CASE STUDY: IMPLEMENTING AN HRIS

ABC Finance provides financial services to customers and employs around 2,500 staff. The organization is currently facing major changes in its environment, both internally and externally. Externally, factors such as increasing globalization, new and innovative technologies, changing demographics and demands of customers, increasing deregulation, and competition in the industry have forced the firm to be more competitive by reducing costs and offering innovative servicesby doing more with less. Internally, there has been a shift over the past few years to a client focus from a product focus, continued growth in the organization resulting in geographical dispersion across the country, and a move toward the delivery of online services. Historically, different functional departments within the firm have rarely collaborated with each other to solve organizational issues. The organization is cautious and consultative in its decision making and could best be described as bureaucratic.

The organization has made a decision to implement a new HRIS along with a new finance system and a new customer relationship management (CRM) system. The existing systems are all more than 10 years old and do not support the current or future environments in which the organization sees itself operating. The existing HRIS will be unsupported by the current vendor in the next six months, and there is an urgent need to implement the new system as soon as possible. The implementation has the support of key senior people in the organization. The HR, finance, and customer relations business units see this implementation as a business project with the software and IT resources as the enabler of better and more effective services.

The organization has two support unitscorporate services (HR, finance, operations, CRM) and information servicesand three business lines: retail services, commercial services, and investment products. A major organizational restructuring took place only two years ago. The introduction of this structure was largely successful, particularly in the corporate services units. However, there was little emphasis on managing the change issues during restructuring, and, as a result, some of the areas in the business lines are still coming to terms with the change and have become highly suspicious of new programs and initiatives that emanate from corporate services and information services. There is a perception that the head office is too concerned with it and does not take into account the needs of other areas and locations. In the past, employees and managers from various geographic locations have complained that the central administration has done a poor job of including or consulting them when decisions are being considered.

The organization includes an HR function and a separate payroll function that reports through to the finance function. HR and payroll currently use the same HRIS. The HR function was, until two years ago, a decentralized function, with many HR services staff reporting through to different business lines. Following the company-wide restructuring, the HR function was predominantly centralized so that the majority of staff now report through to the HR director. Some areas were not centralized and continue reporting to the relevant head of a business unit. After implementation, a new business model may be required to assist with a more complex and integrated system, particularly as the HRIS and the CRM system will share some aspects of the same database.

A major factor affecting the CRM system implementation is that the firm currently does not have staff

sufficiently skilled in project management or in implementing a system of this size and complexity. It has looked to external organizations to assist it in implementing the new systems. ABC Finance expects to gain a transfer of skills, knowledge, and methodologies to its own staff for the ongoing maintenance of the production system, so it may manage future upgrades and implementations.

The existing HRIS was poorly documented when it was implemented, and the vendor provided limited documentation. Because of the decentralized history of HR, data were input with various codes and into various fields; that is, there was no consistency in the way data were recorded. It is a well-known fact that the data in the current IS are neither up to date nor correct. The HR data in the current system carry little credibility in the company.

Furthermore, the software vendor has advised of an upgrade to its product that is nearing completion. This upgrade will provide for additional functionality that will support the objectives of process efficiency, cost reduction, and the use of the Web and work flow management tools at no extra cost. It is known that the software provider has a history of not delivering new versions on time and that these can sometimes be shipped with bugs.

The project has a fixed budget. Although there are some contingency funds, it is expected that these will be for emergency issues only, such as unforeseen costs within the existing scope. Although the HRIS/CRM implementation is still some time off, the PM team needs to make a decision soon on the postproduction support model. Previously, each system had its own support team. The team is considering an integrated support model in which staff members are multiskilled in each of the major areasHR/payroll, finance, and CRM. This model would necessitate another round of company-wide restructuring.

Obviously, ABC Finance has undergone significant change in the past few years, and all staff are feeling some change fatigue. However, there is a significant commitment to managing the change process as part of this project. A change management team has been appointed comprising training and communication staff.

Case Study Questions

1.What PM approaches, techniques, and tools that have been discussed in this chapter can be applied to aid this organization in successfully managing the HRIS project?

2.It is often said that people factors are more important in technical project success than technology. From this perspective, explain the contribution that the HRM department can make to the management of this project.

3.Prepare a list of critical success factors that you think are most important for this project and compare them with the list presented in this chapter.