HR Open Technology
HR Open Technology
Implementation 101: Did You Forget Something?
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Many of our listeners have worked on an implementation or are planning to in the near future. Wouldn’t it be great to have some tips to help prepare for your next implementation? Listen along as Alan Whitford, an HRIS Consultant and long time HR Open advocate shares his implementation experiences and lessons learned to give you a headstart on your next project!
This is Kim bark is with the HR open standards consortium. The title of our podcast is implementation one Oh one. Did you forget something? Our speaker today is Ellen Whitford and HRS consultant and long time HR open advocate, Alan will be sharing his implementation experiences and lessons learned to give you a start on your future implementations. Hi, Alan , how are you doing?
Speaker 2Hi, Kim. Great, great to speak with you today.
Speaker 1Great. I think the audience would be really interested in learning about you and your background. Can you give us a brief history of your experience in HR and implement implementations?
Speaker 2Yeah, absolutely. So I've , um, I'm an American, but I've lived in Europe for about 30 years. I've had a long history in recruitment for us , uh , working for an agency and then in house, and then with my own search firm , um , working a lot with startups in the technology sector. And one of those technology startups was one of the early , uh, recruitment systems resumes . And from that point on, I really got heavily involved in , uh, the whole tech idea that supports both HR and recruitment, whether it's developing systems selecting and implementing them , um, built a couple , um, and for either just, you know, single country organizations here in the UK or multinational organizations , um, during that sort of process of evolving my career, if you will, I , uh , ran into the whole HR XML as it was then. Um, I think from one of my early , uh, you know, systems con , um, contacts , and I got kind of got drawn into helping get HR XML set up in Europe. And , uh, I've, I've kind of stayed in touch with it and watch it over time. Um, but during a lot of my implementations, they may have been for a point solution, but there's always integration with other systems that happen across , uh , you know, across the piece of those sorts of implementations.
Speaker 1Okay, great. Thank you. You've definitely been involved with HR open for years. I recall a meeting in Europe where you were one of the presenters. Can you share some other ways that you promoted HR open or the standards?
Speaker 2Absolutely. I've always believed in it right from those early days that it just made a whole bunch of sense to , um , have a nice sensible middleware, not continually building new sets of API every time you went to do something. So in any time when I'm doing an implementation and we're talking about, well, how's that again , integrate to my core HR or to my recruiting system or to my payroll system. I'm always saying, Hey, don't you know about , um, what is now HR open? And , and oftentimes I'm having that conversation with vendors themselves who may have actually been founder members or early members of, of the HR open standards consortium. And one of those challenges is that I'll talk about it and don't, they don't even know about it. Cause somebody, somewhere else in their business has been involved , um , in helping develop the standards.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's , that has been a challenge as we've had , um, you know, large organizations that they , um , may have. One person has been very, very involved and there's other areas that aren't, aren't , uh , aren't aware. So how do you go about working with them to resolve that? Or can you,
Speaker 2well, firstly, I point them to the website say , Hey , go have a look. You know, there's a whole bunch of standards there that you could be that you could be using the possibly shorten the integration cycle. Um, and , uh, of course, one of the challenges and we know this, you know, when I've dealt with vendors for a long time, as somewhere in their building, there's a professional services team that really wants to sell a whole bunch of, you know, development and integrations because that's what their job is. Um, and there's a sales team that just wants to sell new modules and sometimes they don't actually meet in , you know , in the middle. Um, so all we can do is as a , as an integrator or implementer coming from outside is try and , um , encourage them to look at those standards and engage with those standards and use them wherever possible.
Speaker 1Great. So you had mentioned a little bit about recruiting payroll, the entire, the HR encompasses entire work cycle from hire to retire for a person. What are some of the areas, including the ones you just had mentioned that you focus on?
