On average, 50% of the HR department’s time is spent processing employee information including on-boarding, background verification, employee file management, leave and attendance, expenses, among others. This is more challenging for small and medium enterprises, as many of them do not have dedicated resources for HR. Greytip, a firm focused on the HR domain, has rightly identified this market opportunity, and has launched HR solutions that cater to the needs of SMEs. Girish Rowjee, Co-founder & CEO- Greytip Software, shares his perspective on the potential of HR solutions in the Indian market.
How different are the needs of a small business?
In a small company, the accent is generally on getting the work done and not so much on how it is done. Results hold a significantly higher weight than the process itself. In a larger organization, apart from the end result, a lot of importance is also paid on how work is done. This is mainly because there are a larger number of stakeholders / participants in the process and a defined way of working is required to channel everyone’s effort in order to reach a common goal. So the sales approach and time taken to complete a sale is different.
Sales teams need to work fairly differently in these situations. In a smaller company, convincing the owner or one critical stakeholder of the benefit of an automation tool would help in setting them up on the automation journey, whereas for a larger organization, they will need to ensure that the sponsor and other key decision makers would also need to be convinced.
Additionally, the requirements too vary. The software and the way it appears or enables operations are different. In a smaller company, the user may just add an employee into the application, whereas in a larger organization, someone would add and someone else would need to approve this addition. For each segment, either process would appear cumbersome / lacking in control. So application would need to be defined to suit the way organizations work.Smaller organizations may compromise on a requirement if the pricing is right whereas a larger organization would mostly be unwilling to change their process because a vendor does not support. They may be willing to pay more if it can solve a requirement of theirs. That being the case, the engagement model will be different. A larger customer may be billed more but will need a vendor to make modifications to the software, whereas a smaller customer will pay less but could also mean lower development efforts.
In our opinion, there are both segments of the customers. It is critical for vendors to recognize these variations and setup their organizations to cater to these requirements of their customer segments.At a core level, there are not been too many variations in the way customers have their expectations and how vendor organizations would need to respond. But some of the differences have merged where there are no longer differences whereas some newer ones have got created.
Is the industry adopting the latest technology with respect to the above mentioned needs?
HR user and HR software vendors have steadily started adopting the latest technologies in their areas of work. Apart from CRM, HR applications have been among the leading migrators to the cloud / Saas model. Earlier, the tech adoption and embracing newer technology was quite slow. But with the advent and success of Cloud model with its ability for organizations to try and check suitability, many organizations are now willing to experiment and evaluate. This has led to higher experimentation and subsequently higher adoption rates.
Additionally, with decreased distribution and deployment costs and ability to reach a wider audience, vendors too have started investing in creating newer applications and using more technology to solve challenges faced by their user community. The above-mentioned factors have increased the pace of virtuous cycle of better applications and higher adoption of automation solutions and technology to meet the growing demands of the HR user community.
How does your firm’s solution help in various aspects of day-to-day employee management?
We enable SMEs to generate all necessary statutory reports related to Income Tax, Provident Fund, Professional Tax, ESI, LWF, etc. The ease of on-time filing of returns allow SMEs to focus on their core business instead of being bogged down by compliance activities. We have also seen our automation help small businesses cut costs, be agile and enable them to compete better against bigger organizations. We have tackled head-on the main hindrances to IT adoption, such as affordability, availability of IT manpower and implementation time through our services. Our online helpdesk and phone support allow SMEs to breathe easy in case they need to reach out for help.
How can a company choose the right HR & Payroll solution provider for itself?
Any company that is evaluating an HR and payroll solution provider must look at the following factors:
- Minimal/ no customization, as this leads to a whole host of issues in terms of cost and ongoing support
- Demonstrated maturity and stability of the software to consistently deliver the promised benefits
- Availability of onboarding support, as most applications of this type require an initial hand-holding to start operations
- Ongoing support and market knowledge of the same in terms of metrics and other user feedback
- Social proof of the application having demonstrated value through client testimonials and adoption levels
- Fit between the requirements that they have and the features of the software