Introduction

Shanghai Bell & Alcatel Joint-stock Company, Ltd. (Alcatel Shanghai Bell) is a joint-stock foreign investment enterprise with 50%+1 of the shares held in Alcatel and 50%-1 of the shares in Chinese stock holders. The company combines Alcatel’s main business in China after the share swap and reorganization of Shanghai Bell.
On 28th, May, 2002, Shanghai-----The first joint-stock company of the Chinese communication industry invested by foreign capital, Shanghai Bell & Alcatel Joint-stock Company, Ltd. was formally established. It symbolizes that the Alcatel’s share alteration in Shanghai Bell Company, Ltd. and legal procedure of reorganization has been accomplished. It is also a symbol of successful integration of Alcatel’s main business in China with Shanghai Bell.

Shanghai Bell’s State before the implementation of HRIS

Sino-Belgium Shanghai Bell Company, Ltd. was set up in 1984, being one of the first joint ventures and mainly aiming at the research, development and manufacturing of communication equipment. It was one of the key enterprises under the direct control of Central Enterprise Working Committee. It was also the biggest foreign investment enterprise and on the top of electronics and information industry. The total registered account was 120 million while the total capital reached up to 170 billion RMB. Now there are 6000 employees with an average age of 29, in which 80% of the employees are graduates, more than 900 masters and doctors. The number of Employees on research and development takes up 45% of the total employees. The company has been awarded as one of the most popular foreign enterprises for several times.

Shanghai Bell has lots of branches and offshoots. The HR management is just like other foreign enterprises: versatile and normative. The rich human resource of the company includes various type of employees for research and development, management, marketing, sales, manufacturing, purchasing, project, etc. All the employees were classified to 34 types in the classification of post sequence, in which employees of research, development and management have a big portion. They are well-bred and have strong desire to take a part in the management. In last October, the company signed the Memo of understanding with Alcatel about the alteration of shares and planned to finish integration in first half year of 2002. Kayang’s HRIS was implemented under such circumstance.

Due to the objective historical reasons the former HR management system of Shanghai Bell can hardly meet the fast increase of the enterprise, which even became the bottle neck of the management mainly lying in the following aspects:

• independent running of multi-systems, unobvious advantage of the union

Before implementing the new HRIS, there are several systems running independently, eg.， employees management, overseas affair management, C&B management, attendance management, etc. The data in every system can not be shared because of the difference in the way of data store and programming. As a result, the resource can not be reused. Usually, one’s personal information must be registered repeatedly in the every system, which not only increase the work intensity of HR staff but also add difficulty to data precision, uniqueness，promptness。

• Respective management system of different quality

As the company scale and management requirement alters, the former HR management system can not get accord with the alteration. These systems run respectively with different managing extent and depth, which cause the difference in the quality of the system and the disunity of the management system. Accordingly, the disunity of the system, in reverse, deepens the misfit of the alteration, even caused management mess to some degree (this can be found in redundancy and disunity of the system data)

• Comparatively outdated HRIS

The modern HRIS stresses the service function of human resource and support of decisions of the company. At that time, the independent system in Shanghai Bell was confined to functional management, which reduced the effect of the HR management. As above, Shanghai Bell has high-bred staff and good managing environment (nearly 1person one PC). They strongly expect to join the company management. Especially after Shanghai Alcatel proposes to re-shapen the culture of the enterprise and to strive for a bright tomorrow again, the focus comes to the HR management again. Meanwhile, owing to the specialty of communication industry, talents become the important point of competition between enterprises. The management staff pays more attention to the HR management. At that time, the HR management depends on the respectively running management system in terms of C&B, Training, relationship between employees and performance evaluation. it was hard to imagine that these systems could realize the service function and support decision of the enterprise.

------based on the factor above, Shanghai Bell emphasizes the following aspects as follows when re-choose a new HRIS:

• Openness and flexibility: because of the continual reformation, the alterability of the business becomes very important in the system.
• Customization: allow use to make customization on the business flow, that is to say, the system is expected to be a information platform.
• Security: the system can realize respective control of the department via user authorities and make it possible for two-grade management.
• The system must be convenient for employees to use and wholly shows the EHR concept and way.

To sum up, what Shanghai Bell needs is a HRIS which can be completely fit for the present management way (abandoning the unreasonable parts) with strict flow control and high security（especially important for drastically competing industry）. The system can provide normative management to enable all in the company to join in the management of the enterprise and can all-round support the enterprise decisions. The system should easily adapt to the development of the company as well. The features of Kayang Power HR 2000 happened to meet Shanghai Bell’s requirement.

