Graeme Walker – HCM (OpenPeople) Product Manager

The champagne corks were popping on the Advanced Business Solutions table at the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals (CIPP) Awards ceremony last night. Despite being up against tough competition, Advanced Business Solutions won the HR/Payroll Software Product of the Year category, and the broad smiles in the Advanced offices this morning are testimony to the team’s immense pride in winning this award.

The CIPP’s Annual Payroll and Pensions Excellence Awards are the most respected UK payroll industry awards and recognise and honour payroll and pensions professionals together with human capital management (HCM) software providers for their achievements and contributions to the industry. To win the award the team had to demonstrate that Advanced’s HCM system is up to date, easy to use, legislatively-compliant and well supported.  Winning the award is evidence enough that Advanced’s HCM system fulfills all this criteria, leaving competitor systems in the shadows. And so it is perhaps no surprise that the Advanced team’s grins are broader than ever this morning and are unlikely to fade anytime soon!

Why the broad grins? is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

One debate that causes consternation is the ownership of payroll. The discussion, as we have seen on our own Advanced Business Solutions (ABS) LinkedIn page, is both contested and heated (see a selection of responses, below).

Some executives believe that the HR team, who are required to communicate people issues on a daily basis, should own payroll. HR is a policy-heavy area and close interlinking with payroll can help the organisation to deal with auditing and governance concerns.

Others believe payroll is all about numbers and so should be owned by finance specialists. Payroll is the biggest expense for most organisations and the finance department must understand where money is being allocated.

But there is, however, broad agreement that payroll is a function in its own right. Many areas of the business must address payroll concerns. And this consensus, regardless of reporting lines, provides a useful means to address concerns around payroll ownership.

Regardless of where you feel payroll should sit within an organisation, the key element is to ensure that payroll does not operate in isolation. Payroll systems need to be integrated across the enterprise and interlinked with other software systems.

There are various benefits from adopting an integrated approach. First, information held in one system is automatically reflected across the organisation and staff will not need to spend time manually re-entering information. Such interlinking reduces duplication and, more importantly, slashes the potential for multiple data entry errors.

Second, close integration with finance systems can provide a boost for organisational efficiency. Cross-departmental linking means staff costs are accurately reported as soon as payroll processing takes place.

Finally, bringing together enterprise systems means that employees can benefit from a comprehensive view of IT and data. Your software provider should be able to cover all human and finance management needs, while also providing the subtle configuration to meet your specific business requirements.

As such, the answer to the initial question is perhaps more straightforward than you might expect – payroll can happily sit across an organisation as long as it is brought together through an integrated IT system.

Samples of the HR Vs finance payroll debate on ABS’ LinkedIn page:

- “Payroll sits as a satellite to both finance and HR and deserves much more respect than it does from its HR colleagues.”

- “There is no such beast as good communication between HR, finance and payroll. They all are only trying to protect their own empires. This is why it is so important to get the positioning correct.”

- “In my experience, payroll has been under HR and I think that’s where it belongs. HR and payroll are better integrated on decisions that impact how employees are paid. We have a close relationship with finance and they monitor what hits the general ledger. We’ve had no problems with segregation of duties between HR and payroll.”

- “From my experience payroll has always been under finance, if only to keep the separation of the HR and payroll functions. Many parts of payroll such as the cost centres and expense codes are assigned by finance and it helps to keep the payroll function closely aligned with other finance functions.”

- “It should sit with finance. The most successful organisations I have worked with has payroll as a part of finance.”

Where should payroll sit within an organisation? is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

If it is the second option, your role model might be Gus Gorman in Superman III who defrauds his employer of $85,000 when he collects the rounded-up half-cents floating around inside the computer expense system.

The film’s plot nicely exposes the frailties and inefficiencies of the traditional approach to expenses: ask people to file paper returns, and fail to accurately track where money is really being spent, and the result can be a potential means for errant individuals to boost their incomes.

The odd exaggerated pound on mileage and an over-generous subsistence claim might not seem like a big deal. But for larger organisations, such unnecessary costs can quickly start to add up and become a significant cost black hole.

Organisations must seek to assert greater control over their finances. And IT and HR directors at the smarter firms are increasingly turning to employee expense management systems to do this.

Such technology creates a simple and effective management solution that allows staff to input their travel and subsistence expense claims online. The result is more accurate and effective means of managing staff expenses – and the potential cost savings make for impressive reading.

Efficiency savings typically include an 18 per cent reduction in mileage expense payments. In addition, organisations are able to benefit from a nine per cent reduction in staff expenses spend – a figure that highlights how potential fraudsters are forced to think twice before submitting false accounts.

Clever systems, such as Expenses created by Software Europe and provided by ABS to its customers, ensure that claims are checked and validated against an organisation’s policy. Errors are captured and flagged before they reach the payment phase, allowing authorisers to quickly query a wayward claim.

