Cynicism that comes from native wisdom

Cynicism that comes from native wisdom

One tacit challenge that implementation consultants typically encounter, after the sales gibberish ends and rigmarole of the implementation starts, is the entrenched cynicism of the HR Veterans in the organization .This skepticism is engendered by what can be called the native wisdom of the Veterans. The native wisdom is collective culmination of being a witness to several ‘radically new’ and ‘paradigm shifting’ HR programs and initiatives launched with much fanfare and product implementations initiated with transformational promises. We loathe admitting it but we know that that most HR Programs and product implementations seldom deliver value .Atleast in the perception of the end business user

While implementing PS recruitment module in one of my earlier assignments, we did a requirement gathering workshop that had participation from staffing representatives of the organization (average tenure of the group was little less than 2 yrs). We had a fairly useful session and covered a lot of ground.

Based on this, we build a prototype and showcased it to the Staffing team. During one of these demos, there was this ‘indifferent’ participant who was posing sardonic questions But the questions could have possibly come only from someone who had a thorough understanding of the intricacies of the recruitment process. During the break, I caught up with this person and conversed with him. A typical guy in the trenches, he was too caught up in his daily deliverables and so could not be sparred for participation in the requirement gathering workshop. In the course of our conversation he gave be tremendous insights on the organization-the history of two abortive attempts at implementation staffing application, the dominant managerial style prevailing in the organization that could be potentially detrimental to the success of Manager Staffing Desktop.

During the implementation, I realized that several insights provided by the veteran were true

The veterans are encyclopedic storehouse of organizational knowledge .They might provide tremendous insights that will be of invaluable help in understanding complex issues involved in the implementations.

Much later during a payroll implementation, the ‘native wisdom’ of another veteran opened new vistas for me

PS-Long break in programming attributable to tyranny of currently working in PS Base Benefits,which is proving a tough nut to crack.Hope to regularly update

Technology Enabled HR in Indian IT Organizations

Many Indian IT Services Organizations are now truly global (in terms of size, revenue, geographic spread, employee profile).Their meteoric rise has been fashioned by pioneering the low cost offshore centric model and successfully executing large, complex and sometime mission critical IT Projects .So this might be opportune moment to quickly understand if their internal IT Systems, especially HR Systems are robust and scalable to help them achieve their global aspirations.

Given the manpower intensive nature of the industry (employee cost as percentage of revenue is typically pegged at 50-55% ),the key challenge that faces the Indian IT Industry is acquiring, developing, deployment and importantly retaining of Human Resources (at least key talent).Are Indian organizations investing adequately in progressive IT enabled people management systems ?

The analysis is purely confined to Indian IT Product/Services organizations. (Back -office IT arms of global conglomerates have to invariably align their HR Technology strategy consistent with the Corporate roadmaps)

Good news first.Atleast the big Indian IT majors have achieved basic employee record keeping discipline .Most of them have typically done it using the robust ERP systems (SAP, Peoplesoft etc).With this at least basic employee census is now a passé for them. Though many might loathe admitting it, this itself represents quantum leap .Not long back HRIS teams used to struggle reporting precise employee count due to bewildering complexity engendered by phenomenal growth across locations and exacerbated by poorly designed home grown record keeping systems (sometimes even done manually).

My feedback however suggests that ERP implementations have not been taken to their logical culmination. While budgets and lack of focus on building good Internal HR system might be primary reasons, there are few other factors too.

Paradoxically while many of them have burgeoning (and sometimes matured) ERP implementation services for their clients, the expertise is hardly made available for in-house deployment of ERP (Not only in HR domain but also sales, fianace etc) .The internal HR IT implementation and support teams tends to be typically staffed with greenhorn programmers .It provides fertile training ground before they can be quickly pitch forked to chargeable client assignment. At the helm of affairs are Project Managers who are ‘past their prime’. Some organisations view ERP buy decision as investment to build their practice to serve clients. There is nothing intrinsically wrong in this but it does lead to situation where there is mismatch between intention and outcomes

Good news again. Most organization definitely have fairly well evolved Intranet ‘portal’ with good measure of employee self-service capabilities thrown in .The success of self-service could be attributable to the easy adoption ,given the high IT literacy of the employee population. This is despite several instances of user interfaces not being very friendly and elegant

