Walker (Walker, A.J. 'Best Practices in HR Technology' in Web-Based Human Resources, McGraw Hill, 2001) states that if HR technology is to be considered successful, it must achieve the following objectives:

* Strategic Alignment must help users in a way that supports the users.

* Business intelligence must provide the user with relevant information and data, answer questions, and inspire new insights and learning.

* Efficiency and effectiveness must change the work performed by the Human Resources personnel by dramatically improving their level of service, allowing more time for work of higher value, and reducing their costs.

But, despite extensive implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects, Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS), and HR service centres costing millions of dollars, Walker concludes that few organizations have been entirely happy with the results. Why is this?

Many systems have been implemented by cutting HR staff, outsourcing and imposing technology on what was left. Arguably this approach should, at least, have cut costs. But Walker argues that survey results demonstrate that overall HR departments have actually increased their staffing levels over the past decade to do the same work. Moreover he considers that:

"Most of the work that the HR staff does on a day-to-day basis, such as staffing, employee relations, compensation, training, employee development, and benefits, unfortunately, remains relatively untouched and unimproved from a delivery standpoint."

Walker advocates the business process re-engineering the HR function first, then E-engineering the HR work. He suggests the formation of re-engineering teams of providers, customers and users to examine the whole range of HR activities - including those which are not being done at present. The end product is a set of processes organized into broad groupings such as resourcing, compensation or training and development. These processes should then be examined by the re-engineering team and redesigned to:

1. Be better aligned with organizational goals.

2. Streamlined so as to be cost-effective in comparison with the 'best in class'.

3. Have a better integration with other processes.

From this redesign comes the picture of a new HR function. What next? The organization could be restructured and the tasks handed out existing or new staff. But Walker argues that the most effective approach is to introduce new technology to deal with the redesigned processes.

Part 2

Knowledge Management