A quick review of the HRIS scene – July 2008
The last year or two has seen much consolidation in the HRIS arena, Bond acquiring Team Spirit and Wealden, Sage buying up Snowdrop and KCS and COA taking over ASR. That’s not including the sustained flurry from Northgate who more recently took over ARINSO.
This will probably mean a period of retrenchment and repositioning of products to try to leverage the benefits of increased efficiency and enhanced super-products.
Meantime against this background, we are seeing two particular trends emerging:
a) The launching of products aimed at the Small & Medium Enterprise (SME) sector, such as Ceridian’s Pay & People and Northgate’s Empower. This is clearly a conscious effort by what are considered Tier One suppliers to reach markets that they have traditionally left to their smaller competitors and
b)The emergence of stand-alone specialist applications such as
An innovative application aimed primarily at supporting line management through the cycle of managing people
An HR only application that is refreshing in its approach to set-up for users;
A Recruitment package that is highly configurable and intuitive to use.
These examples will link to other applications, rather than going the integrated route; the attempt to be “all things to all men” can sometimes lead to a weakness  in the overall suite.
Time & Attendance and Access Control packages are attracting increasing attention as both Absence and Security continue to be key areas for organisations eager to control costs or maintain confidentiality. There is now a great range of very usable applications on offer, from the budget-priced Tensor to the more complex such as Softworks
The public sector is still largely occupied by the same players, as the sector’s structural requirements (e.g. multi-posts and pay spines) call for more development than is considered viable by many vendors considering the market place as more finite than the private sector.
dwb 07/08