Speaker 2For me, it is, you know, almost, you just might say cradle to grave or hire to retire. Um, when you're working with an organization, you know, I think particularly from the recruitment perspective, a lot of organizations make it seem really complex, but it's actually a fairly simple, straightforward process, which is identify what you need put into place and attraction strategy , um, sift and select and hire , um , and then let them retire at some later point. Um, a lot of organizations have, this is multiple different processes. There's different parts of the organization that are in charge of it. So what I try and do in the work that I've done is one, I always kind of revert back to the recruitment piece because that's where it all starts. Um, we haven't recruited people, then we don't really need to put them into an HR system. We're actually pay them because we haven't brought them in. Um, but more recently I was responsible for rolling out an integrated HR system across 27 countries. So we have the core HR, we had payroll, we had time and attendance, but we didn't have the recruitment module. That was a separate system entirely. Um, which funnily enough, that's why I originally got brought into the company to look at was the recruiting system. And one of those challenges is they were still an old world mode, which was get them, run them through the recruitment system and then create a couple of folders and email them, or even walk them over to the HR team and go, Hey, look, here's your new employee data. Can you go ahead and plug it into manually into HR system? And that's, to me that's still mind boggling that we do that. Um , yes, it's also a challenge from the whole data privacy side. And I know we've got some pretty strong data privacy regulations in the U S um , but Europe has really put it on steroids if you will, the last 18 months and the new , um, GDPR regulations about data privacy , uh , and the data you can re retain and where do you pick it up? And when you bring it in , uh, is causing a lot of challenges for organizations that have multiple systems and trying to figure out what data should be in which part of the process and in which system, and how do we move it across and then how do we delete it? Because the candidate now has a lot of rights to say, Hey, take my data away. Um , I don't want you to have it anymore. And that's something that I'm actually, maybe we can talk about it , a future discussion, because we do have a lot of interest in how the standards manage GDPR and privacy data privacy in the U S so one of the integrations you talked about, and we had a couple of things that you mentioned know , obviously it's, you know, walking it from one place in one system to another, how are you handling, what are your recommendations and what are some of the challenges you've had with those integrations? I think, you know , typically the first main issue is a lack of preparation before the implementation starts. In reality, a lack of preparation before the selection starts. Um, too many times we see a solution selected by let's say the it department or the HR department, and they haven't brought in to the selection process, the actual subject matter experts or the people that are actually is going to impact on a day to day basis. So we ended up with a system being selected that hasn't necessarily had some of the prep work done beforehand, which is, well, if we're going to put in payroll, have we realized that in fact, we've got seven different payroll providers in our business, we've got 10 different pay dates. Maybe we should rationalize that stuff first, before we start to configure and implement the new payroll. Well, the same thing I'd say time and attendance systems , um, do we actually need to be collecting time and attendance? Do we need people to be clocking in and clocking out? What are we doing to manage that? Is it, you know, some guy in a clipboard standing at the door saying, yup , everybody's here, or is it a more sophisticated system? A lot of them have gone, for example, a time and attendance systems of using , um , biometric using your thumb or an eye. Well, that's great, really cool. Except a lot of countries reject, reject that. Um, they say, for example, it's a nice idea, but unless you're a nuclear facility, we don't really see why you're asking for a thumbprint . Um, so that kind of preparation beforehand and understanding what you really need to do. Um, have we documented those processes? Have you documented existing systems that are already in place so that we can understand what's compliant? What is it compliant to possible new legislative requirements? Um, I saw last year Spain changed a number of requirements and the HR systems they had in place were way out of date. The vendors had disappeared and the only way for them to become, to become com client, once they go into the marketplace and buy a new system, because they couldn't be compliant otherwise. So changes in legislative requirements , um , understanding what you've already got in place, what needs to be connected or not. Um, is it something where, well, we've only got 40 people in that office. Do we really need to have them on a time and attendance system? Um, we've already got a payroll provider that's providing this locally. Do we need to go to a global payroll solution? I think that sort of lack of preparation beforehand , um , is a big hole that a lot of companies fall into.
Speaker 1Okay. You'd mentioned, I mean, obviously the topic of our , um, our presentation is meditation one Oh one. What are some of the things you mentioned, a few of the things that the clients have missed. Are there other things that they've missed that you're able to work with them to help them resolve the , um, the issues and make the implementation go a little more smoothly?
