The right technology, used the right way, can have a dramatic effect on a company’s bottom line. If employees have access to the technology tools they need and the training and support to help them use the tools effectively, the company can benefit in many ways, including:

• Increased efficiency in day-to-day functions
• Better accountability for performance
• Ability to analyze effectiveness of business functions
• More efficient monitoring of results
• Happier, more productive employees who have the company’s best interests at heart

 HR Systems Survey

Consulting and research firm CedarCrestone produces, among other things, an annual HR Systems Survey, which studies HR technologies adoption and the value achieved by their use. The CedarCrestone 2012–2013 HR Systems Survey is based on 1,246 responses from organizations representing more than 21 million employees.

FREE Investigation Report Template

Prepare thorough, consistent investigation reports with our free report template.

Download Template

Lexy Martin, Vice President of Research and Analytics at CedarCrestone, has been the author of the HR Systems Survey for the 15 years since its inception. On the release of the current survey, Martin answered some questions we asked about the survey and her ideas on what the data means, providing insight into the future of HR technology adoption and efficacy.

Can you tell me about some of trends in HR technology design you are seeing?

The #1 reason that respondent organizations are choosing a software-as-a-service HR management solution is an “improved user experience for employees, managers, and HR.” Solutions from the likes of Ultimate Software and Workday are gaining customers because of this, as are other SaaS HRMS solutions.

How are they affecting the user experience?

I personally think that some of the ERP-vendors have forgotten to focus on some of the simplest to fix areas in their solution set. Specifically, employee and manager self-service transactional support is quite poor. When your screen refreshes on each entry to change an address, for example, it’s pretty easy for users to give a vendor a very poor score. Or when a system is designed for HR and not for the employee or manager, people give a solution a poor score.

What have been some of the traditional barriers to HR technology adoption? Is this changing?

Traditional barriers have been high total cost of ownership and data security and privacy concerns. With the first, software-as-a-service solutions offered on a per employee cost are making it more feasible for smaller organizations to automate. BTW….we saw a large increase in the number of organizations in the 200-1000 employee size range. These are the organizations that have lower adoption levels across all the technologies we cover in our survey. If you look at our figure titled Total HRMS Only Expenditures, you’ll see that with SaaS, these smaller organizations pay less per employee than those that have chosen the licensed on premise solutions, which until recently were basically what organizations had as available options.

What do you see as the biggest improvement in HR technology tools in recent years?

You have only to look at the current high-level trends -- moves to SaaS from licensed solutions, social, mobile, and analytics – to see where improvements are coming. The SaaS solutions have best-practice functionality with an enticing user experience; social and mobile delivers functionality on the employees’ devices of choices; and analytics enables managers and employees to make more informed decisions.