Evolving Technology Trends in Self Service HRMS

Enterprises need to build HRMS services with capabilities that is essential in the current business environment. Businesses need to emphasize on more agile and scalable solutions. Technology has moved from mobile to cloud and there is an explosion in analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). The emergence of newer tools for HR professionals has proved to be a boon as it helps in making better human resources decisions.

The Evolving Technology Trends

With the quest to improve and desire to stay at the top, enterprises bank upon technology to implement cutting-edge solutions. Over the last couple of years, enterprise mobile apps have done a remarkable job in improving employee productivity and reducing infrastructure costs. To stay ahead of the technology curve, enterprises have to take a step forward and revamp their mobile suite with the following latest technology trends:

Chatbots

Chatbot is a program conducting conversation in the form of a text or audio. Chatbots can take instructions from the users and execute various transactions. It proves to be appropriate for making the HRMS mobile app as a self-service app. Some of the typical user scenarios that can be automated with Chatbots are:

• Call center help desk: You are able to automate the response provided to the employee calls to help desk regarding HR, Accounts, Admin or Payroll concerns. A simple use case will be that an employee can get details about the per diem policy of the company for business visits.
• Chatbot approvals: A chat requesting an approval of a record change or leave application can be sent to a manager for approval. Manager can interact with the Chabot and take informed decision.
• Analytics: Chatbots can collect real-time analytics to figure out what kind of queries are appearing frequently. This helps the HR admin to make necessary amendments in the process or take informed decisions to resolve the high priority concerns.
• Form filling: HR department often requires the employees to fill lengthy forms. The same can be automated with Chatbots. It can fill forms and at the same time, provide answers to related queries.

Touch ID Login

Get rid of the task of remembering passwords and login with biometric fingerprint authentication technology. A user can configure both left and right thumb prints on the phone and can securely login to application.

Unified SSO Login

Create highly scalable mobile app with a unified SSO login that can create an authentication session which enables the app to talk to different backend systems, simultaneously. SSO mechanism, like ADFS, establishes an identity federation by implementing a trust between security realms of multiple systems. This is achieved by implementing federation servers, one each, on accounts and resources side. The federation server on the accounts side will authenticate the user through active directory domain services and issue a security token that will contain identity and claims about the user. The federation server on the resources side will validate the security token and will, in turn, give another token for the local servers to accept user’s asserted identity and provide controlled access to their resources and services.

Usage Analytics

Monitor app performance and take proactive steps to ensure better usage and high adoption. Mobile backend systems, like MCS, provide analytics API that can integrate with mobile app code to log transactions in the form of events. The mobile backend receives events from mobile app in the form of REST calls along with JSON payload, which provides contextual information like a user’s location, the start and end of a user session, and details about the user’s mobile device. Mobile developer could use various SDK options to customize the REST / JSON payload calls in order to generate specific analytics reports, via Oracle MCS. The analytics reports plots the frequency of incoming events versus the specified time periods. Some of the examples of reports are:

• API call count
• API response time
• New users
• Active users
• Session count
• Session duration
• User retention with funnel analysis

Apart from the reports, a developer can write custom code to get specific information from the HR data. Some of the sample scenarios can be:

Absence management: Custom report dashboard can send alerts for increase in sick leaves. A rise in ‘sick leave’ absence request API calls can be an alarm for disease spreading. The HR admin can take appropriate measures regarding hygiene or employee vaccination decisions based on such leave trends.

Benefits administration: By analyzing custom reports depicting the trends in benefits plan enrollment in terms of API calls and time of the year, HR admin can decide on strategizing various discounts on bundled health plan enrollments to ensure comprehensive and economic coverage for employees.

Push Notifications

Improve enterprise communication; make enterprise level announcements as a pop-up on employee’s mobile device. Users do not have to be logged into the app or use their devices to receive them. Notifications can provide timely awareness about tax documents, submission deadline, information update, holidays, appraisal cycles, missed weekly time entries etc. to:

• A specific device ID or a collection of device IDs
• A specific user or a collection of users
• All users and devices associated with a specific mobile backend
• Devices or users for a given operating system (iOS, Android or Windows)

Chat messaging along with video conferences

Ensure prompt and encrypted communication between employees with enterprise chat messaging available on company network or VPN or over the internet. An employee can directly ping or make a video /audio call to anyone after searching through employee directory in HRMS app.

Oracle HRMS App

HRMS mobile app, pre-loaded with the above mentioned features, sums up to be a powerful self-service solution. The app seamlessly integrates with Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and other existing enterprise systems. The product focuses on enhancing employee productivity by automating back office functions along with informed business decision -making and improved collaboration from anywhere, anytime. The modular approach in developing the app allows it to be easily adapted to the client’s corporate design, themes, logos, custom functionalities and special security requirements like MDM wrapping, API gateway integration and SSO login.

HRMS self-service product is ideal for customers who need a comprehensive solution to automate self-service process in a quick, scalable and secure manner. The app is built on cross-platform ionic framework and the front-end and back-end code is carefully written to ensure modularity of individual functionalities. Commonly used directives like attachment, fingerprint login with SSO, chats and PDF reader are created in such a manner that they can be reused as plugins.

The app can easily accommodate the varied tech stack availability of an enterprise. It is highly compatible with cloud-based (Oracle MCS/ ICS) or on-premise (custom Java / OSB/ BizTalk) Middleware options. Security for enterprise database is ensured with VPN connections and reverse proxy servers in the DMZ layer. The app can be wrapped easily with MDM certificate to allow better enterprise control on devices. The loosely coupled functionalities of the app supports easy scaling up. And can add more functionalities like appraisal management, employee expense claim, recruitments etc.

Other Key Features of the App

• View and edit employee profile
• View and edit employee personal information
• Benefits administration
• Effective leave planning using team calendar
• View absence summary and details
• Absence dashboard
• Apply and approve absence
• Employee directory along with organization chart
• Manage notifications
• View pay slips
• Maintain document of records
• Multi language support
• Time-entry
• SIT and EIT’s
• Offline review

Conclusion

These latest technology trends are considered to provide scalable access to organizational information in real-time. The technologies help to bridge the communication gap by allowing immediate access to crucial information at all times. The concept of Chatbots is sure to gain momentum as they rise in popularity. Tasks that needs analysis and reasoning, and are backed by sufficient data can be interfaced with users using message bots. The technology trends are the future for many time-consuming tasks that will be handled in a convenient and hassle-free manner. HRMS app is sure to benefit the employees.

By,

Saurabh Bahree

Senior Mobility Consultant, RapidValue