The present state after implementation

After nearly half a year’s implementation, The HRIS of Shanghai Bell solved many problems in the former HR management system radically. Meanwhile, it maintained the Bell HR management together with the unique management mode and method. The advantage of the new system lies mainly in the following aspect:

• Information can be shared and the administration can be centralized.
  The present HRIS radically changed the state that the information in the comparatively separate system could not be shared. All the information was maintained by specialists. The information of the sub-modules can be used only with r the authority and thus keep the data running promptly and properly.
  
• Take the C&B module for example. This module needs monthly list of the new employees and then administrates these employees respectively according to different type of the employees. What we did in the past was that the HR of C&B might call or email to get the employee’s list form the HR of employees’ information system. But now, the system will automatically gear a result for the HR of C&B to undertake the following management.
  
• Strict flow control and authority control
  The integrating human resource system requires that the system have strict flow and authority control, so we considered enough about the flow control between every module. First of all, the system will automatically run and watch according to these pre-set flow. Once the user mis-operates the flow, the system will alarm automatically and screen off the influence of illegal operation. E g. the system does not allow the current monthly C&B computation before the current- month attendance statistic computation finishes. If the HR computes the current -month C&B before the current- month statistic finishes, the system will consider the operation illegal or invalid. Moreover, it will remind user that the operation should be after the current-month attendance statistic finishes. Of course, these flow controls can be self defined by the system administration.
  As for the authority control, the administrating mode of the security set is multilayer, centralized and the simplest. Meanwhile, the system administrator can edit the business node which is available for users according to the current running state of the system and the requirements of the management.
  
• All-involved ,the reformation of the HR management—EHR
  Shanghai Bell has a good number of employees with complicated composition, so the management should be different. It is hard to contain all the HR business operated only by HR staff. However, our system limitedly opens the HR management to departments and even employees under strict control. It makes use of ES2000—employee self service. Through the role definition and administration, the system gives out the HR management layer by layer.
  
• Ordinary Employee can look over(or modify) his own information (eg. personal information, C&B information, etc.), and submit applications or confirmations related to HR management, such as leave application, overtime work, training, performance appraisal, etc., while the direct leader can also look over the state of his underlings via ES2000(employ self service) and make approval of relevant applications. The department director, even the general manager, can take part in the HR management as well.

The functions of the new system ease the burden of HR management. What’s more, it contains the new concept of all-involved HR management. The most important is that the Employee Competency and Attitude Appraisal and KPI appraisal realize the 360 Degree Performance Appraisal via such a platform.
The auxiliary tools, such as Automail (best wishes to birthdays of employees), and automatic reminding (due contract), which are embodiments of the humanized management of HR, get consonant high regards of employees and increase employees’ satisfactory degree.

• Management barycenter descends
  Kayang system makes centralized control and decentralized operation possible. A great many of the business has realized two-level management, for instance, personnel, training, attendance, position management can realize spontaneous operations between departments level and company level with the help of system functions. This uplifts the HR efficiency and creates the same language between HR and departments, building up a consonant communication basis.
  
• Learning society
  In all the management methods, the HR management committee of the enterprise always makes frequent adjustments as the internal and external conditions alter. These frequent adjustments require that the HRIS have powerful customization ability and management tools so as to adapt to the alteration, when input to the HRIS promptly.
  Considering this, Kayang proposes that a good HRIS should be learning HRIS. And the realization of this kind of HRIS is depending on a series of tools provided by Kayang Power HR2000:
  Form Designer:
  Design and release all interfaces running in the system.
  . HR Admin:
  Administrate the system object, authority and user menu.
  . Report Designer
  Flexible report making and data digging tools provide enough supports for the decision making.
  .Chart Designer
  Organizational configuration and flow control designer dynamically show the configuration and system state of the company.

Because these tools are administrating tools running independently, separated from the HR direct users, and keep close ties with the system, the administration and re-extending are entirely independent. With these development and management tools, Shanghai Bell extends several united but comparatively independent HR business module to adapt to the actual HR management. These HR businesses came out after the system implemented by virtue of HR business alteration. The HR system administrators in Shanghai Bell Company greatly reduced the maintenance cost and risk of management reformation.

• The new system was integrated successfully in the merger of Shanghai Bell and Alcatel.
• The new system takes a great party in the voluntary separation plan.

The Application Appraisal of the System

In 2001, Garter, a renowned company in the trade that is accomplished in IT application consultation, made an appraisal of the entire IS application of Shanghai Bell. The HRIS of HR department implemented by Kayang was listed as Grade-4(the highest grade is Grade-5) and No. 2 among the application in Bell. Apart from the excellent HR management system and kind cooperation during the implementation of the system, the unique structure of Kayang’s product and its professional customer service also contributed a lot to it.