Information contained in this Survey analysis is compiled and analyzed by Sierra-Cedar as part of the organization s commitment to provide thought leadership on Human Resources technologies, trends, and the impact their adoption has on enterprise performance. Sierra-Cedar encourages customers, media, partners, analysts, and other readers to share the information found herein and to quote liberally from the Survey with appropriate credit provided to Sierra-Cedar. However, this report cannot be publicly posted in its entirety without explicit permission. Please credit all quotes and references from this publication as Sierra-Cedar 2016 2017 HR Systems Survey White Paper, Asia-Pacific Edition on first reference. All subsequent references should read Sierra-Cedar 2016 2017 Survey Asia-Pacific White Paper. To participate in this year s research and receive an early copy of the Annual Survey White Paper, please submit your email address here: http://www.sierra-cedar.com/annual-survey. To request a media interview, please email us here: HRSystemsSurvey@Sierra-Cedar.com. To download previous Annual White Papers or additional research based on this year s Survey, please access our Research site here: http://www.sierra-cedar.com/research. 2 Copyright 2017 Sierra-Cedar, Inc. All rights reserved.
Introduction to the HR Systems Survey The Sierra-Cedar 2016 2017 HR Systems Survey White Paper, 19 th Annual Edition is the latest research installment of the longest running, most widely distributed, and most highly participative research effort in the HR industry. Since 1997, this invaluable resource has been a catalyst for the HR Technology community, providing insight and guidance to practitioners around the world. The Sierra-Cedar HR Systems Survey stands alone as a Global benchmark of Human Resources (HR) technology adoption and the value achieved from the use of these technologies, seen through the eyes of HR Information Technologists (HRIT) and Information Technologists (IT). This research is designed to be of value to the entire HR technology community, covering over 20 years of continuous data gathering on the following topics: Strategy, Process, and Structure Administrative and Service Delivery Applications Workforce Management Applications Talent Management Applications Business Intelligence/Analytics/Workforce Planning Applications Integration and Implementation Emerging Technologies and Innovations Vendor Landscape Workforce and HR Expenditures This year s Annual Survey was conducted from May 12 th through July 11 th, 2016. The Sierra-Cedar 2016 2017 HR Systems Survey White Paper is based on 1,528 unique organizations representing a total workforce of 20.6 million employees and contingent workers. Approximately 7% of our unique organizations are headquartered in the Asia-Pacific market: China, India, Japan, the Pacific Islands, and Australia. Our largest sub-section of Asia-Pacific participants are headquartered in India and, where appropriate, we ve included a breakout of India-specific findings. This report provides insight into the HR Technology landscape that is unique to the Asia-Pacific market and its evolving Workforce and Talent Management practices. Key Findings from the Asia-Pacific Market No one can deny that we are in an age of continuous change when it comes to both enterprise and personal technology environments. For Asia-Pacific regions, fast-paced technological changes are coinciding with economic and cultural changes, making the topic of HR Technology central to business outcomes. Without an enterprise strategy for the HR technology stack, organizations are finding that they not only spend more on total HR technology expenditures per employee, but they also reduce the overall number of employees they can serve per HR resource. Strategy is both a key component when it comes to a technology environment and a significant opportunity for many organizations: more than 40% of all Asia-Pacific organizations and 50% of India-based organizations are looking at improving or developing a new Enterprise HR Systems Strategy this year. Copyright 2017 Sierra-Cedar, Inc. All rights reserved. 1
These Enterprise HR System strategies will likely include many of the topics that were found to be central to our Survey s Asia-Pacific participants: Increasing HR Technology budgets Adopting HR Technology, beyond payroll and core HRMS Making decisions to upgrade or shift to new Cloud-based HR systems Investing in emerging areas such as analytics, Mobile, and Social technologies HR Technology budgets are increasing throughout the Asia-Pacific market: 56% of all Asia-Pacific organizations are planning to increase their HR Technology spending this year, jumping to 64% when we just look at India-based organizations. This spending increase could be short term or set a new level of overall spending in the Asia-Pacific market for HR Technology environments. When we look at major HR Technology initiatives where organizations plan to spend 25% or more of their time we see that everyone is working on Business Process Improvement efforts, particularly non-india Asia-Pacific organizations. India-based organizations are more focused on their HR Systems Strategy, Talent Management, and Integration Initiatives, while non-india Asia-Pacific organizations are more focused on Workforce Management and Workforce Planning initiatives. Figure 1: Major HR Initiatives by Region 66% 76% 53% 50% 57% 40% 40% 39% 38% 37% 38% 33% 34% 30% 28% 43% 40% 33% 33% 26% 22% 20% 18% 19% 17% 18% 17% 18% 17% 14% Bus. Proc improvement HR Systems Strategy Talent Management Service Delivery BI/Workforce Metrics HR Apps Integration Workforce Management Workforce Planning All System Integrations Social Enablement Aggregate India Only Non-India APAC Overall HR Technology Adoption is maturing rapidly across the Asia-Pacific market and moving beyond initial investments in Payroll and core HRMS environments to Talent Management, Workforce Management, and even Business Intelligence applications. In contrast, we found three specific categories of HR application adoption that were from 30 to 40% lower than the overall market adoption percentages: HR Benefits applications Embedded HR analytics applications Career Planning/Succession Planning applications 2 Copyright 2017 Sierra-Cedar, Inc. All rights reserved.
Although past HR Benefit modules have struggled to address the disparate regional requirements of their global audiences, in recent years we ve seen an increase in flexible benefits applications designed to address these challenges yet less than 50% of the overall Asia-Pacific Market has adopted an HR Benefits application. When we look at Workforce Analytics, we see that 39% of all organizations have adopted these applications, which is similar to our Asia-Pacific organizations; but a deeper look shows us that India-based organizations are 30% more likely to use Business Intelligence Visualization Tools and 40% less likely to use embedded HR analytics in their existing HR technology. The lack of embedded analytics adoption could be due to the high percentages of On-Premise Core HRMS environments and could change dramatically as Cloud adoption goes up. Although 57% of India-based organizations are working on Talent Management initiatives, and 43% of non- India-based Asia-Pacific organizations are working on Workforce Planning initiatives, less than 10% of these organizations had adopted Career or Succession Planning applications. Why is Career Planning lagging in adoption across the entire Asia-Pacific region? Unlike the lower adoption levels of Career Planning, we found that Asia-Pacific organizations were more likely to adopt Compensation Management and Performance Management applications; in fact, they were on par or leading adoption averages in these categories when compared with North America and EMEA regions. To Cloud or Not to Cloud Like all regions, the Asia-Pacific market is seeing an increased adoption in Cloud/SaaS HR Systems: just 18% of Asia-Pacific organizations have a Cloud-based HRMS today, but 33% plan to have one in the next year. It is important to note that we often see higher percentages of planned movement than achieved in a one-year time frame. There is also a continued emphasis on upgrading existing On-Premise systems, particularly in India-based organizations where 37% have a major initiative to upgrade their core HRMS this year. Figure 2: The Enterprise HR Cloud Conversation APAC SaaS/Cloud On Premise SaaS/Cloud On Premise WFM Cloud 41% 50% 52% 44% WFM Cloud 16% 26% 47% 36% Payroll Cloud 53% 59% 43% 35% Payroll Cloud 9% 16% 68% 59% HRMS Cloud 51% 63% 54% 38% HRMS Cloud 18% 33% 57% 48% TM Cloud 66% 72% 31% 24% TM Cloud 35% 48% 35% 31% Today 12 Months Copyright 2017 Sierra-Cedar, Inc. All rights reserved. 3
What are the barriers to moving to the Cloud for Asia-Pacific organizations? How can these barriers be addressed? A contributing factor driving many organizations to adopt new Cloud-based HR technology is the desire to implement emerging technologies that are more readily found in Cloud environments, such as embedded analytics, Mobile capabilities, and integration with Social platforms. Improved HR analytics and reporting is definitely on the minds of the 44% of Asia-Pacific organizations that plan to increase their HR data analytics roles this year. Our research has found that the type of technology, either Cloud or On-Premise, doesn t hinder an organization s ability to become a Data-Driven HR function: resourceful HR analytics roles simply need access to enough accurate data for analyses. Cloud technology can allow an organization to accomplish some level of improved reporting and HR analytics, even without a skilled HR Analytics role. It is much more difficult to achieve an organization s goal for Mobile-enabled HR without some form of Cloudbased technology: 39% of our aggregate participants have rolled out Mobile-enabled HR technology today, this is compared to 44% of non-india Asia-Pacific organizations and only 22% of India-based organizations. When we look at planned adoption for the next year, we see India planning to increase to 33% Mobileenabled HR technology adoption and non-india Asia-Pacific organizations planning to jump to 56% adoption. When it comes to Mobile adoption, we see that India was slated to become the second largest smartphone market by 2017 and that it has the fastest-growing smartphone market in the world. Without smartphone market penetration and increase Cloud HR technology Mobile adoption for HR applications is unattainable. Organizations that Use Mobile-enabled HR Technology Figure 3: Mobile-enabled HR Process Adoption USA APAC 47% 39% 43% 52% 22% 33% 44% 56% Aggregate USA Only India Only Non-India APAC 2016 12 Months Social application adoption has a similar challenge to Mobile in that using Social technology strategically with your HR technology environments requires some level of integration. We are seeing an increase in the strategic use of Social Applications for the purposes of HR outcomes. India-based Asia-Pacific organizations seem to gravitate towards closed Social networks used for internal collaboration and sharing, while non-india Asia-Pacific organizations are more likely to use open Social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. When it comes to our Survey data, we know that Social and Mobile technology availability and applications 4 Copyright 2017 Sierra-Cedar, Inc. All rights reserved.
differ greatly by region. We do ask Survey participants to write in other applications used, but Asia-Pacificspecific Social networking sites such as WeChat or Tencent haven t shown up yet in large enough numbers to impact Social adoption percentages for this region. Are these differences in the use of emerging technologies due to culture difference, infrastructure barriers, or a mixture of both? As the Asia-Pacific HR Technology market continues to mature, it is possible that many organizations looking to replace or even implement new HR environments in the near future will be able to jump ahead of the current technology and take advantage of the emerging modern platforms that include artificial Intelligence, self-learning applications, voice recognition, and Internet of Things (IoT). Sign-Up for the Full Report We are pleased to share the initial findings from this year s Sierra-Cedar 2016 2017 HR Systems Survey White Paper, Asia-Pacific Edition. It is our most fervent hope that this information provides you with insights and data to help you make informed decisions concerning your HR systems environment. If you would like to participate in this year s research and receive a copy of the Sierra-Cedar 2017 2018 HR Systems Survey White Paper, Asia-Pacific Edition, please enter your details www.sierra-cedar.com/receive-apac-wp. Copyright 2017 Sierra-Cedar, Inc. All rights reserved. 5
About Sierra-Cedar Sierra-Cedar helps clients navigate their application and technology roadmaps, whether to modernize their existing portfolios or move to emerging technologies by integrating industry knowledge, deep technology capabilities, breadth of service offerings, and global delivery model into best-value solutions. Our services are categorized into industry-based consulting services and industry-agnostic shared services. Corporate Office 1255 Alderman Drive Alpharetta, Georgia 30005 www.sierra-cedar.com