Today, the rising Human Resources trends are mostly about how to become a strategical partner for the development of the companies. To have the adequate resource in the way of taking place within the strategical decision making mechanism, HR should give up certain “primitive” duties such as recording and filing employee information papers or attendance sheets. From my point of view, Human Resources professionals should keep up with the times and learn to benefit from technology as soon as possible. Therefore, HR departments should integrate their systems with HR software tools -also called Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS), Human Resources Management Systems (HRMS) or Human Capital Management (HCM) software- to manage a large or growing workforce in a more efficient way.

After deciding to buy an HR tool, we will face with the difficult phase: which tool is the best? Since there are more than hundred different HR software all over the world, it is hard to choose one of them to integrate all the HR functions. We use ZOHO recruit tool at the company I work right now. But I also curious about the rest of the world technology. Therefore, I had examined four of the most common tools –BambooHR, TribeHR, iCIMS and Orange HRM- and analyze their pros and cons from different points of view.

First of all, BambooHR is suitable for the companies with 50 to 500 employees. It is a plus o see all employee information like sick days or bereavement requests and approvals, job history, benefits, emergency contacts and so on in one location. The reminder feature of the tool is also attractive, since it doesn’t allow you to forget any birthday, benefit date, or training deadline of the employees. Additionally, you can use the tool as of the first moment of recruitment process. This software has an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) which will help to post job openings and hire the right person fast by making applicant information responsive, collaborative, intuitive and integrated. It provides you with CV database, therefore you can create the company’s own database with received applications. Also, when a candidate is hired, information will automatically be saved in BambooHR and an employee record automatically created. Thanks to even only this feature, you will gain more time to focus on emphatical needs of employees. If you handle with the payroll process in-house by HR, you will also be able to use the payroll partnership and you can see time off, pay stubs and timesheets all in one place. As a strategical partner, HR must have some kind of mathematical information such as employee turnover. This tool also gives this kind of information when you need to analyze. With this tool, not only HR employees but also all employees at company will gain time. Rather than fill out paperwork that has to be delivered to another department, the employee can log into the software with his/her own password and quickly fill out a request to which the corresponding manager has instant access. I was also curious about the customer experience and response time of CRM and when I read the customer comments on the Internet, I had satisfied about the masterful job of team’s solutions and quick response email turnaround. You can use this software also to get performance reviews and 360 degree feedback with Small Improvements plugin. Although tens of advantages, there are of course certain disadvantages of BambooHR tool. If your company has more than 500 employees, it’s not suggested to use this tool. Also, for job opening list and ATS, it does not provide more than kariyer.net does.

Second tool I will analyze is TribeHR which is suggested for the companies with 5 to 500 employees. If your company is a small business or non profit organization, TribeHR looks good to make HR less about numbers and more about people and their needs. If you are not sure to buy, you can try it for free. The best feature of this tool is scheduling a team calendar for the all members of team. The team can check the holidays of everyone and schedule his/her own holiday plannings in terms of the dates of team mates. Also, to increase the employee performance, TribeHR is suitable to remind them to be more diligent about their goal-setting and kudos. On the other hand, according to the user comments in the Internet, this tool still has some bugs which complicates the user experience. Besides, the depth of customizability is low comparing to, for example, Orange HRM. If the numer of Y generation at your company is high, it’s not suggested to use a that strict tool since Y gen likes to be able to play with the appearance of the business tools.

İCIMS is the third HRIS which has the similar subscription base pricing model with the first two tools. This tool also provides different kinds of opportunities such as ATS, new hire portal, job board posting. Additionally, if you have or planning to have an employee referral program, İCIMS will make it easy for you to track and remember the details. On the other hand, if you are planning to use this tool for hiring process, you may face with some difficulties. For instance, adding job descriptions from a Word Document was not as simple as cut and paste, some edits are needed. Candidate skills key word search is cumbersome. Searching for things in general can be tough.

The last HRIS I will present is Orange HRM which is a cost-effective HR solution for any size of business. You can benefit from its different modules such as leave module, time/attendance module, benefits module or recruitment module. The best aspect of this tool is to be able to use it effectively in large organizations. If you decide to use also Orange HRM Live, you will be functionally more advantaged to have some extra features such as monitoring of the time employees spend working like work tracking tools. This software is comparingly experienced at the industry since its initial entry into the market was in 2006, most probably that is why its references are worth to consider such as PWC, Redhat, Duke University and so on. The disadvantage of Orange HRM is the deficiency of accounting integration, therefore if you need the tool also for payroll, Orange HRM is not the suitable one. Additionally, this tool uses a series of dialogs that are not well interconnected between the modules, so if you are about to add a new employee into a directory module and wish to assign him a position, then you must go to another module, define the position and then go back and assign the position to the employee. Furthermore, the performance module only focuses on working hours and attendance, so it’s limited. The reports module seems also limited such as employee demographics when you compared to, for example, Bamboo HR.

In conclusion, strategic HR involves growing your company by attracting and developing the best people, as well as better managing your workforce overall. Strategic HR applications generally provide some combination of applicant tracking and recruiting, learning management, as well as performance review functionality. This type of software streamlines these strategic processes to ensure that a company is using its staff as efficiently as possible, and also that employees are continuing to grow and develop.

REFERENCES

1. http://www.recruiter.com/i/review-integrated-recruiting-with-the-icims-applicant-tracking-system/
2. http://www.trustradius.com/reviews/icims-2014-01-17-07-40-22
3. http://www.bamboohr.com/
4. http://www.crunchbase.com/company/bamboo-hr
5. http://www.softwareadvice.com/hr/bamboohr-profile/
6. http://www.getapp.com/bamboohr-saas-hr-software-application
7. http://www.getapp.com/compare/human-resources-software/icims-talent-platform-vs-bamboohr
8. http://www.getapp.com/compare/human-resources-software/tribehr-vs-bamboohr
9. https://www.small-improvements.com/documentation/bamboohr
10. http://human-resource-management.findthebest.com/compare/22-61/BambooHR-vs-TribeHR
11. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/product-spotlight/review-orangehrm-human-resource-management-tool/
12. https://www3.icims.com/CandidateManagementDemo/1137/1057