Choosing HR software for SMEs

I love SMEs - small-medium sized businesses.  The companies with 5 or 6 staff, through to those with 150-200 staff.  They're amazing - the diversity of them.  Each employee can make a difference.  Management know each person by name. They start up, and do useful things that many of us didn't even realised needed doing.

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I respect large businesses too - and there's lots to learn from them.  There's lots of skill needed to run them.  Lots of skill needed to be a middle-manager in one.  And the right attitude needed to work in one as a small cog in a big wheel - part of delivering a large enterprise. Many people have developed those skills - but they are quite different from the skills needed in an SME.

 

As I say, I love SME's.  The big impact that each staff member has.  The power to make noticeable change and deliver great things for customers, and staff.

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I have been involved in SME's all my life - from joining an Internet startup in 1994 in Cambridge as employee number 4; joining a high tech PR and marketing agency in London in 1996-1997 to establish a web design agency within that agency to do websites for their clients; through to running up my own web consultancy in the dot-com boom of 1998 - 2000 setting up ecommerce sites for established businesses such as Iceland supermarket and Eurotunnel. 

 

In 2000, I then co-founded and ran an IT security company, Signify, the secure authentication service.  We started with just 3 of us and no clients but a good vision.  We successfully grew that business, with hundreds of blue-chip customers as well as small businesses, until we successfully sold Signify in 2013. We had around 30 staff, multi-million pound turnover, great clients large and small, and healthy profits.  We'd achieved most things we'd wanted to achieve, and the business was ready to become a specialised division of a larger company, to give the staff the best opportunities of further growth.  And after 13 years, I was ready for a change too, to make use of many of the things I'd learned over the years, to help others.

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I am now part time chairman of an IT support company with around 15 staff, and spend the rest of my time helping other small businesses with a combination of business and technology.

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One area that I've found particularly interesting, and a common theme that is particularly key in SMEs is managing staff.  And a particular tool that they are often missing, is an HR software/system.

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In this blog, I'll try to share what I've learned, so that any SMEs that are looking to improve how they manage their staff, can maybe find some shortcuts to choosing a good system, and how to deploy it, and how to make the most of it.