Human resources technology: systems and applications

Human Resources Technology

Castle's Family Restaurant Business Plan: Stage III

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This section should be written last. It provides the reader with an overview of your business plan. This section includes a brief description of the business, the goal of your business plan, your customer's market/clientele, their current "like" competition, and current business operations, and potential fiscal plan (fiscal plan may be assumed based on current manual process compared to pricing of automation).

Introduction provides sufficient background on the topic and previews major points. Conclusion is logical, flows from the body of the paper, and reviews the major points.

Company Review

This section should summarize the information from your Stage I paper. Provide a basic industry outline. Is it a growth industry? What changes do you foresee in this industry, and how is this company poised to take advantage of them? Take the information from your Stage I paper and analyze the data. What is your analysis of their current business? This will require some additional outside research. Cite your sources.

Business Analysis

This is where you will provide an expanded review of your Stage II project where you will summarize that information and provide your analysis of this customer's business. This section needs to be thorough and accurate so your customer understands the issues you've found. You must validate and substantiate the issues identified and why they are creating inefficiency and cost to the business. Why is automation viable? Why did you choose this specific HR function? This is where the current fiscal information should be placed. This may be completed based on theory. It should line up with your next sections of this business plan.

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HRIS Type/Comparison

This is also information you would pull from your Stage II paper and research. You want to share the type of HRIS system you have reviewed and why. You need to expand on this comparison and include theory to substantiate. This is where you're providing a clear review of different vendors. You want to make it understandable to your customer.

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HRIS Recommendation

Pull together all of your research here. Share the vendor recommendation. You must validate and substantiate this recommendation. Just stating this is what "you think" would be the best vendor is not enough. You must show this customer that this "is" the best recommendation and why. Theory substantiates; what have other like companies used? This is where you include business risks, fiscal impact, impact on employees and customers, etc. Remember, you don't want to "over sell" an HRIS system. Make recommendations that fit the needs of your analysis. 14

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Executive Summary

Castle Restaurants provides casual dining for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at eight locations throughout Northern California. The restaurant operates on volume and therefore the turnover ratio is important to the success of the restaurant. In providing the best operational managerial services to the restaurant, the HR manager incorporated PeopleSoft HRIS HRM solution to manage the HRIS function.

The operations of Castle Restaurant does seek to grow from operating at the margin to increasing profitability at each of eight locations. The goal of increasing profitability is enabled by selecting the most appropriate choice in HRIS software that will allow the HR manager to address areas of the operation that are not as easily managed by streamlining the process via a software solution. To increase profitability, the HR manager is free and can now focus on quality improvement and process management.

Introduction

Castle Family Restaurants is in need of a comprehensive human resources information system (HRIS) capable of streamlining the labor management of the organization across its 8 restaurants employing approximately 340 employees. The need for a comprehensive HRIS arises due to the length of time and expenditure of energy required upon the HR manager to track and log employee hours and payroll data using an excel spreadsheet. Via travelling to each location in Northern California, the HR manager manages the scheduling, recruiting, hiring, and answering of queries from the employee/staff. PeopleSoft Software is the HRIS of choice.

Company Review

Castle's Family Restaurant is a busy casual diner type of establishment serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The restaurant employs a high volume approach by serving a large number of guests in a short amount of time. Think of the short order cook and the fast turnover with regard to revenue and expense management. The time each customer sits in their chair is an expense to the restaurant, unless the customer continues to order from the menu, or if coffee refills are charged as extra upon the initial charge.

The restaurant is largely a cash-based operation, employing 40% part time workers consisting of cooks, servers, busboys, and cleaning staff. Benefits are not part of the monetary equation for these workers generally an hourly wage is what is paid in return for their labor. The compensation management aspect of the company is relatively easy to manage. Expenses related to gasoline are important, as usually the purchase of a comprehensive system such as PeopleSoft for HRIS would normally be cost prohibitive. The increases in the price of gas have forced management to reconsider the cost of using HRIS software to mitigate the increase in gasoline expense.

The level of supervision commanded by the HR manager Morgan is not conducive to effective operations management as time spent on travelling in between restaurant locations coupled with the time taken to log and input data prevents the manager from attending to more important and detailed work within the operations management of the company's eight locations. Hence, the PeopleSoft HRIS is designed to aggregate and handle the tasks associated with data entry, data tracking, and the data information requirements for HR payroll management and subsequent accounting functions (Healthfield, 2010).

Castle's Family Restaurant operates on razor thin profit margins as is and therefore any cost savings or expenditure must be in line with current operating margins such that margins do not decrease further. The purchase of any HRIS is considered to be a preventative measure enabling the increase of profit margins rather the promotion of software to which margins decrease at the expense of perhaps marginally superior HRM.

The HRIS function of PeopleSoft is very comprehensive such that all components of the software will not be necessary to engage the management of the business. Indeed, the eight locations, non-contiguously located, are better controlled via a virtual environment if employees can log on and engage a human resources management system to track their hours rather than the manager arriving on location to engage the employees or to review hand written time sheets to obtain the payroll management data.

The ability of empowering the HR management via the PeopleSoft HRIS HRM does allow for the manager to now refocus the energy and effort on quality control and improvement through the possible use of process management. The requirement of travelling to each restaurant location is still a function of the HR management's work duty however now the management can focus on the area of quality control rather the tedious process of human resources management, specifically the logging of payroll data.