Speaker 2Sure. That the key thing for me, plan, plan, plan, and resource resource resource , um , you know, there's never enough resource. Uh , this project that I was on for three years for the first 15 months, I was the only resource. Uh, there was, we didn't even have HR people in all their countries. We were looking to roll out to , uh , now clearly that was met . We were under resourced , you know ? Um, and I think it's, it's an easy one for organizations to miss. And a lot of this comes down to who owns the project to begin with is that it owned in which case there's probably a better chance for some more resource, but they won't have the subject matter expert. If it's an HR driven project, they'll have the expertise, but they won't have the resource to implement it because HR always struggles to get enough resource into their building. So to me, that's , that's the number one piece we unders we under scope the resource required to actually put things in place , uh , whatever part of the , the HR community or HR systems you're trying to put in. Um, and then that leads to a planning perspective. Do we actually have a project manager who knows how to plan , uh , and if it's an it project, almost certainly we have a project manager in place we'll have a project, you know, they have a PMO , um, you know, the lots of people that know how to run projects. Um, but then we have to train them on what the application is all about. So, and I think it varies a little bit if it's obviously most systems that are cloud based. Um, so in fact, we don't really need it very much. We just need them to make sure the network is up. Um, but if I don't have someone planning the project who understands that , that then it's, then it's a challenge. So this
Speaker 1is a little off topic, but some of the implementation I've done many years ago , um , one of the challenges that we had were getting the bot , the buyout , um , just, yes, we're more interested in doing this, especially from the ones that are actually going to be using the systems and how to get them to say, yes, we're willing to do that and helping you with any questions. You know, you mentioned having those , um, expertise in the actual, not the systems, but the actual end user. Have you seen that and how you dealt with that?
Speaker 2You see it every day. Um, if I look at that last project I was on, when we finally hired HR people. So I had one HR person in Italy, one HR person in Germany, one HR person covering Spain and France. Um, you know , I had half an HR person in Holland, a half, an HR person in Singapore, and they've got about seven or eight or nine different HR projects that they're supposed to be working on during the course of the year. You know, they're supposed to be working on performance management, they've got to work on, you know, the employee survey, they had a whole bunch of stuff. And my HR system is about one eighth of what they have time to put time into. And so they consider me just a pain, you know, like, what am I going to do? Your stuff I got my day job to do. And that's when I talked about that resource challenge is , um, iStar just at HQ resource. It's out there on the sites where you need to be putting this stuff in, you know, the site manager and time and attendance is going . I don't have time to play around with your system. I got to get out here and I gotta turn the machines on. I gotta get packaging out the door. You know , I don't have time to work on your, on your new system. I got a clipboard. I'm good. Leave me alone. You know? Um, so it's a challenge about getting them to buy in some of it reverts back to what I mentioned earlier in the early stages of planning for the selection. If you didn't include them in the selection process, they consider your project to be what I used to call a seagull project. You know, the seagull flies over and drops a load on the team and they're just expected to clean it up. Right. So if we didn't get them to buy in beforehand, you've got to do a whole bunch of work in terms of the communications and engagement and getting people to buy into it. What's in it for me. So you've got to build a lot of that. Well, why is this better for you? You know, I know it's great. That HQ wants better. Am I , but what does that do for you on your day to day job? And why is it better for you? And that takes a lot more time. So again, when you look at your, your implementation timescale, you sat down with the vendor and said, okay, so it takes six weeks to do that. And nine weeks to do that . It's a great, here's our plan, but that doesn't take into account any of that, you know, local communications, local resource gathering , um, what are you going to do when you get to UAT? Uh , who's going to actually do that. Oh, we don't have anybody. So all of that piece of planning, which is may look like it's a two month implementation, it could be six or nine months if you don't have that resource in place.
