Workforce management | Achieving efficiencies through integration

Taking responsibility for the management and payment of the workforce is an essential function in any business.

Whether you have a dedicated HR team or the responsibility lies within finance or administration, managing human resources and producing accurate payroll can be made simpler and less time consuming when you have the backup of a first class Human Resource Information System (HRIS).

Choosing between a fully integrated HRIS or separate software can be a challenging process. Some buyers may feel it is better to implement a new, integrated HR and payroll system whilst others opt for different systems that may (or may not) integrate with each other. This is the dilemma that you could find yourself facing when it’s time to replace HR and/or payroll in your organisation. On the one hand, a single integrated system means only having to maintain one set of data, which considerably reduces duplication and inaccuracies. On the other, there may be cost considerations and legacy issues around existing systems that make a standalone payroll package more attractive.

But for the purposes of this article we will look at the benefits of integration. Greater efficiency is considered the main advantage of integrated HR and payroll software as the overlap in data used by both is substantial; for example employee name and number, employment record, birth date, gender, address, sickness, maternity and much more. Michael Howard, Managing Director of established solution provider, Frontier Software, says “integration means that relevant data is only entered once and, from a database management aspect, data should only be stored once. Where this is not achieved, duplication and inaccuracies occur. This will also be the case when the data needs to be changed and updated.”