As far as Performance Management, Compensation Planning and Learning/Development, the processes themselves seem to be perpetually in the state of flux .So whenever automation is attempted, it ends up automating chaos. My enquiries reveal most of them use some kind of in-house system .I guess none of the Indian IT biggies have implemented any of best of bred,point solution that dot the talent management landscape.The homegrown system more often than not are incapable of mapping the ‘new’ and ‘improved ‘ performance management process that HR inevitably comes up with every year

Recruitment is one area that technology has tremendous potential given the insatiable manpower needs of the Indian IT industry. Except for honorable exception of Wipro Technologies, the idea of leveraging technology in recruitment process does not seem to have percolated across. Using Commercial Job boards (Naukri) and few static career pages in the corporate website is where staffing organization’s idea of technology ends .Most recruiters that I have interacted have infact disdainly dismissed the utility of Talent Acqusition or even Applicant Tracking system as they feel its completely divorced from the reality of IT recruiting in India

As far as adoption in areas like HR Analytics go, it looks a distant dream now. Good starting point might be at formal, documented cohesive HR Technology plan that should of course stems from the HR strategy of the organization

Capping it all is the lack of appreciation among the HR Leadership in India (I have interacted with very few) on technology being the key cornerstone of HR Service Delivery strategy.

While it cannot be disputed that Indian IT industry has been witnessing excellent growth (thanks to the sterling efforts of Sales and Delivery Organisations) ,HR leadership should start thinking in terms of establishing systems,(with help of technology of course) that help them furthering their global aspiration

Taleo and Peoplesoft Recruitment

For a very brief while I got to work on the implementation of Taleo recruitment application .It happened fortuitously.

Senior team member, who was coordinating the regional rollout under the stewardship of Implementation lead based out of the Corporate IT Team, went on a extended marriage break.So she requested me to proxy for her during this hiatus.

I gleefully accepted this opportunity, as it not only provided me respite from the rigmarole of production support job ,it also puts me in vantage position to compare Taleo’s staffing piece with Peoplesoft 8.8 Recruit/E-Recruit/E-Recruit Desktop Manager (which was among the multitudes of PS modules which I worked in my previous Organization)

During this 30 day period, I was introspecting on general terms on why organizations have adopted, what is commonly known as “Best of Bred” application strategy -where they have opted for pure-play players providing exclusive solution in only that area ,with only tenuous ability to plug in with the Core System of the organization

Based on my limited worldview, there are several compelling reasons for implementing Peoplesoft Recruiting Solution.Peoplesoft has made staffing integral part of their HRMS strategy .The recruiting product line in Peoplesoft is built based on strong best organizational practices which has been a consistent cornerstone of all their HR product line.(Even giving allowance for sales gibberish, that Peoplesoft has consistently expanded the product frontier is beyond dispute).

For any organization that has successfully implemented Peoplesoft Core HRMS - recruiting solution comes with in-built integration with the Core HRMS .This can be leveraged tremendously to tighten business process linkages, technology infrastructure consolidation and optimize the Peoplesoft expertise available in the organization.The transaction orientation of ERP’S ,with most of them evolving from being ‘department ‘software could be held against their ability to meet collaborative nature of processes like staffing .However PS 8.8 had conquered many of these barriers

During this period I did a quick exercise of understanding lacunas in PS 8.8 Recruit suite

-Many tables that Recruit application use are set up as part of the Core HRMS Configuration. Hence there will be significant challenge in arriving at a fine balance between Internal “HR Language” and external community friendly language. For example- Locations/Job Code/Job Functions need to be configured with lot of consideration

-Multiple Approvers for job requisition is not supported in Peopleosft.We have only three role players defined in the system-Originator/Approver/Recruiter

-The applicant facing functionality that is available through Peoplesoft E-Recruit is not very friendly/elegant and can be a very tedious, sometimes hostile experience for the applicants. This may serve as impediment in encouraging more resumes getting channelised through the career site .For navigation enhancement would be required for cross applications

-Resume Processing functionality (extracting key data elements from a candidate's resume and automatically populating those fields in the application) is not available as part of the core product offering. It requires separate licensing

-No delivered functionality for supporting resumes from Staffing Partners/agencies who would typically constitute a major recruitment channel of any large organization

-No Provision of creating candidate files and better sharing of candidates with other users by creating configurable folders outside the context of a requisition

