It has been approximately six months since NetSuite acquired Waterloo based TribeHR. Joseph Fung, TribeHR founder and CEO, held a media scrum at SuiteWorld 2014 to update on TribeHR’s integration progress into the NetSuite fold.
NetSuite offers full enterprise resource planning (ERP), plus customer relationship management (CRM) and related packages, in the cloud, and TribeHR supports existing NetSuite customers by allowing them to optimize and better leverage business decisions by considering human resources (HR).
NetSuite’s acquisition has sped up TribeHR’s development, and already great traction has been achieved under the NetSuite banner. Currently employees are logging into the TribeHR system in over 50 countries. How exciting (and profitable) is that?
So again, what makes this “home-grown” Canadian product so special? As Fung outlined, right from the beginning, developers were embedded with designers, and they tried to think how the TribeHR experience could be made more social. They considered the customer by asking how does TribeHR interact with the customer to make it an optimal experience? The goal was to build in social interaction with all the components of the system, and as a result, according to Fung, when TribeHR is implemented, there is absolutely no resistance as employees have buy-in based on the system’s design principles. And as someone who has done system implementation, I know this is huge.
A live demo presented by Donna Fung, product manager of human capital management (HCM) for TribeHR, further highlighted the user friendliness and flexibility of the platform. “Social HR” (notsocial media) reiterates that the goal of the system is employee / employer engagement, not “socializing” for socializing’s sake. Employees can access their own personal screen and perform tasks such as recording sick days, and requesting vacation time while referencing a central company business calendar to ensure no conflict exists in their request. Unique to TribeHR is employee ability to provide internal recognition, or “Kudos” to other employees for a job well done, or anything else that seems worthy.
The Kudos feature is particularly interesting as it allows the organization to track if employee Kudos are reflecting and reinforcing core company values which have also been identified via the TribeHR system. Further, when performance reviews are completed, the Kudos are referenced by managers, like a 360 feedback mechanism, to see where employees have been given recognitions throughout the performance review period.
Recruitment is also very innovative, and applicants are tracked via their own uniquely assigned email when they apply directly online or via their LinkedIn or Indeed accounts. Once hired, the employee resume, interview notes, etc. automatically create the employee file, and data fields that we created from the start of the interview process seamlessly populate the remaining components of the TribeHR system, saving tons of time, and ensuring an error-free record. Further, the organization chart is automatically updated when a person is hired.
And not to be overlooked is that all of this date interchange and storage is being done in the cloud. My considerable HR experience can attest to the fact that thousands of trees will be saved by eliminating employee paper files held in fireproof cabinets or in off-site storage at considerable cost, not to mention saved “filing time.”
TribeHR by virtue of it being migrated to the NetSuite platform ensures integration with other NetSuite based systems. Again the time and cost savings are huge, and HR from a functional perspective, no longer has to hope it will get noticed, but by virtue of its integration in NetSuite, is part of the NetSuite platform where all business operations and metrics are managed.
So, my own Kudos to the TribeHR team on a job well done! “The world is your oyster” seems an appropriate adage to describe TribeHR’s future, and whether or not you are part of the “True North,” check it out.
