A guide to early-stage HRMS selection

It’s never too early to start planning for a new HRMS. How can your be certain that you are making the best use of your limited time and resources before you begin? Set yourself up for success by making sure that you have these elements in place before you start requirements gathering activities.

Identify and dedicate resources

Many companies get so involved in selecting an HRMS that they forget the human capital aspect. Internal implementations usually require backfilling of permanent positions to free up skilled and knowledgeable HR and IT staff. Implementations that are staffed by HRMS consultants will still require in-house expertise to provide input and make decisions about data and functionality.

Regardless of your implementation method you need to have your internal staff in place sooner rather than later to get their inputs into the HRMS selection. Many companies think that employees will be full time implementation team members on top of their regular HR desk jobs. This short-sighted thinking will cause you to miss key perspectives.

Document your HR processes

Each and every HRMS selection and implementation will seek to understand the current state for fit gap purposes and to estimate change management efforts. Take the time now to review your documentation to ensure that it is current. Written procedures will save time for the selection team and your internal support staff who will otherwise be tasked with providing details in long sessions.

This 52-step HRMS selection checklist will help ensure your software project goes smoothly from start to finish

What if you have no documentation or defined processes? Companies who are coming from a dysfunctional environment may want to begin with an HRMS implementation as a green field. If you have solid processes and systems it’s a starting point just to document your process flows for major events such as hires, merit increases and terminations. The selection team can then build on these to fill in the details with vendors.

Finalize your business case and scope

Your business case should be watertight and agreed by all HRMS stakeholders in the early stages of your selection. It provides the measurement of success once you’ve launched your HRMS. Many times a business case is drafted but never reaches sign-off, this incomplete area often correlates with a project that does not deliver.

Scope is an essential area that should be wrapped up prior to requirements gathering. A clear scope sets the foundation for the selection team and helps to avoid the dreaded scope creep that appears during HRMS implementations.

Companies that gain agreement on the business case and scope are ahead of the game when it comes to selecting a new HRMS and gathering requirements.