Regardless of the industry, employees are a business' number one asset and its largest expense. The secret to success lies in the ability to control this expense as well as to optimise the performance of this investment. Automating human resources operations, from recruitment to separation, from personnel records to benefits and compensation, from defining competency requirements to training scheduling and tracking, give a pro-active role to HR in Organisation Development by utilising best practices using the latest technology platform available.

The result:

• Elimination of common payroll errors and oversights
• Management gains immediate access to any employee's personnel file
• Employees can view and edit their benefits and compensation in paperless format
• System driven task initiations and reminders with escalation of pending tasks
• Reduction in unauthorised overtime expenses
• Comprehensive reporting on labour payments, thereby improving labour allocation
• Reports to facilitate data analysis (Overtime analysis based on authorisations, department, tasks, etc), and
• Achievement of quick ROI, with ongoing savings thereafter.

The organisation thus experiences dramatic reduction in manual document labour while enforcing best practices and compliance.

With a substantially diverse set of documents, HR can often seem like an overwhelming sea of information. Personnel documents can range from paper and electronic job applications, employee reviews, to employee photographs and signatures retained for security purposes. Employees are now able to take a proactive approach in managing their own information - including address and phone number changes, vacation requests, and insurance/benefits changes. Information that was very hard to access before is now securely available in a browser with a few keystrokes instead of having to search through several systems and file cabinets. Users can attach notes to documents and can make changes to a file without having to use paper. This eliminates duplicate personnel files and scattered record keeping.

Most of the HR Manager's time is spent on administrative work, including everything from updating addresses, searching for employee/interviewee documents, answering questions from employees and superiors, etc, thereby leaving no time for working on real HR functions like planning towards organisation development, succession, training and performance rewards.

Deploying a Metier HRMS shall put all the HR functions on to a single easy-to-use network working on an integrated database. Metier HR allows HR Executives to be more responsive to employees and management with customisable workflow based process design engine that streamlines HR record keeping. It also helps maintain a competitive work force by simplifying and accelerating hiring, training, and retention programs with an accessible, integrated database. Employees also gain greater control of their HR processes due to the self-service model.

HRMS encompasses all the following:

• Organisational structure and staffing
• Position Descriptions and Competency Dictionaries
• Critical Positions and Succession Planning
• Recruiting, Training, and Development
• Tracking Training Objectives, Goals, Results and Costs
• 360 Degree Assessments and Annual Appraisals, and
• Employee Orientation Programs and Surveys.

In addition to the administrative HR tasks including:

• Employee Documents
• Attendance and Leave Tracking
• Employee Portal
• Employee Expense Reimbursement
• Asset Tracking, and
• Employee History.

Today's businesses are constantly seeking the right tools and strategies to Identify, Manage and Develop Talent to maintain their edge over competition. HR professionals are continuously being urged to drive organisational growth with newer ideas and initiatives. M?tier HR brings about the change to model the organisation based on competencies and covers all the phases of the competency based management. M?tier HR software has the following powerful modules, which are tightly integrated so that common and/or shared information is automatically updated at one place. The system can be deployed as an integrated solution or as stand alone modules, facilitating the user to automate the HR processes in a phased manner.

• Company Portal - wiki, blog, events, document library
• Human Resource Information System (HRIS)
• HR Process - Leaves, Attendance, Transfers, Reimbursements, Separation, etc
• Personnel Appraisal - Review, Rating, Revision
• Reminders - Periodicity, Escalation
• Employee Forum - Help Desk, Knowledge Base
• Job Portal - Resume Manager, Interview Rating
• Competency Assessment & Succession Planning (CASP), and
• Training Scheduling & Tracking.

Salient Advantages:

• Up-to-date MIS Reports about the Human Pool driving the Organisation
• Completely web enabled with multi-browser compatibility
• Multi-tier Security
• Work Flow Automation & Management
• Information about each employee's performance & job history
• Instant access to attendance and leave records
• Employee access to their information
• Help desk to resolve employee's grievances
• Meets all major requirements,
• Built in Best Practices, and
• Is customisable according to end user requirements.

M?tier HR is built on N-Tier architecture where logic and processing is distributed among logical and physical "tiers" which are conceptually separate, and can be physically located on different servers and even in different geographical locations which brings several benefits, especially in the key areas of stability, performance, scalability and maintainability, making our solution appropriate for large/medium enterprises.

Know your Employee:

• Personal details
• Contacts
• Emergency contacts
• Dependents
• Education & Qualifications
• Certifications
• Career history
• Skills & Competencies
• Correspondence
• Achievements and Awards
• Legal documents
• Images
• References
• Employment summary

Security M?tier HR provides security by allowing only active employees to login and preventing access to unauthorised users and thus protects the confidentiality of your company affairs. Access to the different modules, administration and masters is restricted to the users authorised by the Super Administrator.

Hyderabad-based M?tier Software Solutions provides high quality on site services for software development and the end users on a broad range of hardware and software platforms and latest technologies. Within a short time, M?tier Software Solutions has carved a niche for itself in the IT industry and has increased its business by acquiring some major domestic projects. The company has been able to make a name for itself because of its ability and commitments to ensure customer satisfaction by offering quality work in time.

Contact: Kumari N, Sr Manager - Marketing, Metier Software Solutions P Limited, Hyderabad. Tel: 040-66025513-15. Mobile: 099080-18021. Email: kumari@m-s.co.in

(The second part of this article to be published next month discusses leave management and attendance tracking system)