A Case Study Of Limuru Dairy Farmers

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

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Human Resource information system (HRIS) provide an integrated group decision support system (GDSS), according to Lin et-al that select the appropriate human resource (HR) capabilities for a firm by using existing decision algorithms and information technology (IT) software systems, to gather, store and analyze information regarding an organization’s human resources which essentially optimize the database query and enhance sharing of information both online and also offline and enable easier management of the employees in an organization (Lin & Hsu, 2010).

Database optimization is very critical for it enhances speed and efficiency, according to kim et-al reliability optimization has attracted attention due to the increasing need for highly reliable systems. Which can be achieved by increasing the reliability of components; and adding the redundant components in various subsystems, but both ways usually increase the resources such as cost and volume. Due to these set backs, Simulated annealing (S.A)algorithm are developed to make up for the weak points of heuristic methods to search for near optimal solutions and which have been successfully applied to handle a number of reliability design problems (Kim, Bae, & Park, 2006).

Developing HR capabilities become an important strategic development matter since it plays the critical role of resource for firm’s existence and growth, institutions are stating to realize the benefits of data mining (DM) in their strategic planning and application of data mining techniques can be of vast payoff first, for administrative purposes which reduce cost and time and, second, the more analytical decision support ( Lin & Hsu, 2010; Ball, 2001; Lee & Siau, 2001) Human Resource information system Yasemin et-al put forward the view, that it aids senior management to identify the manpower requirements in order to meet the organization’s long term business plans and strategic goals, and aid Operational management also to track the placement of the employees and recruitment while, for middle management uses the system to monitor and analyze compensation of employees, allocation and recruitment, which make the organization to enhance database optimization and when it comes to recruitment enable short listing and job clustering(Yasemin, B. Esin, E.& Serdar. B,2012).

Therefore the most significant factor for selecting this system is to add some innovative features to the website due to the fact web based technology has being the paramount determining factor for the immense use of technology in business world which is data intensive, since it has allowed sharing of data in distributed computer systems and also on PDA and web enable phones. There is not a function in HR today that is not applying software, thus the need for each organization to give precedence to information system that will enhance data maintenance, data mining and database query optimization (Bussler, Lori; Davis, Elaine, 2001) These will help the human resource and management to optimally utilize all information in their database through querying, analyzing and monitoring hence a competitive advantage to them. Majority of companies have seen a necessitate to transform the way HR operations are performed in order to keep up with new technology and escalating numbers of employees according to Steven, so that the organization can be able to optimize the potential employee have and have competitive advantage over other organizations (Steven Brown, 2008).

The human resource system will enable the legitimate employees to update their profiles, handle employee benefits, change their physical address when need arise and even access their payroll when they have being uploaded by responsible department when legitimate employees log on to their profile after authentication. HRIS products have customizable user interfaces so employees can access their own HR information, called Employee Self Service (ESS) which greatly reduces calls to the HR department and this saves time to both the department and the employees (Kai Yee, 2009).

Limuru Dairy Farmers Cooperative Society Ltd:

LDFCS is located at Limuru town 28km from capital city Nairobi, according International Labour Organization the main activities are collection, and marketing of milk through Limuru milk processors ltd with a daily average of 35000 kgs of milk produced in the Ngecha, Ndeiya, Tigoni, Ngarariga and Kikuyu regions among others. The total number of farmers registered is 9600, with this kind of vast number of clients it has a large number of employees both skilled and casual workers thus the need of implementation of HRIS to manage the potential of the work force and also for the smooth running by the management (International Labour Organization, 2011). If the HR department is overwhelmed by manual paper work system, there is high possibility of incidences of having ghost workers and imposters, many claims of benefits and even employees taking more than one annual leave in a year. The system through optimization of database query and data mining those incidences will be a thing of the past and the organization work force will be well managed, according Lee et-al developing client-server induction system capable of supporting efficient and effective data mining of large data at different abstraction levels will be an advantage edge (Lee & Siau, 2001).

