Software is meant to make your job easier, but if it’s not built by coding professionals who “get” the HR world, the technology can’t perform at its highest level. The integrations and data transfer portion of HR software is often the sticking point for companies getting into the smart HR world. If the integrations are well built and nimble, your HR team will experience smart HR at its best, from Day 1. If the integrations are old, clunky or built for a one-size-fits-all match up…your HR team may be adding to its workload.

When looking at adding systems and getting them configured with your ERP, look for a software that has a proven record of “playing nice” with systems like Sage 300, Viewpoint Spectrum, Viewpoint Vista and ADP, to name a few. The BirdDogHR integration system is not only built to play nice, but our coders will also build out a custom integration for customers if needed.

Integrations can be the first step into a tech-savvy new HR world. Not sure what we mean? Take a look at these examples of integrated HR systems.

3 Benefits of Having Integrated HR Systems

Scenario 1: Data Entry

The Situation: Your company landed a big government contract and brought on almost 100 new employees. Your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) allowed the new hires to fill out their personal details, including current trainings and certifications, when they applied. That data is a cozy Employee Resource Planning system hub (ERP) – names, certification status, phone numbers, bank accounts, etc. Your company recently invested in a new onboarding software, and your teams are eager to get it launched so you can bring the new hires up to speed.

For the Integrated HR System: Your snazzy new onboarding software is all configured on Monday. About an hour later, your central hub has seamlessly shared all necessary employee data with your onboarding program. You’re all set, with time to assign onboarding tasks as necessary based on training levels.

For the HR System without Integration: All employee data is located in one place, but the new onboarding platform isn’t picking up the data. After a morning full of customer service calls to the onboarding and ERP software makers, the consensus is: the two systems don’t speak the same language. You’re going to have to manually input all the data that’s available in one system into the others. No flash drive transfer. No copy-paste. Data entry. With your nearly 100 new employees, you’re looking at spending several hours to a few days re-typing data and dealing with data entry errors for weeks down the road. The inability to integrate means a loss of accuracy, time and money.

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Scenario 2: Life After Hours

The Situation: It’s Thursday at 8 a.m. Your newest HR purchase, a payroll processing software, is about to launch. You have a scheduled Friday off, with plans to visit friends and family.

For the Integrated HR System: At 8:30, you trigger a data transfer from your ERP to the payroll system. At 5 p.m., you’re out of the office and ready for a three-day weekend.

For the HR System without Integration: At 8:30, you have both your ERP and your new payroll system up and running. However, your payroll software is blank. Is it asking you to enter ALL your employees’ information? By noon, you’ve got the final answer: The payroll system doesn’t integrate with your ERP, and it looks like your three-day weekend is going to be less family-and-friends, and more keyboard tapping. Not to mention wasting paper as you print out employee records.

Scenario 3: Missing Data

The Situation: Your business has gone through a strategic overhaul, and it’s brought on new software to make things more efficient. Over the weekend, IT configured two platforms: Your ERP and your Learning Management System (LMS). Here’s how it looked on Friday:

Your ERP system asks for:

*First Name: _________________________

*Middle Initial: ________________________

*Last Name: _________________________

 

Your LMS system requires:

*First Name: _________________________

*Middle Name: ________________________

*Surname: _________________________

It’s Monday morning, and you’re a little nervous to open up your system and see what kind of changes have happened.

For the Integrated HR System: Despite the entry fields being different names, the software integrator has your back. The coders behind the system anticipated issues like this and coded the integration process to fuse those similar fields (e.g., Last Name = Surname). Your new ERP system and your LMS are not only linked, they share data points. Your week is off to a good start!

For the HR System without Integration: The difference in the entry fields has caused a data black hole. Where did all that basic information go? Why does everyone only have a first name? You make a call to your new software provider (or email, if they don’t have live customer service) and find out their integration process doesn’t play well with your ERP. You’ll either need to pay an unexpected integration fee to make it happen, or you’ll be re-entering all that employee data by hand.

A poor integration plan can start your smart HR experience off on the wrong foot. It’s important to consider how your systems will be able to communicate from one purpose to another. When you build your HR system with a robust software like the BirdDogHR solution, all modules and the ERP, also known as the “source of truth,” can work together to get data where it needs to be. But even if you’re building your system with various software providers, the BirdDogHR integrations can make life easier.

See a demo to find out how your current system can benefit from an upgrade and become fully integrated. 

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