Flow of data

For outsourcing projects the order products have to go live in must be agreed on before the projects begin, as there will be dependencies between products.

This is especially important in regards to where the data flows from and too through all the different products.

For example, if it is a payroll or time and attendance solution, then it must be understood and agreed from where the employee demographic data (name, job title, department etc) will come from.

Ideally all employee demographic data should be in a global HR system (e.g. Workday, Workforce Now, SuccessFactors) and the payroll or time and attendance solutions must be able to receive data from it.

This can be in the form of integration, an output file is generated from the global HR system in a defined format that the solution (payroll system or time and attendance system) can receive the data in.

If there is a middleware product that is required to transfer data from the global HR system to the payroll or time and attendance solutions then this must be implemented first. As this middleware acts as the road the employee demographic data must travel down to get to the solution. If not, there will be a period of time where data will have to be provided manually. Manual data collection is resource intensive and time consuming plus has a greater risk of errors in the data than automation. But it may be worth the risk and workload if there are tight deadlines and other factors that need to be taken into account.