HR Tools To Tackle Top Tech Demands

Hagel & Company president Frank Hagel went shopping last year for an application to help him review the performance of employees at his Puyallup, Wash., solution provider business. After working with Halogen Software's employee performance and talent management applications for a spell, it occurred to Hagel that his customers might benefit from Halogen's product as well.

And so Hagel & Company (coincidentally a provider of human resource planning and management consulting services and HR information systems) became both a Halogen user and a reseller, adopting the same kind of dual relationship it already had with Sage Software and its Abra HRMS applications.

Slide Show: HR Apps For Hire

"We're only 11 employees. But there's still some fundamental things we wouldn't see if we were just a vendor," Hagel says. "It helps us relate to customers because we can say 'We believe in this product because we use it ourselves.' This is a model that's worked very well for us."

It's a model that can work for other solution providers as well. VARs that use the same HR software they sell to their clients earn a kind of "we eat our own dog food" credibility. They also gain valuable problem solving and "customer point-of-view" insight about the product -- expertise they wouldn't likely get by just reselling it.

Click here for a who's who overview of HR software vendors and what their apps address.

"It's critical to be able to say we are using the apps we are selling and servicing," says Randy Forkner, president of Collins Computing, an Irvine, Calif., reseller and user of Microsoft Dynamics GP applications, including its HR software. "If you don't believe in what you sell, it's tough to sell it."

Remy Corp., a Denver-based solution provider that offers consulting and implementation services for Oracle's PeopleSoft HR applications, also uses the PeopleSoft Enterprise Staffing Front Office applications to process and store candidate resumes and track applicants. Managers search the system to find applicants with the skills and compensation history that fits the company's immediate hiring needs, says managing partner Dave Bacon.

Being a user of PeopleSoft HR gives Remy an advantage when working with its clients because service technicians better understand where customizations may be needed. "It helps us with our client base when we're going through the same issues they area," Bacon says.

HR App Drivers
Solution providers say the HR applications market is booming right now. Sales are being driven by the move by many businesses to provide employees with flexible work hours and compensation alternatives. "The work environment is changing a lot and HR applications need to be able to support that," says Bacon.

Another driver is the move by some companies to move HR operations (with the exception of payroll chores) back in-house after less-than-successful outsourcing experiments, says Paul Hamerman, a Forrester Research senior analyst. And new categories of HR applications that address the problems of recruiting and retaining critical employees -- an issue that both solution providers and their customers are wrestling with -- are especially in demand.

"The difficulty in recruiting and retaining employees is leading companies to put greater emphasis on their human resource management systems," (HRMS) Hagel says. "We're seeing a very hot market."

NEXT: HR software vendors you should know.