Which means only two things: an attempt from an individual to be the next Gus Gorman is bound to fail, and your organisation is likely to save a great deal of money in the long term.

Managing employee expenses is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

Although the UK economy continues to teeter tentatively towards recovery, inflation is rising and interest rates are set to increase sooner rather than later. Consumers have little money to spend and organisations, particularly those in the public sector, must continue to watch how cash is apportioned.

Secondly, high profile companies – like Microsoft and Sony (see further reading, below) – have warned of a growing skills gap and an impending crisis in expertise. That situation is expected to deteriorate in 2011; graduates have to fight hard for a limited number of vacancies and companies have to fight even harder to attract, and retain, high quality talent.

The final concerns come down to costs, both in terms of economic and labour-based constraints. Research from consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers (see further reading) suggests the cost of replacing a competent member of staff equates to approximately a year of that person’s salary

Finding the right person – from external advertising, dealing with recruitment agencies, interviewing candidates and negotiating salaries – is often a time-intensive and costly process. Even when a decision is made, there can be no guarantee that the person selected will represent a good fit for your business as many appointments are made on ‘gut feeling’.

At a time when many organisations are looking to cut costs and maximise value, HR departments are increasingly being tasked with identifying smarter ways to hire top quality talent as effectively and as cheaply as possible.

Help comes in the form of human capital management (HCM) technologies, which can help organisations to develop a more cost effective and successful recruitment strategy. These systems boost automation and improve reporting functionality to enable HR departments to analyse the costs and success of its different recruitment methods and ultimately, recruit as successfully and cost-effectively as possible.

HCM systems can also assist HR professionals to identify a preferred list of external agencies and negotiate better rates based on the success of the candidates they put forward. When it comes to internal assessment, detailed reporting techniques can be used to assess worker performance against broader company objectives’, helping the organisation to assess the suitability of specific employees. The results of enhanced automation are swifter access to accurate and real-time information and, ultimately, smarter recruitment.

Times are tough but that should not mean you scrimp and save on HCM software. The intelligent approach to recruitment will improve efficiency and provide a strong return on investment.

Further reading

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12192047

 http://www.develop-online.net/news/36722/Industry-report-will-reveal-massive-skills-gap-says-SCE-UK-boss

 http://www.ukmediacentre.pwc.com/News-Releases/Failure-to-retain-competent-employees-costing-UK-businesses-42bn-a-year-f27.aspx

Take the intelligent approach to recruitment is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

Replacing good people is never going to be easy. Research from PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests that the cost of replacing a competent member of staff equates to approximately a year of that person’s salary.

Another key recruitment issue is that the selection process is not an exact science. HR professionals are required to jump through a series of administrative loopholes, running a series of interviews, sorting out contracts and inevitably picking someone that they think provides the best fit.

And as we all know from our interaction with new employees, there is no such thing as a perfect fit; organisations simply have to hope that the person selected through the timely and costly recruitment process proves an asset to the team. Recruitment is, therefore, a bit of a ‘finger in the air’ process.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. While any new employee is likely to come with a degree of risk, organisations can make use of specialist software to help ensure that the transition to fully-fledged team player is as painless as possible.

The right human capital management (HCM) software can provide a valuable asset to any recruitment strategy. From identifying a gap in the workforce and sifting through the candidates’ applications through to awarding the contract, HCM software can help generate significant efficiency and cost savings during the recruitment process whilst increasing the chance of recruiting the right type of person.

Look for automated HCM technology that will help you to match potential employees against established criteria. Integrated HCM reporting tools will also highlight the recruitment methods that have been most successful and at what cost. Such tools will also enable you to track the success of costly recruitment agencies, creating a preferred supplier list of worthy partners.

Finally, look to automate as much as possible to free-up the HR team’s time. Automating response letters and other recruitment correspondence can help slash administration costs. Meanwhile, electronic recruitment forms which can be automatically uploaded to the HCM system, will help save both time and expense.

Attempting to find the right person is never going to be easy. But it doesn’t have to be a struggle. And with the right software in place, you will have a good head start and the intelligence needed to do the best job possible as you attempt to identify that perfect needle in that rather large haystack!

Using software for smarter recruitment is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

Of course, people can have any number of valid reasons for not being able to make it into the office, from illness and injury to family crises and annual leave. But even the valid excuses need to be tracked and monitored to ensure regulatory compliance and adequate levels of productivity.

The key to tracking the whereabouts of an organisation’s people is time and attendance (T&A) software, which provides an accurate recording of an employee’s time and movement. At its best, rather than just making people feel spied upon, T&A software aids employee engagement.

As a starting point, you’ll need to make sure that your T&A software records the HR basics, such as working hours, flexi-time, absence and lateness. Such an approach will allow your organisation to create an accurate and real-time record of staff movement. T&A accuracy can also be maintained through flexi-time reporting and functionality that manages leave, time in-lieu and holiday entitlement.

