Human Resource Information System Specification and Selection - Research Paper Example

Human Resource Information System Specification and Selection Executive Summery Information Systems help their users to benefit from the information they provide them with. There are many kinds of information systems. Management information systems are systems which provide information to the manager so that they can make better decisions easily. With the help of MIS it is easy to feed a large amount of data easily into a system and the system converts that data in to information for different purposes. In the Modern age these systems have been so simplified that they can be custom made according to any organizations needs and users can easily use them with only a little training. The MIS benefits different departments of an organization. The departments which are greatly benefited from them are Human Resource Management, Marketing Department and Finance Department. These departments now use these systems and with their help are able to perform their functions with greater ease. Efficiency and productivity of these departments have increased and cost has been significantly cut. The small investment the organizations make in MIS is worth every penny. Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Introduction Information system is a system which helps its users with information so that the user can perform his task efficiently. 1Generally the information system is a system of people, data records and activities that process the data to form information. It makes access to information easy so that it could be understood and appropriate actions may be taken on it on the right time. There are different types of information systems for example, transaction processing systems, management information systems, decision support systems and knowledge management systems. With the help of information technology it is easy to handle large amounts of information and perform difficult calculations and controlling many processes simultaneously. In any business the extent of the involvement of an information system may differ. In a small organization, a system might be doing limited data collection but in a complex organization it might be performing a very complex task. Even if the information systems today perform complex tasks, they are easy to operate. The language of input and output is very simple and very simple and basic training can enable an employee to learn how to use the system. An information system grows with the growth of its organization; as the organization grows more complex features are inculcated in the information system.2 A progressive organization should always support it self with a good information system which can always be upgraded and modified to match the ever changing business environment. Today technology is changing rapidly and organization should try and get maximum benefit out of it. Information systems if used smartly, reduce the work force requirements in many departments, and do activities like maintaining records and book keeping. It saves valuable time and increased the speed of work. It increases the efficiency and productivity of certain departments resulting in an over all organizational increase in productivity. Management Information Systems Management Information Systems (MIS) are systems which are designed to provide information which is needed for effective decision making by managers.3 It gives detailed history and future prospects of the project. It gathers data relevant to the project turns it into information and provides it to the right person for the right decision. It helps its user in the functions of planning and control. It helps in determining the course of action and helps to control and monitor whether specific targets have been achieved or not. A management information system (MIS) helps in overall internal controls of business covering the application of people, documents, technologies, and procedures by management accountants to solving business problems such as costing a product, service or a business-wide strategy. 4Management information systems are very different from other information systems; they are used to analyze other information systems applied in operational activities in the organization. Any system that provides data or information to people other than managers is not a management information system. Effective management systems are very important in today’s rapidly changing dynamic environment. Quality of work is improved as due to large sizes of organizations, managers cannot have personal contact all over the organization and it is the MIS that enables them to keep track of everything. The MIS simplifies completes information and makes it east for the manager to access the situation. It helps in decentralizing authority as it can make it possible for the operations to be monitored at a lower level. It connects all departments of an organization and makes information readily available for them. It helps in evaluating performance and helps in improving it by comparing it to standards. MIS is of great help all over the organization and is beneficial to the core departments of every organization. Benefits of MIS to the Human Resources Department MIS and Human Resource Department are so related that today there are MIS which are specially designed for the processes of Human Resources; these are called Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS). The HR department is very essential for every organization. It involves selection and evaluation of candidates, and manages progress of the employees. It is responsible for promotions and training of employees.5 It also keeps all the academic records of the employees, their experience and expertise. It does succession planning and points out employees who have the potential to go far with the organization. The HRMS helps in all the functions of the human resources department.6 It speeds up the process of recruitment. It has to manage the pay rolls and benefits, it has to do succession planning and manage its people. It has to keep record of the education, skills, achievements and potential of its employees. Managers are greatly helped by the HRMS implemented in organizations. These