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HCM integrations

HCM Integrations 101: Best Practices

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Alexandre Diard Alexandre Diard

Have you considered investing in an HCM integration for your workforce management? If so, you’ve come to the right place. Investing in a new human resource management tool can be expensive and convincing your executive team to sign off on the purchase can take some convincing. Therefore, it is important that you understand all of the benefits of investing in an HCM integration before you take the plunge. In this article, we will explore the benefits of HCM Integrations, best practices, and how to know end-to-end if this tool is right for your specific organization. 

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What is an HCM Integration?

HCM integrations allow your team to benefit from the connection of multiple tools across your organization as an HR-management solution. Your HCM will talk to other business applications with its HR technology, streamlining many of your operational processes. Typically, an application programming interface is used to connect these tools seamlessly as an HR solution, in order to allow data to move between them. This way, all data will stay in sync, safe, and up-to-date. HCM integrations are enjoyed by teammates and HR professionals alike to help with time and attendance, payroll, performance review, timesheets, HR metrics and other HR business-processes software solutions for the best employee development. 

Are HCM Integrations Right for Your Organization?

HCM integrations are a very standard practice organizations implement in their HR-strategy that is constantly evolving. The most valuable asset that your organization has, is its people and as so it has to invest in people management. Human capital management helps human resources teams invest in the success of this capital. As your organization grows, which most do, HCM integrations can help you make smarter business decisions and recommend the right course to deploy your strategic hr plan to your executive team. 

HCM integrations can also help your business recruit the right talent to grow your team. Talent acquisition is anything but easy, especially when trying to find the right fit for your business. It is a job seekers market, which means employers need to step up in terms of compensation and benefits packages. HCM integrations can help you stand out as an employer, by integrating your ATS system. This way, you can automate the process of posting on several job boards, saving your organization time and money. You can also centralize data from several different applicant tracking systems, if you keep applicant data in multiple places.

You will also be able to streamline your onboarding process with the help of an HCM integration. HCM integrations allow you to view all of the onboarding materials necessary for employee success, all from one portal. You will be able to review a standard checklist, to make sure that each and every employee has what they need before their start date. Employee training tools include shipping employee equipment, completing tool training, and submitting essential compliance forms. 

Retaining employees is just as important as attracting them in the first place. By utilizing your HCM integration, you will be able to view specific data points that give you insight into different types of people data. Your HCM integration will help you aggregate different data points, such as rewards, performance, absence, and more. All of this information is collected on your central HCM dashboard, with the help of integrations with other human resources tools, such as your benefits portal.

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HCM Integrations 101: Best Practices

As with any human resources process, HCM integrations come with best practices. Implementing proper HCM integrations is crucial in order to properly streamline your data collection. By looking at data across your organization from a single dashboard, and having your tools talk to one another, you will be able to make the best predictions and recommendations to benefit your team. 

Keeping Your HCM Up-to-Date

Human capital management solutions can help you save a lot of money, especially when it comes to employing admins in your company. A lot of the backend work that typically falls on the administrators at your organization will be automated with the help of your HCM system. Administrators are typically responsible for granting licenses, making orange changes, and distributing important company information. Your HCM system will integrate with the current tools that you use, to create a dashboard or employee portal that is completely customized for your organization. Not only will your current administrators enjoy having this extra help on hand, but your employees will enjoy having a self-serve system that they can use to get updated on company data. One of the ways in which companies can save big on HR costs, is by doing an audit of the tools they use. Your HCM integration will allow you to view all of the systems you are subscribed to so that you can continue or cancel your memberships in a more streamlined way.

HCM Integrations and Onboarding Efficiency

Onboarding employees is a huge cost for many organizations concerning enterprise resource planning. Welcoming new hires, training them, sending out new equipment, and adding them to the necessary systems, comes with a big price tag. If your organization is looking to cut back on its spending, an HCM integration can help you do just that HCM integration will work alongside your ITSM to help add an element of automation to your current onboarding process. So, once you have sent an offer letter to a candidate, their signature will trigger your system to automatically start the onboarding process. The best onboarding systems are as automated as possible while providing new hires with immediate communication and next steps. This allows them to feel less lost during the onboarding process and provides your organization with more trust early on. Once you build out these workflows in your HR system, you can customize your HCM tool to grant specific systems depending on the role of your new hire. For example, their manager can pick exactly what tech tools they should have access to, important onboarding documents, and automatically set meetings with key contributors during their first week. 

Data Collection and Analysis When Integrating Your HCM

Data collection can be an extremely expensive and complex process for any organization as part of their HR processes. If you are looking to optimize your data collection and analysis process, it is important to streamline these systems as much as possible. If your data is only stored in a specific to all, you run the risk of falling victim to a data silo. Data silo occurs when data only lives within certain tools, therefore this data cannot be analyzed against other collection points you have gathered with the use of different systems. When you eliminate data silos, you will open up a more streamlined form of communication for your employees, too. Your employee experience will also improve, as employees can utilize the HCM system to access data when they need it, without the help of an administrator.

Data entry can also run the risk of being highly dependent on accuracy. When processes are run by humans, there is always a risk of human error occurring. To avoid this, you want to rely on your systems and tools as much as possible. This will allow you to focus more on implementing change as a result of the data you have collected. This is a task that can only be done by real employees, and not be taken over by artificial intelligence. The more time you were able to save end the data collection and analysis process, the more time you can dedicate towards having human-centered conversations in your organization. 

Measure Employee Experience After HCM Integration

Your employee experience scores will likely increase, due to implementing HCM systems within your organization. If you do a survey for your employee net promotor score to get a pulse on your organization’s standing, you will likely notice an increase after implementing your HCM system, as the result of more employee efficiency. The bottom line is that employees like to feel empowered. If you give them the ability to access important information regarding life at the company, they will be able to view important details to help them make the best decision for their career.

HCM Integrations will also allow you to analyze data across applications to simplify your processes. Since all of your human resources tools will talk to one another, you can utilize this advantage to see what benefits your company offers that are most loved by your team. Check and see how many people are enrolled in your benefits program, and what specific plans they are choosing. You can also look at overall PTO use and make adjustments to your time off flexibility. Having data like this is truly invaluable and can be used to help strengthen your retention strategy and improve employee experience overall. 

We hope this article helped you get inspired to start your HCM integration journey. Your employees will thank you for improving their experience and allowing your organization to become more streamlined!

Why wait to customize your HR ecosystem?

There’s no better time to explore the PeopleSpheres platform. Zero obligations.

Free trial

PeopleSpheres features