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Executive Summary:
Executive Summary:
Modern workplace has been experimenting with the automation of HR function since General Electric
(GE) adopted early forms of HRIS during 1950s. From automating personnel data to the modern HR ERP
platforms, HRIS has undergone sea changes. Current experiences and available reviews have established
usefulness of HRIS in terms of efficiency and effectiveness despite various challenges organizations face
with HRIS. As with any other form of technology, modern IT has gone a complete face lift. Collaborative
and smart technologies have made inroads into other business functions such as Sales & Marketing,
Supply chain & Logistics etc. The early concept of e-HR is fast getting repositioned as Social-HR. Social
technologies are fast re-writing the rules of business of HR in many spheres due to changing
demographics at workplaces, nature of collaboration and easy interface among various technology
platforms. SMAC stands for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud technologies. Web2.0 has revolutionized
business processes through collaboration, co-creation and HR is one of the front-runners which is going
to be impacted the most due to the changing demographics of the workforce- it’s estimated that by
2020, 50% of the workforce would be of millennials & Gen-Y. These generations are already the digital
natives and have been fed on the staple diet of Apple & Blackberry of the world.
The project intends to review HRIS and the role it has played in making HRM functions more efficient
and effective, key challenges and shortcomings in HRIS implementation and then introduce SMAC as the
integrating force which can transform HR practices to make it truly social. We will review how SMAC can
play an over-arching role in the entire ‘employee-life-cycle’ thereby driving organizational effectiveness,
greater employee engagement and at a broader level optimizing human potential.
Key words: Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC), Human Resources Information System (HRIS),
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Information Technology (IT), Human Resources (HR), World Wide
Web version two dot zero (Web 2.0), Generation-Y (Gen-Y)
‘SMAC’ing up HRIS: A Review of Emerging Technologies
Sadhan Bhattacharya, Shilpa Gothi, Bhupendra Rawat, Vivek Swain, Madhav Singh, Durga R Madasu, Vijeyta Banerji

2. Background:
HRIS stands at the intersection of HRM and IT. From the traditional record-keeping of employees such as
name, address, family status, education, past employer records etc. to more transformational areas
such as training & development and talent management, HRIS have impacted the business of HRM in
terms of efficiency, accuracy and effectiveness. Existing HRIS applications have helped organizations get
better in terms of improved utilization of the most critical resource i.e. human capital through timely
responses, accuracy, increased efficiency, improved effectiveness and freeing human capital for more
value-added deliverables of strategic importance. Despite these benefits, HRIS practices suffer from
serious bottlenecks- more prominent among them would be monolithic structures, data security &
integrity, cost of employing HRIS specialists, cost of HRIS systems for smaller organizations and lack of
collaboration with other HRM functions.
Problem statement:
HRIS has been successful in bringing efficiency and accuracy to many HRM functions but suffered from
some inherent challenges that restricted its scope of impact to other strategic HRM deliverables. We
intend to review the benefits of HRIS alongside its shortcomings and then review the emerging
collaboration tools (read, SMAC) which can be successfully integrated within existing HRIS platforms.
This, we believe, has the potential to transform HR and HRM practices into what can be called ‘Social
HR’. In the backdrop of changing workforce demographics, Social-HR will help forge stronger
collaboration and engagement within the future workforce.
Project Objectives:
The project intends to critically explore the following two aspects of HRI system and outline the
emerging trends of social technologies to formulate recommendations for the HR function with a view
to integrate with existing tools for enhanced collaboration and engagement for the changing workforce.
 Review the benefits of HRIS for e-HRM and critically analyze the limitations of existing HRIS
 Explore SMAC technologies in HRM context and review the emerging trends to suggest ways of
integrating these to transform into social-HR
Expected benefits of the project:
The project is exploratory in nature and tries to analyze the major trends seen in collaboration IT space
which are either being used successfully or can be leveraged for HR function in future. One of the
expected benefits of the project could be the working guidelines for practicing HRIS professionals. This
approach can be truly strategic in nature and integrative in practice- right across the various stages of
the employee-life-cycle: Peri-ELC, if you wish to call it! This transformative practice and philosophy of
social-HR will see the following major benefits,

3.  Making HR more strategic in outlook and practice; turning focus to non-transactional business
that are truly partnering and collaborative in nature
 Making many of HRM practices integrative and value-additive in nature
 Create lean team of super users of HRIS professionals
Research Methodology:
The project employs both primary and secondary data points. The group intends to execute
fundamental research through surveys, questionnaire and interviews with key stakeholders within our
respective organizations or external resources. We will research extensively the available literatures,
industry white-papers and existing research on the topic using the web. Since, web 2.0 technologies are
breakthrough in nature and of break-neck speed; we could have very little references from any text
books even from the latest editions.
While bulk of data will be qualitative references in nature, we see the major quantitative data sources as
the survey results from our organizations and of course, white papers. Data display using the survey
results will be the main approach to analyze and present the primary data.
Conclusion:
The arrival of various collaborative technologies are redefining and reengineering many business
processes and functions. SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics & Cloud) are such a family of collaboration
tools that are already being used in many business settings mainly in marketing, supply-chain, finance
etc. Adoption and integration of SMAC in HRM practices will transform the workplace of today making it
more collaborative, collective and engaging. SMAC when successfully integrated with HRIS platforms wil
truly create a Social-HR.

4. Project Synopsis: EPHRM05 Mumbai group-12