help managers in activities related to pay roll, benefit management, work time, Succession planning, recruiting, training and performance records of people. The HRMS gathers data on employee’s attendance and his time in and time out and generates employee’s pay cheques by deducting taxes automatically from his total salary. Data is fed to this system by HR personnel and Time management Systems. It assists with all transactions of employees and is integrated with the financial management systems. The work time aspect of the HRMS gathers the date about work and time to do cost benefit analysis and to deduce efficiency. It also keeps track of the employee related benefits like insurance, profit sharing and retirement schemes. It also records all the data of employees, and makes the managers capable to read all the data on the employee with analysis of his future potential. It also tracks the training an employee has undergone and identifies what future training programs he is ready for. It has a budget managing function too.7 Performance management and appraisals are also assisted by the HRMS. It tracks employees through out the year and align objectives with the organization, it evaluates the competencies of an individual, his progress and gives feed back on the performance of an individual. It helps to reduce time needed for scheduling tasks of work force, reducing operating costs; it provides reports on the productivity and efficiency of staff. The biggest benefit of this system is that it reduces the workforce in the Human Resources Department, the activities that needed a team to be managed before can now be managed by a very small team. If an organization has thousands of employees it can still keep record of them very easily, it can retrieve required data about any employee at any time, and it can predict which employees should be promoted, not on the basis of assumptions but on the basis of facts. It can find out what essential training its employees need to keep pace with modern technology. An organization can easily find which employees it has to invest in and who will be the most beneficial for them in the future. Many companies like oracle are making customized HRMS to serve the individual needs of every organization. If a company does not have the assets to build an HRMS for itself it is very easy to buy one from a vendor. At the initial stage it may look like a huge investment to an organization but the long term be Benefits and the future costs that it will cut for the organization are far greater than the initial investment. Companies with thousands of employees find it very interesting and beneficial but companies with few employees think it might be a little too expensive for them. But a company should always pace according to the changing environment, in the near future when the company will grow it will definitely feet the need of an HRMS. Benefits of MIS in the Marketing Department Marketing is also a very important department in any organization. It is no use of making products if there is nobody to buy it. It means activities and process for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large.8 Organizations invest very heavily on the marketing department because it helps them sell whatever they make. A marketing management information system helps in making the functions of marketing easier.9 It keeps track of trend of the marketing environment and analyzes it through four subsystems. These sub systems are the internal accounting systems, marketing intelligence system, marketing research systems, and analytical systems. The information from this MIS helps the managers, to make marketing decisions as well as planning, implementation and control of operations. Internal Accounting system is a very basic system that keeps track of orders, sales, inventory levels, receivables, payables, etc. This information is than analyzed and the reports generated makes managers aware of opportunities present and problems at hand. Change in trends can be analyzed and patterns can be identified. 10They can generate solutions and options to over come possible slow down of sales. Inventory levels are reported so that what stock is present in an inventory at a given time and what level of inventory should be maintained in different seasons. This helps in the reduction of costs related to storage space, it prevents over stocking. This results in efficient use of resources. Sales representatives, dealers and consumers all over place their orders with the organization. The orders are received and the department sends the invoices to various departments. Orders are placed for items that are out of stock. Effective count of orders is taken and it is estimated how many orders can be delivered from the present inventory. After the sales have taken place personnel report it immediately. At times sales are reported slowly due to different reasons and this result in incorrect report making which adversely affects decision making. With marketing management information systems managers get day to day data and they get a daily update on the market. This system enables the marketing people to be up to date. They learn competitive moves and market needs at the right time when they have a chance to make decisions and profit the organization. Without this system a manager may know about a development in the market so late that it may be of no use to the organization. Marketing is very challenging. The marketing department always has to be fully informed about new techniques, new developments, new markets, new completion, new product and new companies. Every day there is information overload as knowledge about all these things are on the internet, in newspapers and in peer groups. It is very difficult for a marketing manager to do all his duties as well as keep first hand knowledge about all the new happening things. If he does know about these things the performance of his organization suffers. A marketing management information system makes sure that correct marketing information is at the disposal of the manager at the time of decision making. It makes sure that no important information is over looked by the department. The organizations earn all their money through marketing activities and if there