The Fall of Legacy HR applications

In the midst of gigantic businesses that have been the bane of existence for the corporate world and have been relied upon heavily in the past, the winds have shifted, and the sails have been redirected in a newer direction. The past is witness to the glory of these humongous ERPs that have ruled and were the only and “costliest ventures” for the corporate world. Money flowed in, quality was assured but hefty processes were involved, and outcomes were regrettably late and sometimes over budgeted. HR world has been no different, they have always been laden with age old mechanisms and systems that no longer make sense in the modern day. From the time when a true corporate giant prepares to come on-board with such systems to the time when it really is implemented the procedures and steps, cost them an unfair amount of time, dedicated staff and financial burden, all for the sake of a “renown and old ERP” that no longer caters to the modern approach at any certain institution. By the time, a company is ready to implement such a system, a lot of time has been spent training and actually making things work in a flow that it is too late to realize that, the system is a no fit because by that time, an actual agreement and money allocated for such venture has been spent and getting out of such vicious circle is not only hard but is impossible.

Our research analysts have identified the core problem areas as to why there is still an affinity towards such archaic systems, that only sell because of their name and size of the company and it turns out, it is the thought process that goes behind it. The generation gap amongst these systems cannot be denied and like all technologies, there is always a resistance at first to convert to modernity and then it becomes a matter of survival. As for HR is concerned, it has seen tremendous re-modelling over the past five years, and we can’t deny the fact that legacy systems are dying out slowly and gradually. The cloud has taken over and SaaS versus the rest is on a constant rise, we could say that the market is ripe for a complete over haul and it is just a matter of time, all businesses, whether large or small are going to turn towards it. The strategy that the old companies that still want to stay in line with the trends use is, they acquire the ones innovating to upgrade and keep up with the pace, I would say, it works to a certain extent only. I have seen multibillion-dollar businesses that instead of building any technologies or trying to upgrade themselves, fish for companies that have done it all and have sometimes successfully incorporated that within the re-vamped versions of themselves but largely some newer more competitive minds beat them at their game by building and implementing things at a pace that they cannot even fathom.

Some of these have been wise enough to adapt the metamorphosis early on and IBM is notably the one that caught up the vibe when it began, hence their AI capabilities and modernistic approach sets them apart in todays competitive Machine Learning scenario. It is a well appreciated fact, that their advanced technology has been an inspiration for many, and “Watson” has made a remarkable stamp in the history of the pioneers of such technology. It has been proved that the hegemony of enterprise resource planning is over and so is the decades long hold on the market, with this the question arises, as to what should be the next in line to meet the needs of the market that is ready for change?

Companies with multimillion-dollar revenue rely heavily on such legacy systems, no matter what size and type the company is, it is breaking their backs. Whether it is retail, manufacturing, healthcare, finance, agriculture, education or exports, this is still the choice of many, as they believe that it produces ground breaking results and keeps their business going. Is it still true and applicable in this age and time? I believe the answer is “not really” Some of the applications in this regard have risen to the top, although they sometimes prefer not to be called an “ERP”, but the truth of the situation is that, it is what it is. No fancy name can replace the authenticity of the matter, that by the end of the day, these are those legacy system that are now on the decline due to their over budgeted and slow solutions, that no long cater to an audience that is more knowledgeable and aware of their requirements along with the dwindling support for such applications. The doubts to make these huge decisions are justified as the only time a SaaS company takes to adjust them is when they initially signup and rest of the implementation is a breeze as compared to legacy giants like SAP, Oracle etc. The reason, patience in the corporate world is running out and newer players in the market are taking huge chunks of the business because of their smart and fast software capabilities along with the incorporation of business intelligence tools, AI and Machine Learning techniques that make them more lucrative and tech savvy.

This competitive edge in the recent times have resulted in the constant decline of the license fee structures of such systems.  Over the years the license price has dropped significantly and yet $ 1,800 per user cannot be justified as compared to miniscule amount the SaaS business charges for the services that are times, surprisingly superior more advanced than the ancient ones. Oracle for instance has seen a decline in the license renewal and revenue as compared to their cloud revenues, that have increased more than 27% recently and yet the market tends to dive their nose towards the All-in-One robust and comprehensive SaaS software. Another huge concern when we talk about ERPs is cost overrun, which is if we would just put in here in simple words is, crossing the budgets that were originally allocated for that system, sometimes as much as 70%. According to some reports and analysis, majority of these implementations fall short of expectations and fail to provide the benefits that were theoretically stated at the time of the agreement and hence, this calls on the bluff! What goes wrong is, initially a lot is only on paper and agreement and none of it is seen or experienced before deploying it completely and most of the feasibility reports are essentially, only on paper. The ground reality is that as these documentations and processes move as far away from realism, they create a divide between the end users and the providers because the support mechanism is too little and too late to make any amends. All the love lost between this time of implementations and processing, sometimes stretches over a period of few months to even a year without any visible benefits, while the only monetary benefits go to the providers.

It is imperative for the sake of such monetary losses at the hands of ERPs, that the consumer be educated about the financial growth and evident benefits they can gain when they move to SaaS cloud providers, that did not acquire the technology but built it themselves, so that they do not have to rely on third party support mechanisms and yet be using the ten year old technology that they have been using to date. Floating a few updates to the mechanism cannot bring the agility and freshness of a SaaS software that is built on the lines of user friendly UX and UI to help companies leverage their best talent and use them effectively for the sake of exponential growth year over year. Most companies these days have executives that work towards identifying how to make the most of business intelligence tools provided to them, that is where companies like “WebHR” stand out. WebHR provides such HR related business intelligence tools, that go beyond the scope of other such software out there and are an asset to any organization that wants a better return on their investment. It has blossomed and matured over time into a system capable of moving in any directions it lays it eyes on and then excelling at that, it has also been called the “workday” of the modern age HCM suites.

According to Gartner, as noted in 2015, the rise of HCM is a major contributor to the destruction of ERP suites, fired by innovative cloud solutions with more frequent updates, faster deployment and better user experience. It is noted that any integrations, for e.g. slack would take a legacy system, a lengthy set of approvals alongside a longer wait time, till they have been incorporated into the system as compared to the modern SaaS solutions, where crazy developers stay up the nights and get things done. The backend teams work cohesively like a well-oiled machinery that can take up any task that has been provided to them, nothing is impossible when it comes to achieving these targets. With the decline in these age-old ,,systems, there was a fall in the reliance of the servers they used and devices they depended upon, bringing forth the sharp rise of hyperscale cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and IBM Softlayer.

At WebHR we are doingeverything a modern HR should be doing, bringing the social aspect into HR and connecting teams, bringing them closer at work along with seamlessly interfacing and talking to other software through APIs. Staying ahead of the curve, with their 24/7 customer support, we believe in dealing with customers as part of the family and every matter is resolved without delays and customizations are made according to the needs, whenever and wherever they are required. We do know that, this leaves the age-old systems, nowhere in the race, as the current competition is amongst the modern and innovative solutions, that are bringing some novel concepts and approaches to the market, are more tech savvy and affordable to their very roots.  It would not be unjustified to say that, legacy HR systems are losing this fast-declining battle against the current point solutions providers, that are ready to bring the much-needed change.