Attendance systems are a crucial component in HR automation. But what worked smoothly a few years back seems to be lagging in handling today’s work demands. So progressive companies in general are upgrading to advanced Enterprise Attendance System.
If you are considering to upgrade, I have compiled this exhaustive list of 13 must parameters. It comes from our 10+ years of experience servicing the attendance industry, catering to 200+ clients in various verticals.
It is clear from our experience that attendance system is no more just restricted to installing biometric devices and capturing the attendance. The attendance system is now seen as a source of crucial data for business performance evaluation and enhancement.
Let us carefully understand the relevance of each item & how it impacts the business.
1: Domain expertise – Every business has its unique proposition for success. To extend this success the solution also has to be aligned to industry practices and peculiarities. This can be delivered only when the solution provider understands the business & configures the solution to meet the business need.
Be aware, any AS IS solution with free frills does not give the required business success experiences.
Take away: Appoint a service provider who is a subject matter expert.
2: Attendance rule engine – The success of Attendance Management System depends on integrating organisation’s rules in the system. This is a must for optimising the business productivity, keeping in mind the employee flexibility.
Take away: Attendance rules configuration flexibility is a must.
3: Attendance features – The attendance capturing is a complex thing in today’s business scenario. With people on the move, part-time and contract employees, dynamic shift hours, work from hone employees, all needs to be taken care of.
Complexity of these attendance scenarios need to be simplified with a feature rich & user friendly enterprise attendance system.
These features range from attendance rules, requests, approval, shift planning, attendance compliance, reports, analysis, and attendance alerts. Using a smart device on move is the need of the day.
Take away: Intuitive & user friendly attendance software needs to be deployed.
4: Custom development for Business requirements. The attendance solution should be flexible enough to be configured for unique business requirements, or to add a component of the custom piece to exactly fix that business need.
Like the high demanding attendance system for Facility / Manpower industry, or, any organisation with high dependency of employees on remote sites.
Take away: Attendance solution provider should be flexible and capable to custom build a piece. Also evaluate if their core system can accept the customisation smoothly.
5: API for integration – Enterprise attendance system, or any system, that cannot handshake with other systems is a resounding NO. Integration of data seamlessly with various ERP solutions is a must for better productivity and fulfilling crucial business demands.
We highly recommend you to buy a solution with API capabilities, even if the solution has one less feature.
Take Away: The enterprise attendance system should be ready for API integration with existing ERP solutions, may it be SAP or a custom built in-house solution.
6: Scalability – Two things to check for scalability. One the volume it can handle considering the next 5 year growth plan of the organisation. Two, ability to scale up and add-on modules for HR, from attendance to payroll on a single integrated platform.
Take Away: Appoint service provider with a vision to grow in the Attendance & HR vertical. A company which can continuously upgrade and scale the system to match up with new age requirements. You need not just vendors, but experts who can advise on the attendance trends in the industry.
7: Multi-location management – This is one of the features of Attendance System, but this is critical & hence part of this evaluation matrix.
Today companies do not restrict the business to cater locally. But are expanding in various geographies. Even globally. In such scenarios the solution should be able to cater multi-location & multi-time zone.
Take away: The capability of MLM feature is to analyse data from the multi-location workforce, rostering of shifts, real time attendance info, finger-template management across locations.
8: Contractor management - With companies shifting its focus on the core business, the trend in outsourcing support function is on rise, so it is important to have a checker in place as the cost of contract resources makes a dent in the pocket, if not monitored for actual attendance & performance.
Take away: The solution should be able to monitor the work order of contractor, to attendance & billing. The key to success is to integrate contractor attendance system with the Vendor management tool. A case study
9: Attendance compliance - Reports as per state statutory is a must. From overtime rules, to compensatory off, number of leaves per year, working hours per day, breaks available and many more details.
Take away: The solution provider must be able to generate the reports, or integrate with a compliance management system for monthly audits.
10: TAT & SLA adherence – Finally, when we are going to on-board a service provider for an enterprise attendance system, kindly validate, review & do reference check for the services. Few SLA like up time of the system, frequency of patch & version upgrade. Chances of downtime because of updates. Response time to resolve critical errors.
Take away: No matter how good is the solution, at least 30% selection score goes to ongoing services & support by the attendance system service partner.
11: Biometric support - The starting point to any attendance system is Biometric Attendance System. It is as much important to evaluate the correct device for the organisation. While cost can be a barrier for good devices. But with onetime expenses spread across 5-7 years, it is a clear case of buying quality device over a cheap solution.
A recent news of employees using fake fingers to mark attendance has caused panic in corporate world, as it affects the security too.
Take away: Biometric device with Push technology, finger template management, sensor warranty, guaranteed capability to detect fake & live finger. And most importantly biometric data should integrate seamlessly with attendance system.
12: Attendance system Security - Data is asset for any organisation. With cybercrime on rise. It is a mandate for any attendance system to have IT security checks in place.
Take way: The attendance system should be security compliant. Need to check for HTTPS, VAPT report & APP security report.
13: Data migration – Each organisation will have historical data in some format available. Implementing a new system without past data will delay the advantage of implementing a new system. Because the new system will not have enough info for analysis & building attendance trends.
Take Away: The attendance system should have the capability to import past data.
We are sure, if the checklist is adhered than you as an organisation will implement a robust, productivity-enhancing, successful online attendance system. One which will save you time and money and will repay its own cost multiple times.
Kindly share your learning, success/ failure case studies.
Looking forward to connect with you for an interactive discussion on attendance automation. Feel free to write to me on dhwani@opportune.in or call me on 9821186599
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