Essentials of HRMS Implementation
It is essential to adhere to the design requirements of the system and have customization scope of the user requirements in order to have a successful implementation of a human resource management system (HRMS). HRMS implementation requires planning carefully, process and system set up, clear objectives, and an integrated methodology (Williams, 2017). Dixon Schwabl have been using the manual techniques in managing human resource operations for a long time. This has decreased the productivity of the company and thus the need to develop a computerized human resource system arose.
The manual system has no proper tracking capabilities, reporting, training, employee motivation, human performance, and organizational development. This paper will focus on designing a high-level system architecture, discussing the various user design concepts, security concerns and controls, and the system deployment process.
The human resources management system will have three essential features which include components, connectors, and collaborators. Connectors describe the communication patterns between components while collaborators describe interaction patterns between connectors and components (Shen, 2011). Based on the requirements given by Dixon Schwabl, the HRMS system architecture will be a multi-tiered architecture. The multi-tier or N-tier architecture has been described as an improvement of the 3-tier architecture and has more benefits such as worldwide accessibility, load balancing, easy data generation, and cost effectiveness.
The architecture is made up of 4 layers; presentation layer which contains the user interface components and process component, Business layer which describes the business workflow, records handling, utilities, and exception handling, data access layer which contains service gateways and data access components, and database layer which has stored procedures, database, and SQL queries.
This architecture will best work in a networked environment. The system will utilize the client-server architecture in which the server and the client are two different computers interconnected on the network. The system will be deployed on the server and the users will use the client computer to access the system from a web browser like Google chrome, Firefox, or internet explorer. The client basically refers to a laptop, desktop, or a portable computing device like a smartphone or tablet.
The server will store all the shared data. As compared to stand alone system, a networked application is easy to manage through updates, patching, and adding security features to further improve the security and performance of the application. The networked environment enables sharing of resources where users have access to complete and up to date information, easy communication, high reliability to ensure high system availability and minimal downtime, and speed where users will be able to access the HRMS quickly (Yaskevich, 2017).
The Human resources manager feels that the design is very appealing is able to add details of the employee with a lot of ease. The interface is very intuitive and the form is very easy to fill.
The human resource manager can be able to view the details of the employees. The interface also provides the functionality to edit the details or add any missing details.
The human resource system will allow the human resource manager to view a list of all the employees registered in the system. The user can be able to print the list or select and delete the employees who have left the company.
Designing a High-Level System Architecture
The system will allow all the employees to apply for leave days when they need a break or have other personal matters to attend to. Upon applying, the human resource manager will approve or reject depending on the reason the employees have given.
User interface elements are tied together by consistency of predictable and distinguishable actions which offer a great experience to the users (Fitzgerald, 2018). Some of the user interface design techniques that will be employed in system design include:
Simplicity: when designing the HRMS it is important to facilitate doing simple and normal activities easy and simple to do by ensuring the interface communicates using the language of the users and offering good. Additionally, the users should be provided with shortcuts associated with long processes.
Visibility: focus on the needed information and the users should not be overwhelmed with a lot of information on the interface that can confuse them (Juneja, 2015). The needed materials and options for a particular process should be clearly visible.
Feedback: the user interface should be notifying the user on the process that he/she is doing. It should regularly inform the users of the interpretations and actions/processes, condition, errors, change of state, and exceptions that are of interest to the user through concise, clear, and familiar language to the users.
Reuse: the HRMS interface will be able to reuse external and internal behaviors and components while keeping consistency with purpose minimizing the users’ effort to remember and rethink.
Tolerance: when designing the system, it is important tolerance and flexibility of the design to allow the users to undo, redo, and minimize the cost of misuse and mistakes, and ensuring that errors are prevented where possible through sequence and input tolerance.
Structure: the user interface should be design and organized purposefully in a useful and meaningful way depending on consistent and clear models that are identifiable to the users and grouping related items together and separating items that are not related (Porter, 2018).
Focus on user design research: quality research on the user requirements is very crucial in order to have a consistent experience. This should never be abstracted or done in a hurry.
This is a security approach that is used in regulating access to resources in a computerized system. This concept is fundamental in reducing the risks that Dixon Schwabl may face. There exist two categories of access controls; logical and physical. Logical access control describes the techniques that are implemented that restricts the connections to the information system or computer networks, data, and system files. Physical access control restricts access to data centers, physical IT assets, and computer rooms. Dixon Schwabl should implement electronic access control system that depends on access card readers, user credentials, reports, and auditing to monitor how employees access proprietary locations and limited business areas.
Access control can be implemented by using authorization and authentication aspects such as personal identification numbers (PINs), passwords, security tokens or biometric scans (Kumar Behera, 2016). There are several types of access control such as discretionary access control, mandatory access control, Rule-base access control, role-based access control, and attribute-based access control. Dixon Schwabl can adopt all or some of this access controls to ensure that the new Human Resource management system is secured.
User Interface Techniques
Digital signature is a security technique that uses mathematical approaches to authenticate the integrity of data, software, message, or any other digital file/document. The objective of this security techniques is to address the problems of impersonation and tampering in electronic communications. Dixon Schwabl will benefit from the added assurances of identity, source evidence, and document/file status, message, transaction, and the signer’s consent can be acknowledged. Digital signatures depend on asymmetric cryptography or what many people refer to as public key cryptography (Zafar, 2013). One can be able to generate public and private key that mathematically connected from RSA, which is an example of public key algorithm. This is a very effective security control technique because it employs the use of two cryptographic keys that are mutually authenticated.
Encryption is a security technique that is used to transform plain message into an encoded format during transmission to prevent cyber criminals from getting hold of the meaning of the encoded message (Choi, 2017). The message can only be decoded by the target user with the decryption key in order to read the message. Dixon Schwabl can employ this security technique because it is one of the most effective in enhancing data security specifically for point to point data protection sent over a network. This technique is commonly employed when transmitting user information through the internet such as payment details, login credentials, or other private and personal information.
Modern encryption algorithms help in validating and authenticating the sources of the message, ensure integrity, and guarantees confidentiality.
This is a security technique that is used to guarantee security of financial transactions conducted over the internet. Credit card issuers provide the users with digital certificates that will be used together with digital signatures to verify transaction between the merchant and the purchaser. Secure transactions employ the use of secure transaction technology (STT) from Microsoft, secure socket layer (SSL) from Netscape, and secure hypertext transfer protocol(S-HTTP) from Terisa System (Astakhova, 2015). This will aid Dixon Schwabl in case it integrates payment gateway to the human resources management system.
The following tasks has to be carried out in order to convert and initialize data to be used by the new HRMS at Dixon Schwabal:
- Critical data validation
- Collection of more data needed for the new system to operate
- Defaults should be ready and correct for migration to the new HRMS
- Data should be transferred incrementally to the new system
- Validate the results of the conversion process
Data conversion strategies make sure that the process of building the sure that process of building the database is limited and efficient (Ambler, 2014). Additionally, it should be responsive and flexible to meet the distinct requirements that may arise during data conversion.
The following should be considered when conducting the process of data conversion:
- Only valid and comprehensive data should be converted
- Have a conversion schedule
- Develop conversion procedures
The following methods will be used for data conversion:
- Automated conversion techniques
- Automated client data conversion
- Automated external system data conversion
- Automated editing and data validation methods
- Automated transfer of data
By employing these techniques, Dixon Schwabl will successfully convert and initialize available data for the purpose of system deployment.
End user training is a very crucial process to facilitate implementation of the system successfully. Before a system is deployed, user training is important to ensure that the users are aware of how the system works and if they can use it easily. User training can be done parallel to user acceptance testing. All the users should be trained on the system functionalities. The company can use the project team to carry out end user training or contract a training partner to facilitate the training process.
System Deployment Process
However, it is important to use the project team to deliver end user training because they better understand how the system was develop together with all the other aspect and they can easily transfer this knowledge to the users (Yan & Feng, 2012). Hands on Training is the best training approach because users tend to interact with the system as they are being trained enhancing the training process. When conducting the training it is important to focus on the following factor:
- Identify training requirements
- Design documents and materials for training
- Design support materials
- Update support and training materials
- Training delivery
- Training support
HRMS implementation is basically an integrated and planned approach involving the HR managers, executive management and a team of technical specialists and consultants. A clear definition of organizational goals and objectives is very important before starting the implementation module
The implementation basis is the planning on which the probability of successful implementation relies. It offers the foundation for the choice of project consultant or manager, defining management and reports methods, functional areas, comparing and assessing future and current processes, modify modernized methods, selecting a particular project, a good team of implementation, budgetary techniques, software and hardware determination, communication of user and software acceptance (Khera, 2012).
Before fully deploying the system, it is important to ensure that the critical components needed to deploy the system are in place. They include:
- Set up the network infrastructure
- Implement security procedures and access control
- Set up servers
- Configure database
When all these components have been deployed and installed, the HRMS can be deployed.
Although there are many change and version processes, the following are the general activities:
Create a transition or deployment strategy: planning for deployment functions would start early in the software engineering (SE) life cycle, though these activities can be carried out jointly with realization activities. Planning should incorporate some of the well-known lower-level activities of checkout, testing, installation, and integration. Such activities are important in showing that the interfaces and the system with the functional environment can operate as expected and meet the allowed specifications of the system. To effectively implement and manage these activities, the responsibility, criteria, and procedures for performing these activities should be agreed upon and clearly developed during the planning stage (Motwani, 2015).
Conclusion
When designing and developing a human resource management system it is important to focus on the system architecture in order to produce high level application. Many systems have a client server architecture. The server will process users’ requests and display on the client side. Additionally, it is necessary to pay attention to the user design principles to ensure that all the user requirements have been met. Before deploying the system, it is important to research on the security threats and devise mitigation strategies.
References
Ambler, S. (2014). System Deployment Tips and Techniques. Retrieved from https://www.ambysoft.com/essays/deploymentTips.html
Astakhova, L. (2015). Evaluation Assurance Levels for Human Resource Security of an Information System. Procedia Engineering, 129, 635-639. doi: 10.1016/j.proeng.2015.12.083
Choi, Y. (2017). Human Resource Management and Security Policy Compliance. International Journal Of Human Capital And Information Technology Professionals, 8(3), 68-81. doi: 10.4018/ijhcitp.2017070105
Fitzgerald, A. (2018). The Guide to Design Consistency: Best Practices for UI and UX Designers. Retrieved from https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/guide-design-consistency-best-practices-ui-ux-designers/
Juneja, P. (2015). Systems Considerations in the Design of HRIS. Retrieved from https://www.managementstudyguide.com/systems-considerations-in-design-of-hris.htm
Khera, D. (2012). Human Resource Information System and its impact on Human Resource Planning: A perceptual analysis of Information Technology companies. IOSR Journal Of Business And Management, 3(6), 6-13. doi: 10.9790/487x-0360613
Kumar Behera, M. (2016). Emerging Issues and Challenges of HRIS: A Review. International Journal Of Economics And Management Studies, 3(5), 91-95. doi: 10.14445/23939125/ijems-v3i5p114
Motwani, B. (2015). Perception of Professionals towards Effectiveness of Human Resource Information System. Journal Of Strategic Human Resource Management, 4(3). doi: 10.21863/jshrm/2015.4.3.017
Obeidat, B. (2012). The Relationship between Human Resource Information System (HRIS) Functions and Human Resource Management (HRM) Functionalities. Journal Of Management Research, 4(4). doi: 10.5296/jmr.v4i4.2262
Porter, J. (2018). Principles of User Interface Design. Retrieved from https://bokardo.com/principles-of-user-interface-design/
Shen, J. (2011). The Concept, Characteristics and System Architecture of Map Generalization in Mobile Environment. Geo-Information Science, 13(5), 623-629. doi: 10.3724/sp.j.1047.2011.00623
Weimei, Z. (2013). Design of Functions and Framework of Enterprise Human Resource Management Information System. Information Technology Journal, 12(8), 1593-1599. doi: 10.3923/itj.2013.1593.1599
Williams, J. (2017). 10 essential UI (user-interface) design tips | Webflow Blog. Retrieved from https://webflow.com/blog/10-essential-ui-design-tips
Yan, L., & Feng, J. (2012). Design and Implementation of the System of Computer Skills Training and Testing. Energy Procedia, 17, 1520-1523. doi: 10.1016/j.egypro.2012.02.275
Yaskevich, A. (2017). Web application architecture: Components, models and types. Retrieved from https://www.scnsoft.com/blog/web-application-architecture
Zafar, H. (2013). Human resource information systems: Information security concerns for organizations. Human Resource Management Review, 23(1), 105-113. doi: 10.1016/j.hrmr.2012.06.010
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