Speaker 1Right. Great. That's , that's really helpful. And I think that's something I had found too, is you need to really make sure you have the right people involved at the right time. It's both of those pieces. So do you believe that using standards would have helped with any of the implementation? It doesn't deal with the resources as much, but do you think it would have helped with the implementation issue you've found through your
Speaker 2yeah, I think it would because a lot of the challenges and a lot of the actual extra time that ends up in a project is figuring out how do we move data from point a to point B to point C and I'm in a five-year-old payroll system and an eight year old time and attendance system and a brand new core HR system. You know, if I got to go find somebody in it or go outside, which is I'm seeing in my current [inaudible] based project to actually build the integrations, because I've got three different age systems here. And that probably wasn't part of anybody's plan at the start. Um, they just said, Oh, I got data there. That's easy. I'll just pick it up and move it over. Well, you and I have both been there enough times to know that that isn't as easy as it sounds. So having some standards in place during the scoping of the project, knowing what those standards are, what's available to help them with that data across would also help in figuring out, you know, what am I going to need in timeframes? What pieces do I need to do? Do I need to go buy something else? Um, can I download those nice free standards from, you know , your consortium that I can use? Um, it would definitely help. I think if we had more attention to that early doors,
Speaker 1and another thing might be, we've talked with other implementers about vocabulary. So you're going to have different, you've mentioned the different , um, HR people that are in different countries. So being able to have a common vocabulary that says when we're talking this bit of data, we all mean the same thing I would imagine that would definitely save some time and resources upfront that you have a good starting point and don't have to create that from scratch.
Speaker 2Absolutely. I think, you know, in the , in the project or the HR system, we spent weeks trying to come up with an agreed set of common terminologies. Um, and across , you know, is that 20 something countries. And so it wasn't just the language barrier per se , but it was well that group of people all learned American English and this group of people learned English, English, and that group of people into , you know, Australian or South African English. So even though English was a common language, it wasn't really, you know ,
Speaker 1aside from that though, I could see, you know, a term that one business may use it in one way then compared to another. So, you know, maybe be talking about open date, what does open date mean? It might be something different for different purposes. So commonality, I think, would really help with the implementations.
Speaker 2Yeah. We see that with onboarding now. Um, it feels a pretty comfortable term to me, but when I talked to my colleagues in Italy, they went, what do you mean onboarding so I can understand the English word, but I own understand what that means in terms of our processes. We don't call it that.
Speaker 1Yeah , I think, and I think that would definitely be a good, a good starting point. So in your previous, one of our previous discussions, you'd mentioned the big picture in a rollout. Can you explain, explain what you mean by that?
Speaker 2I think it goes back again to a little bit of what we talked about earlier, but it's, do I understand what the bigger picture is, what my organization needs to do over its next two or three years? You know, what is our plan? Has a CEO got plans to go out and make five acquisitions? In which case I need to think about that in terms of, as I start to select my new solution for whatever it is, recruitment resourcing, whatever it might be if I haven't planned for the capability and the flexibility to add two new countries and five new divisions I'm in trouble. So what does that big picture look like? And that was one of the challenges we had in this last rollout is that I had an initial implementation in North America, which took one, you know , systems , org structure. And then we started to implement it in Europe. And we had a one org structure and hungry and a different orange structure in the UK. So all of a sudden we got to a point where we had three different org structures and then management decided to change from being a geographically based org structure to a divisional based origin structure , which Ben , in some cases I had to rebuild what I'd already implemented because we didn't have that view that the CEO that was coming in was going to make those sorts of changes because for some reason he and his management team didn't think that HR would need to know this , um, which meant we had to go back and rebuild stuff. So we didn't actually , as an HR community necessarily have the visibility of what it was going to happen to us. Um, and some of that's on us as an HR community. Like why didn't we go knock on the door, the new CEO and go, Hey, what are you thinking? You know, before you decide to do something, cause this is the impact on what we're doing as a business. So there's those kinds of implications and business implications that we have to lead to . Um, and at the same time we may have said, well, we're making an acquisition. Well, they've got, you know, solution X, well, we've just invested in a global roll out of solution Y and someone's gonna say, well, I've got accidents working confined for me, leave me alone. So that's, I mean that big picture. Sometimes we , we do our stuff in a vacuum a lot of the time.