T&A software can also provide a tighter grip on HR administration and instant access to timely information, enabling improved decision making whilst helping supervisors to quickly identify potential T&A issues.

The need for additional T&A functionality is dependent on organisational demands. Functionality-rich T&A software can identify job costings, for example, showing how much particular employees or contractors financially contribute to the business.

By opting for a solution that allows the business to track and trace employees’ movements throughout the organisation’s offices, T&A technology can also be used to aid security

Overall, your system should be easy to configure, compliant-ready and integrated with other key HR and payroll areas to produce a holistic approach to human capital management.

Staff also tend to respond positively to having time and attendance controls in place as it ensures a level playing field. After all, when staff appear to ‘get away with’ poor time keeping and repeated absence, it can breed discontentment within a team, potentially leading to disengagement and disruption.

And so, with the right T&A technologies in place, the organisation is ensuring that its most valuable and costly asset – its people – are being effectively monitored without being too ‘big brother’.

Perhaps clock-watching is a good thing after all!

Automating corporate clock-watching is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

1)     People Management

People Management is the official magazine of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the professional body for those involved in the management and development of people.  Two blogs are run from its website – the Editors’ blog, in which People Management journalists comment on the latest HR news and developments, and the Specialists’ blog, where top HR commentators offer their observations on the business world.

2)     Personnel Today

 The ‘editors’ blog’ of this leading industry publication is a great source of information about everything going on in the world of human resources. Packed full of news and views, this blog is a must-read.

3)     HR Headmistress 

A personal blog from the MD of Milton Keynes-based consulting firm Russell HR.  Regularly updated, the blog provides an interesting perspective, proclaiming its existence is an opportunity to let off steam about employment law, HR, politicians, plumbers, the importance of shoes and all the really major issues of the day!

4)     HR Magazine

This blog from the much-respected magazine HR Magazine aims to put HR into a business perspective. Blog postings cover a wide range of topics, from flexible working to employment law.

5)     HR Zone

HR Zone is a popular site which allows everyone to submit blog postings and get their thoughts on HR topics or issues of their chests. All you need to do is log-in and start blogging!

Top of the blogs….part two is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

Here we share some of our favourite industry blogs, and explain why.

• Taking Stock

Taking Stock is a well-read blog from the people over at Accountancy Age. Expect plenty of “Gags and Gossip” from this popular site.

• CIMA

This blog from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and includes comment and analysis on key industry issues. Last month, CIMA also offered members the opportunity to blog on CIMAsphere,

• AccMan

Here, Dennis Howlett, industry veteran and prolific blogger, gives his views on the major issues of the day, providing comment on everything from SAP to Sage. The latest addition to the blog is AccMan TV, live streaming from the man himself – what more could we ask for?

• Telegraph.co.uk

Tracy Corrigan is a columnist and assistant editor of the Daily Telegraph, focussing mainly on business and finance. Her regularly-updated blog takes a thought-provoking stance on interesting stories hitting the headlines in the UK and across the world.

• AccountingWeb

The A-Team Blog is from the team behind AccountingWEB.co.uk, providing topical news and insights on a range of issues relevant to accountants and accounting professionals. Definitely worth a read!

A list of our favourite HR and payroll blogs will follow soon….

Top of the blogs…. is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

Kate Upcraft
Payroll writer and lecturer
ISIS Support Services Ltd
kateupcraft@btconnect.com

HMRC PAYE review is radical for the industry is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

There is little point investing in internal staff if you are going to cut workers at the earliest sign of a downturn. Training and employing staff is a costly process and it is surely remiss to write off such investment.

Before getting to the point of redundancies, your organisation needs to have a strategy to ensure workers are committed, productive and ambitious. Start by thinking about what type of company you would most like to work for.

If your business is only as good as your people, how can you ensure existing staff are capable of being future executives – and how can you attract the up-and-coming generation?

Concentrate on what types of things would improve the status of your organisation and make people more likely to consider a position in your firm as the right opportunity. That question is only likely to become increasingly important.

Leave nothing to chance. First, select recruitment tools that can help you identify the individual that is likely to be the best fit for your organisation. Weighted matching will ensure the right candidate is offered the right opportunity.

Then look for software that can help you create the right development projects for your new and retained staff. Trained workers feel wanted; prove your commitment through well-managed work experience, workshops and mentoring.

On an ongoing basis, use specialist analytics software to ensure worker performance is valued, rather than just monitored. The right metrics will show how staff are aligned with the broader goals of performance, ensuring people costs are not wasted and promotion is more likely.

Finally, make sure the obvious details – payment terms, absenteeism levels and succession planning – are not ignored. Workers will quickly feel aggrieved if they believe their efforts are being ignored at the expense of other less productive employees.

An integrated approach to human resources software can help with all these elements. Your business is only as good as your people and the right technology will attract employees and keep retained staff keen.

Next generation leadership is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment