Case Study: Vignette Continued3

Larson Property Management Company is one of the largest property

management companies in California, with more than 1,000 employees. The

company provides a full array of commercial management and development

services. These activities include complete management services for

commercial office and retail buildings and apartment complexes;

construction, repair, and maintenance of commercial properties; and financial

management and billing services for commercial real estate clients. The

company has experienced significant expansion over the past five years in

response to the growth in apartment and commercial construction in southern

California, and this expansion has resulted in the need to hire a large number

of employees on an ongoing basis to staff its operations.

Larson Property Management has depended on a legacy HRIS to manage its

applicant and employee databases. The system runs on a client-server

computer system. The system was implemented approximately 10 years ago,

prior to the companys rapid growth and when it employed fewer than 100

employees. The systems functionality is limited to the storage and retrieval

of employee and applicant data. For recruiting purposes, the system requires

a clerk to manually enter basic applicant data, the results of the application

test, and whether or not an offer of employment has been made. Prior to this,

applicants files were passed around to those who reviewed the materials and

were sometimes misplaced, so trying to locate a particular applicants file

was often a problem. The current HRIS has limited file storage capability for

applicant and employee records and currently has reached its storage

capacity.

Larson Property Management has decided to replace its legacy HRIS. One

application module in the new HRIS that the company wants is a

sophisticated applicant-tracking system (ATS). The primary objective of the

ATS will be to provide a paperless hiring process. The basic functions of the

new system will be managing the requisition and approval of job openings,

storing resumes and job applications and retrieving through query functions

the names of applicants who match job requirements, tracking a candidates

progress through the recruiting and selection process, and providing

automated reporting functions. The companys managers also want an e-HR

functionality that includes the Internet posting of job openings through the

companys website and external job-posting services, application and resume

submission through the Web and through kiosks at various office locations,

staff ability to access and use the system remotely through a Web browser,

and online resume- and application-scanning capabilities.

Part of the design phase is modeling the processes that will be used in the

system for applicant tracking. For Larson Property Management, this

modeling will allow the system analysts to design an efficient paperless

hiring process.

Larson Property Management is well aware that the design stage of the

SDLC is critical for the successful implementation of the new ATS.

However, there is considerable confusion about how to proceed with this

phase. The HR and IT professionals assigned to the ATS committee have

been meeting to plan the new system. From their planning and needs

analysis, it is clear that a new HRIS application is needed, can save

considerable time, and can result in more accurate storage and retrieval of

applicant data for cost-benefit and other management reports.

The company has had several vendors provide presentations, with each

vendor outlining its particular approach to the design of an ATS. But these

presentations were primarily focused on the physical design of the new ATS.

The HR and IT committees must now begin the design process, which must

be completed in three months.

Case Study Questions

1. Based on the material in this chapter, design a three-month operational

plan for the ATS.

2. Describe the importance of the data view versus the process view

for the design of the new ATS.