Speaker 1And I think that happens a lot in just HR in general. It doesn't, it's , um, it's not one of those departments that people are aware of or think about when they're planning the big pictures and how it's going to affect them. So that's really good to know that you need to follow up yourself as one of the actors in that, in the HR area.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. And it can depend also on even changes within the HR community. So I started out in a project that one set of leadership and HR and finance leadership had chosen the solution. And 18 months later, they were all gone. Um, and the CEO had put in new leadership who hadn't actually been part of the original selection piece. And so then they, we spent six months reviewing what we had already input in to see if that's what we still wanted to stay with. Um, and then said, yeah. And I said, well, thanks. You just cost me six months of my implementation timescale, but, but you have to go through that kind of review as well. Um, is what you decided three years ago fit for purpose today? Correct.
Speaker 1That's a good, good point. Thank you. So , um , when you're going through the integrations, do you need to think that obviously you would, but how would you think longterm as far as any type of customized vendor , vendor integrations or longterm maintenance?
Speaker 2So you and I have both been there when everything was client server and you configured everything to your , your organization. And when the updates came from the vendor, it was kind of like, Oh, huh, how are we going to do those? Um, the one thing that the cloud based systems has done is standardize 90% of what you've got running and you can figure in the other pieces so that if there's an update, a new release of the product, it shouldn't, you know , require too much change on your, on your side. And I spend a lot of time and implementations trying to convince people do not customize. Do we really need that field to be, you know, in yellow instead of blue , um, you know, do we really need to have all of these customized fields? Why can't we just use what is standard to stay as close to vanilla as possible, and then configure the configurable parts later on. And I think, you know, most of the , the, the current solutions have that ability to just flick a switch on or off. So you're not negatively impacted by the new release that rolls out. Um, so part of the challenges we used to have with clients server based systems kind of go away because of the cloud approach that the flip side of that is for some organizations, if say , well, we're special. And what we do is really, really different. Um, there some communications and training and educating that we need to do as implementers to help them understand, well, you don't really need that to be yellow. It's just comes . You used to have it in yellow. Well , let's show you what it could look like in blue, like everything else. Um, so that's, to me, that's, that's one of those still challenges as implementers that we have to think about educating our user base again, very early in the process in terms of what do they really, really, really need versus what do they really, really want? And that's not always an easy conversation.
Speaker 1That's really, that's really good. Thanks. So, one, one last question before we end our session, do you have any final recommendations when considering integration
Speaker 2don't do it? That's probably not the one we wanted to use. Wasn't no, you know what ? It's interesting Kim, because we've all been through that cycle too , in which, you know, this year, it's all about buy the point solution, right ? Buy the best recruiting solution, buy the best performance solution by the best payroll, by the best each piece. And we'll use standards like, like your consortium provides and we'll knit all of those together. And that way we'll end up with best of breed across the board. And then you'll go through that cycle and two or three layers , everything's going to be, Nope, just buy everything from one vendor. Don't give me everything. Right . So my integration challenge is less because I'm buying everything from one vendor. And my implementation challenge then is how am I getting all of my old data into and my new shiny system? And I don't think there's one answer to that. I think the challenge is always that any core HR vendor came from a place where this was their area of expertise and they've added the other parts on. And I think from a selection criteria perspective as an organization, you have to look at that and go, what are the most important parts to me? What do I really need to have really best of breed? And what are the parts that I'm kind of going I'm okay with an average or slightly better than average solution for that part of the business, or I'm not going to change that anyway. So that helps you decide on how am I going to do the knitting together, a number of solutions, or am I going to just, you know what, I'm going down to one store and buy everything from one guy. Um , and then your challenges in implementation are different than there about data conversion and those sorts of lovely challenges that you might have. Great .
Speaker 1Well, and thank you so much for your time today. I'm sharing your integration experience. I have really enjoyed talking with you. It's been great. We hope our audience learned what to look for and be prepared for their next implementation. And there are more resources available on our website and follow us on the social media at HR open standards. Thank you so much. Thanks Kim .