Business Analysis

The choice to proceed with the HRIS solution was not spurious nor was the decision made from laziness or a lack of effort to pursue the payroll and scheduling management end of restaurant management. The PeopleSoft HRIS management software tool was chosen as it is easy to learn. A short learning curve for our staff is critical to providing a smooth and relatively error-free transition to the new software. Additionally, the software is capable of handling all of the restaurant's HRM functions rather seamlessly. There is no need to improvise onto the software as all the managerial functions for payroll, scheduling, and additional data entry areas are already incorporated into the software, which align in accordance with the human resources operations for Castle Restaurants.

PeopleSoft HRIS functions using a database to aggregate employee data for payroll and schedule coordination/management. This feature enables management to keep track of the aggregated data but only deal with key indicators from the data via the online format. The software is able to integrate onto the online data display format, which enables Morgan to remotely access the PeopleSoft database files from a virtual location and obtain the data that once had to be obtained by physically travelling to the location and manually inputting the data according to hand-written payroll files.

Although the PeopleSoft software can handle the expanded HRM load of benefits management and labor scheduling based on business activity and staff workload, these areas are considered to be 'luxuries' rather than the key critical components of HRM management that Mr. Morgan is seeking. More importantly, PeopleSoft is relatively inexpensive when compared to alternatives in the market that may have as a requirement, database networking coupled to expensive hardware requirements.

The main competition for PeopleSoft with regard to selection in handling Castle Restaurant's HRM is Ultimate Software's ULTIPRO. The ULTIPRO is similar to PeopleSoft as it is on-demand software that enables HRM to perform the same management tasks as other competitor HRIS applications. ULTIPRO however does appear to have a considerable operating cost structure that is higher than PeopleSoft. More IT support is expected by running ULTIPRO rather PeopleSoft. The added flexibility with PeopleSoft is also an added benefit that ULTIPRO seems to lack.

Mr. Morgan alternatively is the only individual needed to operate the PeopleSoft HRIS. The goal of turning HRM into a part-time affair is the goal of incorporating the HRM system into the integration of operations of the eight restaurants. By using PeopleSoft, achieving the goal of delineating the HRM support into a part-time affair becomes possible whilst the ability to focus on more critical aspects of management becomes ever present.

HRIS Type/Comparison

The decision to use either PeopleSoft or ULTIPRO is a decision that would have a multi-pronged impact on the ability of Castle to manage their operations via a remote capacity. These two major competitors are the choices put forth by the management of Castle restaurants and comprise the selection of available choices. The decision is ostensibly not a very difficult one, as the primary area driving the decision is cost to service as the cost of the system against the level of services provided for the business will drive the decision.

PeopleSoft is a product developed by Oracle, a financial software solutions company that is well respected in the industry. Given the level of responsibility of the part-time staff and the expected low competency skill set with regard to computers and its use, the limited knowledge of computer literacy to engage the software effectively and properly is a critical component driving the decision with regard to which software to purchase. PeopleSoft is easy to learn and can easily manage all of the specific HRM requirements within the daily operations of Castle.

PeopleSoft is also described as an Internet-based software integrated solution that can enable the uploading of database information from the computer onto the Internet-based application. Additionally, the software is user friendly as it can effectively transfer data such as benefit information with regard to worker status. Managing the employee data and tracking the employee employment becomes seamless with the software and web integration ability. Benefits transferred can be more readily tracked as well as accumulated time on the job based on leaving and returning within a given time frame.

PeopleSoft differs tremendously from ULTIPRO in that it is the only pure Internet architecture that is not based on coded input from the client. Companies are able to directly engage the employees via the software without needing to use management to engage employees, which equates to a waste of time and resources on the part of labor and management. PeopleSoft in comparison is of a lower cost in terms of upfront cost and the carry cost of using the software. PeopleSoft is also the second-largest application provider and is widely used in many industries as the primary HRIS.

The customer service and user support service offered by PeopleSoft is superior as the resources behind PeopleSoft is greater as the company is an industry leader over its competitors. PeopleSoft as an industry leader has afforded the company a number of advantages in terms of streamlining costs, cloud computing, and the superior client services post purchase. The support for learning applications on the software is a tremendous supplement to the relatively self-explanatory process of using the software.

ULTIPRO is somewhat of a copy of PeopleSoft, yet is effectively more expensive and is second to the cloud computing market that PeopleSoft has engaged primarily and is the industry leader. The increased need for IT support and hardware also makes the ULTIPRO a more costly choice where the value of using the HRIS is obfuscated by the cost, the greater hardware requirements, and the lack in providing superior service over PeopleSoft.

The company contingency plan is to rely upon ULTIPRO should PeopleSoft need replacement due to an unexpected reliability issue. We do not expect this to be a problem however a contingency plan is in effect due to unexpected problems that arise. Contract negotiation and switching is a requisite course of action should the need to switch arises.

HRIS Vendor Recommendation

The decision to recommend a specific vendor is a function of the cost of the software, the service quality of the vendor post purchase, the quality, ease of use, and reliability of the software are all critical in driving the decision of which to purchase. The decision in the case of Castle is relatively simple given the very thin profit margins associated with its collective operations. The decision to purchase and integrate a HRIS HRM tool is indeed an expense and may not be necessary should the price of gasoline dip below a specific threshold.

However, the price to where gasoline has to fall below given the travel of the HR manager is a macro economic market and OPEC driven dynamic that cannot be accurately predicted over any long course of time. The trend of rising gas prices is likely to continue and therefore the selection of a software solution becomes the answer as it is likely to be a long-term solution.