-The Delivered Recruit Workforce reports may not support the complex reporting requirements of the organization. Several custom reports needs to be required which may require significant time

-No “Job Agent” feature which would provide for applicants and employees to notified via e-mail when applicable job openings are available (or did I miss it)

-No Provision for Multiple Attachments (only one attachment per application) which is very restrictive

-Minimal user-end system configuration required for certain functionalities to work-for example Hi NT or W2000 is required for Resume Processing

-Peoplesoft has no recommended security strategy for hosting the e-recruit application on the Corporate Career pages for external login. So organizations have to evolve their own methodology for secure access to the external applicant facing e-recruit application


I understand now that PS 8.9 Talent Acquisition and Candidate Gateway address many of these issues and there is sudden spurt of interest in this product. It would be great if these interests translate to big wins.

I still believe that it makes real sense to have Core HRMS and major portion of the Talent Acquisition and Talent Management piece from the same Vendor.And today only Peoplesoft and to same extent SAP might be providing this complete solution. I think the advantages that accrue, in ease of implementation and slightly superior functionality, from point solutions can be offset by the tremendous value that integrated HRMS solution from the single vendor

The only disadvantage that PS perpetually suffer is that in many big organization, the running version is not the most recent version .And firmly entrenched view that upgrade is virtually a new implementation makes them take the simpler route of buying Point solutions

Why this blog on HR Technology?

This was long before Time Magazine pitchforked me from ‘virtual’ obscurity to global limelight by bestowing the title of “Time Person of the Year”.Years back,while performing one of those customary googling when traversing the WWW, I accidentally encountered the world of blogs

Ever since that moment of inspired serendipity, life has never been the same again. Barring that good, old habit of reading hard covers, blogging probably relegated every other interest of mine to lesser importance, including my wife(:

It’s difficult to fathom why blogging has occupied such primacy in my life. But I am not complaining.If not for blogging, how else would this nondescript individual, lost in anonymity of some miniature cubicle of an high rise building, performing largely dreary and banal job, could have found himself and expressed to the world.

Never mind that my ravings, rantings and ruminations, manifested here ,does not attract more than 5 to 6 eternal faithfuls. As they say “Journey is the Reward’. Without iota of doubt in this journey of self-discovery, blogging has been truly rewarding experience as my woefully limited world-view continues to be challenged , some time even giving way to broadened perspective.

While http://prasannavishy.blogspot.com/ will continue its no-holds barred tirade and scathing commentary of the Indian Political/Social/Media scene, the new blog of mine will be on my vocation- HR Technology.

Existing and emerging cutting edge technology offers tremendous possibilities for HR Profession to operate, at qualitatively and quantitatively different plane altogether .Technology, not only opens new vistas for HR to deliver basic employee services more effectively but promises to address some existential predicament that has been plaguing HR –especially on strategic value it can add to the business. Workforce Analytics especially, if deployed well, can answer many profound critics of HR ,who seem to be ever increasing tribe.

This blog will endeavour to understand the trends/usability issues/deployment strategies/products/staffing/adoption/data issues in the realm of HR Technology.Also developments and research in HR Domain that will affect HR Technology adoption will also be dissected

Only time will tell if these objective of the blog is achieved but what it will defintely do is mirror my evolution as a HR Technology professional. So either it could turn out to be incoherent rambling of uninformed observer or useful addition to the vibrant critique on HR Technology space.

Need to add a caveat here. Highly regimented nature of my current job(I do plain and simple backend ERP user support for one region) does not provide me too much visibility to HR technology plans / roadmap of the organization I work for . Though part of the extended HR Technology group,I am at best , interested end user of several HR Application that run here. Because of this tenuous linkage , my understanding and articulation of issues might will be limited.

I will try to post as regularly as possible One great incentive of being IT Professional is that euphemistic ‘Warming the bench’, constituting some portion of your job description. While the munificence of continuing to get paid handsomely during these periods of heightened professional idleness and indolence is taken for granted, the joy of plunging headlong, in to your private passions is unbridled. I promise to use these periods to good effect

Obviously hazards like profession etiquettes and profile of potential readership demand that i adopt polite, refined and ‘politically correct ‘ discourse ,none of which was too much evident in my other blog

I hope you patronise this blog and also occasionally comment.Even if you dont,blogging continues (: