HR API

Will disparate applications ever talk to each other?

Quickbooks cloud applications are evolving to the point that accounting functions will be able to do simple things like provide copies of old invoices to the sales department, or updating the parts and quantities and weights and densities and class of freight on Bills of Ladings back to Quickbooks.

Some businesses have a disconnected bunch of software applications, and a high cost of rekeying information to operate multiple systems. Other businesses have invested in programming their ‘roll you own’ systems and enjoy better data and lower costs of labor in menial drudgery.

Enter Salesforce, a combination of standard CRM (Customer Relationship Management) functions and programming in Java. Not only do you get the opportunity to customize applications in Java, with enough effort you may be able to migrate complex business logic written in a standard programming language to a more cost effective and integrated platform.

But for functions like DOT Hours of Service, GPS tracking of trucks, Driver Vehicle Inspection Reports and Human Capital Management issues relating to the management of employees with Commercial Drivers Licenses and the requisite Human Resources challenges, perhaps there is an application that can be bolted on to the side of existing systems.

 

When the boss sends his troops out to find software, a system to store and share assets and orders, calculate things like hours, inventory, sales and costs, the shoppers are never fully equipped to evaluate our options.

Like a teenager with their first car, we have little perspective, even in a smaller and less pervasive arena like human resources in the cloud, to know what we need in terms of horsepower and legroom.

The process becomes a journey of ‘demos’ and one player in the group finds some things they want, sways the remaining shoppers and the company adopts a platform.

Over the years, some companies have adopted everything from Peachtree to Quickbooks, while other companies have rolled their own systems with bells and whistles that fit their business to a degree with which no generic solution could ever compete. Still, cloud based software solutions also have features that home grown solutions may need, but sorely lack.

Features of (some) cloud based software solutions;

1. Authentication – a user and a password, at the minimum, identify the person that might be updating, or messing up data.
2. Advanced Authentication – two factor or three factor, thumbprint, keyfob, or more recently, sms based.
3. Encryption – all data that flows over any network is encrypted.
4. Multi level authority – setting the level of authority by user, can they view, add, update or even delete data.
5. Audit Trails – a complete record of changes that have been applied to a field or a record of the database. (WRbil does both)