is a problem in this department or it this department is old fashioned they may suffer from great losses and be taken out of competition by their rivals. All the organizations try their level best to keep their marketing departments in the best position possible. Technology is used to benefit this department in every way possible and Marketing Management information System is one of the best technological investments that can be done by any organization who wants to grow. Benefits of MIS in the Finance Department A financial management system is an information system which keeps track of financial events and summarizes financial information.11 It has advanced accounting features which work according to the needs of the environment in which it is installed. It uses information to support management and budget decisions. It helps in preparation of financial reports and statements. The system should be properly integrated in the organization. It should have standard data classification so that it can keep recording all financial activities. It should have proper procedure of data entry, processing and reporting. It avoids duplication of entry so that financial misjudgment may not occur. It interfaces with the It stores, organizes and makes access to financial information easy. It stores financial information for along period of time; it stores the spending and budgets of the past. It keeps a detailed account on the inflow and outflow of funds. It makes it easy to keep the inventories of all financial assets and liabilities.12 There are different types of FMIS, from simple ledger to more complicated things. A good system provides timely, accurate and consistent data to make the right decisions at the right time. It helps in making policies in accordance with budgets. It helps in making, planning and analyzing budgets and enables a manager to have more control over financial activities. It helps in making correct financial reports. It also facilitates audits of organizations finances. It helps in generation of balance sheets, cost reports, return of investments, etc. It gives clear picture of accounts receivable and accounts payable, budget variances and performance reports. It actually reduces the work of the finance department and the record that many people used to keep collectively, with errors expected, is now possible to be kept with the help of this system, almost error free. Managers use the given information of this system to plan budgets and match the variance of last year’s budgets. They easily track the financial position of the company at all times. They can measure the financial performance of individual teams. It helps to identify flaws of the budget before it’s too late and helps in correcting those flows. The cash management features help in the management and forecasting the cash flows of the future, it also identifies the future financial needs. They help in checking and making sure that before a transaction is committed the organization has enough funds to do through with it. It makes sure that proper payroll is run on the proper time. This system helps the organization to benefit financially, it helps the organization to truthfully evaluate its financial position and make investment decisions according. It helps the organization to reduce its losses by amending its budget in a timely manner. Before the implementation of these systems all activities were done separately and a lot of people had to be separately employees just to keep books and ledgers up to date. Managers had to keep a team of people under them who would go through all that material extensively and come up with recommendations. All these people had to be given salaries and managed. By these systems it is easy for a manager to get extensive knowledge of the financial position without having a very big team. There has been a drastic cut down in the number of people employee in the department. All the important resources of the department can now focus their attention on ital decision making they do not have to utilize their time in activities which are time consuming and whose results are not proportional to the amount of hard work and energy that is put in them. Conclusion Management Information Systems make the decision making for managers easy by providing them with processed data in form of information. Its implementation helps the organizations to cut costs and increase efficiency and productivity. Many departments benefit from the MIS but it is most beneficial to the HR Department, the Marketing Department and the Finance Department. It makes their tasks easy and allows the managers of these departments to have greater knowledge and information about their work. It enables them to make good decisions. Organizations have realized the importance of these systems and have invested in them. They know that in the lost run this investment will bring them more benefit as compared to their investments. Organizations with more number of employees are benefited more from these systems. References Ralph M. Stair & George W. Reynolds, “Fundamentals of Information Systems”, Fifth Edition Anne Banks Pidduck, John Mylopoulos, Carson C. Woo, M. T. Ozsu, “Advanced information systems engineering: 14th International Conference, 2002” Raymond McLeod, “Management information systems”, 1998 R. Wayne Mondy, Judy Bandy Mondy, Robert M. Noe, “Human Resource Management” John Macy, “Human Resource Information System Specification and Selection: Documenting Technology Needs Based on HR Business Process” William Richard King, “Marketing Management Information Systems”, 1977 Gerald Albaum, Edwin Duerr, “International Marketing and Export Management” 2008 Australia Dept. of Finance. Consultancy Services Unit, Australia, Dept. of Finance, “How to Implement a FMIS: A Guide to Implementing Financial Management Information Systems” Dimitris N. Chorafas , “The New Technology of Financial Management: Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems, Intelligent Networks, Knowledge Engineering” Susan M. Heathfield “HRIS Definition” at http://humanresources.about.com/od/glossaryh/a/hris.htm Steve Johnson, Sarah Woodward, “Marketing Management Information Systems” Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 1988 Read More