Besides a clear vision and good leadership, HR management plays the same important role in a company success. Thus, technology often took part in making a more efficient HR management.

Technology also enables integration between HR management and other managerial aspects.

One of the companies that use technology to ease its HR management is chocolate producer PT Ceres.

Originated from a small-scale household industry, Ceres has transformed into the biggest company in the business with more than 6,000 employees.

Self-Service

Arief Gunawan, Ceres IT Manager, says the company management had come up with the idea that HR administration should be done by self-service system.

"Using the previous system, an employee taking a leave has to queue to fill the form and submit it to the HR division. Whereas employee matters are not just about leave, it could be overtime work and many more. And queuing really not effective,” Arief says.

As the person who is responsible on IT matters at Ceres, Arief look into several system alternatives that could bring more efficiency in HR management. And the company decides to use OrangE HRIS System.

OrangE HRIS System or OrangE is an application to help companies is HR operation and strategic management. With a web based comprehensive IT system, OrangE is proven to provide reliable, fast and effective solution.

“With OrangE, Ceres could pool all the existing and former employees’ data’s. OrangE also enable employee to access and manage their private data, thus build up a sense of ownership and responsibility of the employees towards their own data’s” Arief says.

Employees could even update their non-taxable income data. With all the features, HR division could improve their work efficiency by 60%.

Furthermore, with OrangE, employees could use it to submit their leave, check their attendance and overtime on their own. Each is given user id and password to access their database on OrangE.

At the company, Ceres provides six pc workstations that can be used to access OrangE. But since OrangE is a web-based system, employees could actually access the system through their cell phones.

"If they want to take a leave, they could just submit it through Orange. It’s the same thing with sick leave or if they want to know their attendance or overtime. This makes things easier," Arief explains.

Ceres also uses OrangE for recruitments. “We gather the applicants’ data’s so that we have a database when we need talents,” says Arief.

Warm Welcome

Since the beginning, Arief says there was no negative concern when implementing OrangE. Ceres is confident that the employees could adapt and shift from the old system. And as expected, all employees are enthusiastic about OrangE. This is because the flexibility given to employees to manage their own HR administration.

"It was challenging to teach them how to login or input data’s. Often they forgot their password. But we passed that and OrangE is already a habit and even a term they often used," says Arief.

Strategic Direction.

"Now, there is no such thing as data entry nor overtime paper form. Goodbye to piles of papers in the HR division. There is no need to create a performance report manually. No queue in the HR locket. All is taken care by OrangE. Control function is distributed among the departments," explains Arief.

Choosing PT Mitra Integrasi informatika

Ceres appointed PT Mitra Integrasi Informati¬ka (MI1) as implementer partner when implementing OrangE. Together with MII, Ceres build the design and prepare the entire infrastructure needed such as bandwith.

Ceres implement OrangE with seven modules: Core Modul, Time Attendance, Payroll, Leave, Medical, Travel Expense, and Recruitment. Implementation kick-off was done in May 2, 2011 and go live in January 2012. MII stays to provide assistance one month after the system go live.

Arief says, overall the implementation process went smooth. There were no significant obstacles met. Moreover MII gave its best effort in providing assistance. This was not the first time for Ceres to work with MII. Previously MII was also Ceres’ implementation partner when the company adopts Oracle e-Busi¬ness Suite.

"There’s chemistry between Ceres and MII and that makes the cooperation works well,” Arief says.