By Scott Thomson, Chief Operating Officer, Links International
We often speak with potential SME clients (less than 1,000 employees) who are about to make a horrendously expensive mistake – buying a HCM / HRIS payroll system in Asia.
Buying an HRIS in Asia is about as crazy as continuing to play Pokémon Go despite being stabbed.
You’ve lost it and here’s why:
You can get your HRIS / HCM for free!
What’s the alternative? Not being charged for your HCM or HRIS. Yes, you can access an HCM / HRIS for free!
Adopting Payroll Outsourcing instead of purchasing an HCM / HRIS should enable you to get access to an HCM for free. Most Payroll Outsourcing providers use an HCM from which to deliver their services and can spread the cost of the HCM across a high number of clients, which means access to the HCM should be included in the cost of your outsourcing service. This is a HUGE benefit as your spend on HCM now also provides you with additional resource as a result of the Payroll Outsourcing.
What would you do with an extra hour in your day? You now have a ton more time to focus on making a difference in your business.
Most affordable HCM / HRIS in Asia are tragic
We regularly review HCM / HRIS systems in Asia as part of integrating with clients’ existing HCM and in order to ensure that we are delivering our Payroll Outsourcing service from a top product. Outside of the tier 1 HCM (e.g. Success Factors, Oracle, Workday etc.), the large majority of HCMs in Asia have critical issues:
- Most Asia HCMs are ancient legacy systems that were created 10-20 years ago and are likely to be made obsolete (if not already!) in the next 1-2 years. Bluntly speaking, the amount of on-premise based HCM with terrible user experience we see in Asia is overwhelming and the number of companies that readily accept these substandard systems is staggering.Having a great employee experience is critical and delivering your employee experience from a spreadsheet or system your parents thought was awful when they used it will not help you attract and retain top talent!
- Most Asia HCMs only support payroll calculations in one or two countries (if you’re lucky). If, like most businesses, you are looking to benefit from Asia’s continued rapid growth and expand quickly in Asia, having an HCM that only works in one or two countries is a big fly in the ointment, as you need to continually purchase country specific HCMs that probably won’t integrate with each other. A good Payroll Outsourcing partner will be able to provide a regional integrated HCM solution at a regional price and prevent the issues associated with an ever-growing monster of unintegrated, single country solutions.
You are making a big commitment with no flexibility
You’re probably less likely to be fired if you adopt Payroll Outsourcing over purchasing and implementing an HCM system.
Purchasing an HCM / HRIS involves a significant amount of commitment and needs to generate you a demonstrable return over at least 3-5 years. As a result, there is significant work, cost and personal risk associated with implementing an HCM, right from procurement, to implementation, to training, to daily support. Committing to the wrong partner with no flexibility is a recipe for a career disaster.
In short, a good Payroll Outsourcing provider will enable you to remove the risks associated with purchasing and implementing an HCM / HRIS (e.g. unsuccessful implementation, low adoption rates) while also requiring a much shorter commitment time frame.
Engaging a good Payroll Outsourcing partner will not only enable you to focus on making a difference to your business by reducing your HR admin and HR spend, but also negates the risk and commitment associated with purchasing a low quality HCM in Asia.
If you’re using a great HCM / HRIS in Asia, we’d love to hear about it!
Links International was voted Best Payroll Outsourcing Partner in Hong Kong and Singapore. If you want to make a difference in your organisation, whilst saving time and costs, outsource your payroll with Links! Contact us now.