Reviewing your HRMS project: a three step guide

Selecting and implementing a new HRMS: when it’s all over, what exactly have you achieved? Is your business running more efficiently? Has the HR team’s reputation been enhanced? Is ‘people data’ a regular feature at board meetings? Or do you just have a new, rarely used icon on everybody’s corporate desktop?

It’s easy look at a functioning HRMS, and look back at all the work you’ve done to get to that point, and tell yourself ‘Good job!’ But was it? To find out, you need to review your HRMS project. Ask yourself what lessons you can learn, and find out if you really went about the task in the most effective way.

1. Did you engage with the right people?

Any project’s success depends on people, and the first groups of people you engaged with were your stakeholders. In drawing up your system requirements, choosing the right HRMS for the organization, and then installing it and getting it up and running, you should have been talking regularly to the different demographics with an interest in, and/or and influence over, your project.

In your review, you’re touching base one last time: does the final result meet their needs? Do they feel they were sufficiently involved? Do they feel they were listened to? Have the promises you made them been fulfilled?

This guide to calculating HRMS ROI will help you review how well your selection project has gone

2. How did the user training go?

The other ‘people angle’ comes down to the question of whether the people who need to use the HRMS are capable of doing so. And more than any other factor, user training is the keystone to user capability. Whatever your training strategy – instructional workshops, coaching, how-to guides, podcasts, manuals – evaluate it properly to understand how well it worked.

Ensure you address different levels of evaluation: as well as asking what the users thought of the training, test their newly-acquired knowledge, establish how that knowledge is benefiting them and their teams, and if you can, measure the impact on the organization.

3. Did you achieve value for money?

This is the bottom line. You spent money on a new HRMS. You spent both time and money on implementing it. Was it worth it? Assess the full cost of the project, including up-front system costs, hardware or supporting software costs (if any), the cost of people’s time spent on the project, any external consultancy costs, and the cost of user training.

Now measure the financial value or impact of the benefits achieved so far. The longer a functioning system is in place and in use, the more the benefits side of the equation will outbalance the costs, but even at this early stage, a cost-benefit analysis will give you an indication of how rapidly you might achieve your return on investment.

Finally, consider whether there is any learning that might benefit future IT or HR projects. What went well? What would you do differently if only you had your time over? What unanticipated problems arose and if they could happen again, how could you mitigate them?

An objective review of your HRMS project can provide a highly practical snapshot of the whole process that can help you maximize the benefits, and polish your organization’s project management practices.