HCM consists of advanced capabilities that leverage predictive analytics, complex automation, and expansive integration suites. These enhance existing HR applications while also adding new prepackaged software. The main modules included in these platforms are shown below in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Human Capital Management Applications

These modules help organizations support core HR processes while ensuring their workforce is optimized in terms of capacity, productivity, and skill. And for the employee, automated modules optimize how an individual experiences their organization to ensure satisfaction is maximized. HCM suites also help scale HR support through ticketing queues, digital assistants (chatbots), and configurable surveys.

Organizations deploying a full HCM suite benefit from having a single, centralized source of employee data that can be leveraged across all HR-function applications. In addition to providing a cross-application workflow and a wide range of integration points, HCM solutions help HR teams predict risks in skill-set gaps, develop highly targeted recruiting campaigns, and automate personalized action plans for any individual. HCM solutions are also valuable to business users: employees can self-manage their data profile and have more tools to support their career path and goals. This improves organizational efficiency and ensures employees are up to date with compliance requirements.

HCM packages range from narrowly focused HR functions to fully-fledged analytics platforms. Solutions can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment. Organizations should evaluate which functions are required for their use cases as add-ons will impact subscription costs. Common limiting factors include the current state of HR domain systems, whether all applications can be centralized in one cross-integrated suite, and whether data can be exhaustively stored in a central location.

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Ripping and replacing applications is no longer feasible, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify for organizations struggling to cope with shrinking budgets. Technology decision makers need to decide what to do with these legacy applications. Three main choices are available: maintain the status quo and do nothing; migrate and modernize the applications to a modern, cloud-based environment; or rewrite and replace them. While the third option might appear to be the optimal solution at first glance, the overheads in terms of the effort, time, and cost required to rewrite what could amount to thousands of applications may not always be the best approach.

To help technology decision makers understand some of the dynamics behind modernizing applications, we conducted a field test to assess the benefits and costs of application migration. This is a repeat of a test that we ran last year, as we wanted to ensure that migrating legacy applications was still a feasible option. The field test walks through a migration scenario and evaluates its costs, performance, and benefits. The results were similar to the previous test, and they reinforced the following:

• Significant cost savings can be achieved by migrating applications to the cloud from on-premises infrastructures.
• Traditional .NET applications can benefit from such migration without refactoring underlying code.
• The Microsoft Azure solution offered a potential total cost of ownership (TCO) savings of up to 54% over running on-premises and 35% over running on AWS.
• Streamlined operations, simplified administration, and proximity to advanced cloud services are additional benefits.
• Built-in tools for Visual Studio and MSSQL Manager provide ease of use for database and application migrations.

For an exercise of this nature, it is critical to use legacy applications for the migration to the cloud, as this is a scenario that many organizations find themselves in, with the need to balance the application’s requirements against the potential advantages of the cloud.

The field study looked specifically at .NET applications, which allowed different approaches to migration to be assessed, looking at the advantages and disadvantages of each. We discovered that moving to Microsoft Azure has a measurable TCO advantage over Amazon Web Services—with cost savings of 35% when applying Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) licensing—and that Azure offers additional benefits in terms of ease of migration. (Figure 1)

Figure 1. Three-Year Total Estimated Operating Cost

We concluded that any cloud migration frees up considerable time and resources to work on more strategic tasks that drive value to the business rather than maintaining resource-heavy applications. As a result, we can say that modernization may be viewed as an imperative element of a forward-thinking application strategy. The best starting point is to evaluate existing applications and determine the best migration strategy for each, based on priority.

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The business context and strategy for RPA are equally as important as its technology features, if not more so. It’s easy to use the tools tactically to “paper over” cracks in processes that require proper analysis and change while applying RPA more broadly without due consideration will simply produce another tangled layer of point-to-point interfaces. Therefore, organizations should take a more strategic approach to their automation initiatives and use RPA alongside other tools, accompanied by suitable process analysis and change management.

From a market perspective, RPA is a highly active domain that has yet to reach maturity, with a large number of credible participants. The pioneers of RPA have grown to be sizable businesses, and are now being challenged by the major platform vendors, many of whom have entered the market through acquisitions. At the same time, there are a number of smaller innovators and specialists in particular applications of RPA, all challenging the market leaders.

In the accompanying GigaOm report “Key Criteria for Evaluating Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Tools,” we list the major features and evaluation metrics that should be applied when selecting an RPA solution. In this report, we analyze the leading solutions in the market, weigh the key criteria and evaluation metrics used to assess them, and identify important technologies to consider for the future. All vendors featured in this report offer viable solutions that are capable of providing core RPA features, but there is much greater differentiation in the more advanced areas that form the key criteria for evaluation. The report is intended to appeal to organizations looking to extend investments in existing platforms, as well as those starting out on their RPA journey.

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RPA tools are different in the ways they allow data to be handled in and among many applications. They can be thought of simply in terms of their ability to record a user’s actions on screen and then repeat those actions reliably to remove the need for a human to perform them. However, modern RPA tools increasingly can tackle far more complex problems, like interpreting data in email attachments, discovering the processes best suited for automation, and assisting users in decision making.

Improvements in interface design also have boosted the potential for non-developers to create RPA bots efficiently. Similarly, advances in bot stores and marketplaces within vendor ecosystems can substantially shorten the time required for design and implementation of bots. However, this democratization of RPA, in which the consequences of adding bots often are not considered up front, can lead to poorly managed sprawl. A strong approach to change management, business architecture, and understanding where RPA should be deployed within an organization is therefore key to success in implementing these tools.

RPA has become a key part of digital transformation and has been applied widely across both front- and back-end processes. Human interaction and input to these systems represents a pause in the process flow and can restrict the speed and scale of process automation. In many cases, these interactions are simple, repetitive, and of low value, so finding a solution to automate such tasks can provide benefits in many business scenarios.

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