Modern businesses understand the importance of using technological innovations in HR. According to research conducted by PwC, a leading consulting company, 44% of executives have already used cloud SaaS technologies in HR, and 30% plan to adopt it in the next one to three years. In comparison, only 23% of business owners applied HR solutions in 2014.

What are the main reasons for using HR technologies? And what role do mobile devices play here? PwC, together with Oxford Economics, conducted the research that answers these questions.

A few words about the research methodology

Business executives from over 650 companies around the world took part in the study, which was conducted during the third quarter of 2015. Throughout the course of the study, PwC focused on the executives’ attitudes towards cloud SaaS technologies in HR and their willingness to use them in business.

Why companies chose cloud SaaS solutions for HR

Cloud computing in general has become commonplace, and most companies’ HR departments are ready to implement it now. It is not seen as just another technology for management, but as the platform that can optimize a company’s communications and structure. So, 64% of executives believe that the cloud SaaS solutions will allow them to reduce the dependence of top managers from IT department.

Many executives believe that SaaS is a good tool for the optimization of business processes. The majority of executives are sure that the cloud will help them to lower the cost of ownership. Some of them manage companies with complex structures and need a catalyst for change in the form of SaaS. And 45% of executives want to use innovations to accelerate all business processes.

You can view their various motives in the chart below (data is from PwC’s Annual HR Technology Survey):

What about Mobile?

Executives understand the role mobility plays in HR; fully one-third of them consider mobile access to all company processes to be one of the main reasons for moving to the cloud in HR.

For what purposes do companies use HR mobile apps? In most cases, mobile access helps to solve the tasks of work-flow approvals, time management, training enrollment, and HR analytics. All the reasons for using mobile devices in HR are represented in the graph below (data is from PwC’s Annual HR Technology Survey):

It is worth noting that 4% of the respondents said that the majority of the transactions they perform on their desktop can be performed on their mobile device. Taking into account the existing technological constraints of mobile devices, that is a pretty good figure.

The use of technologies in HR provides a competitive advantage because it allows enterprises to optimize the processes of human resources management. And looking at the trend of increased use of cloud SaaS solutions, businesses understand it.

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