The big advantage | An integrated approach to HR

There are many options to consider when purchasing business systems, including the structure of a new solution, and there will always be debate around what represents the best solution for a business. Do you buy a single solution from a single vendor or a combination of best-of-breed software?

Single software vendor or best-of-breed?

The question of whether to choose a single vendor or a best-of-breed combination applies to buyers of HR and payroll solutions. Some suppliers combine different pieces of software, whilst others provide fully integrated single products. Sometimes, third-party software solutions are promoted by a vendor as their own – a process known as white-labelling.

But how can you tell the difference, and which is the best approach? Solutions comprising disparate software combinations risk information being scattered across multiple databases. Often, changes don’t update everywhere leading to conflicting versions of data with no way to know what is true. Correcting the resulting errors is time-consuming and disruptive to business.

Organisations using multiple software solutions must determine how to enact data changes across all their software, determine a source of truth for their data and implement interfaces to enable this. Then, where data structures change or software is replaced, organisations must reconfigure their interfaces. Fully integrated software solutions have one database to update, one source of truth. This approach minimises disruption and the risk of errors.