to evaluate your needs before you buy the HR software.