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; the 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 5 years in response to the growth in the 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 rapid growth of the company and when the organization had fewer than 100 employees. The system’s 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 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 applicant’s 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 candidate’s progress through the recruiting and selection process, and providing automated reporting functions. The company’s managers also want eHRM functionality that includes the Internet posting of job openings through the company’s 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.

Questions:

1. What is the company trying to achieve?
2. How will an HRIS benefit the company and employees?
3. Who are the main users impacted?
4. Explain which development strategy you would use (In-house, COTS, or Outsource).
5. Which vendor(s) would be best suited?