Human Resource Information System will fast track the management of LDFCS human resource in various ways, the system will come in as a vital tool for data mining, monitor and analyze the work force. Making it easy for the organization to be among, the very best proactive and strategically managed farmers organizations. Due to the proximity to capital city and also been in Kiambu county LDFCS attract a large number of job applicant because these areas have high number of population for example Kiambu county population as per 2009 census report was 1,623,282 (Male 802,609 – 49%, Female 820,673 – 51%) which is 4.20% of the National Percentage, the unemployed youth are the majority, because of these factors the e-recruitment module of the HRIS can ease the process of selection and short listing and also creating a mechanism to interact between the prospective applicant and also HR department and these will ensure the best suited candidate is selected (Kenya national bureau of statistics, 2010).

1.1.1Organization Hierarchy for Limuru Dairy Farmers Cooperative Society LTD

MANAGING DIRECTOR

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

MARKETING MANAGER

HRM MANAGER

ACCOUNTANT

HEALTH OFFICER

PUBLIC REALATIONS OFFICER OFFICER

SALES PERSON

CASHIER CASHIER

VERTINARY

Figure 1 Organization Chart.

The above diagram (Figure 1 Organization Chart) shows the management structure for Limuru dairy farmers cooperative Society limited (LDFCS). This structure ensures clearly defined roles or responsibility for every department delegating responsibilities and authority for enabling the staff to work more efficiently in a harmonized environment and this is well captured by system requirement of the Human Resource Information System and also sharing of information across the hierarchy is very vital.

1.2 Problem Statement

The main problem is data retrieval and data mining from the firm large data repository and utilization of the database optimally to aid the delivering of the organizations goals by assisting in management of the workforce at the most economical viable, efficient and effective way possible.

Human Resource Information System is thought to contribute largely to organization performance by fulfilling or at least supporting the tasks of data retrieval and data storage, and serving as primary administrative support tools, of reporting statistics as well as of program monitoring. It also allows organization to cut cost and offer more information to employees in a faster and more efficient way (Marilyn M. Helms, 2006;Yasemin, B. Esin, E.& Serdar. B, 2012)

1.3.0 Objective:

1.3.1 General Objectives:

The objective of this project is to develop a system that will optimize database query and increase retrieval of data by the management as well as employees using a web based system to ease operation making the organization to have a competitive edge.

1.3.2 Specific Objective:

Review critically the literature related to human resource information system.

Analyze the user requirements so as to understand the desired system requirements and then

Model and design i.e. implement the Human Resource Information System for Limuru dairy farmer cooperative society

1.4 Scope

The researcher shall use Limuru Dairy Farmers Cooperative society as a case study because it has a vast number of employees to management thus handle a large magnitude of data which need to be processed and retrieved, thus arise a need for database optimization and data mining for strategic management. The ASP.NET and MS SQL server 2005 shall be used as they are powerful languages and provide security and consistency.

The reason for choosing ASP.NET is it takes advantage of performance enhancements found in the .NET Framework and (CLR) common language runtime. ASP.NET code is compiled, rather than interpreted, which allows early strong typing, binding, and (JIT) just-in-time compilation to local code, it has been designed to offer important performance improvements over ASP and other Web development platforms. Accessing databases from ASP.NET applications is an often-used technique for displaying data to Web site visitors. ASP.NET makes it easier than ever to access databases for this purpose (msdn, 2013).

1.5 Justification:

The Human Resource Information System will aim to achieve the following functions,

To allow employees have an avenue whereby they can access up-to-date information from their human resource department

To allow management to have an avenue whereby they can upload up-to-date information and also retrieve information from and optimize their database query.

1.6Contribution to Research:

This research will make a contribution to the literature in terms of evaluating Human Resource Information System projects, the system designed will help management to use database optimization and data mining to aid to have both breadth and depth in decisions making (Hosack, Hall, Paradice, & Courtney, 2012).

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

There have been numerous studies on innovation, spanning many disciplines and focusing on both organizational and individual levels, according to Kassim et-al the process of adopting new innovations has been studied for over 30 years, In the innovation diffusion theory, done by Rogers proposed that innovation adoption is a process of uncertainty reduction and information gathering, The objective of the study was to understand the influence of various perceived attributes of innovations on the extent of HRIS usage and the outcomes of HRIS use (Kassim, Ramayah, & Kurnia, 2012). Information technology in the past decades drastically changed the human resources function, according to Yasemin et-al with the rise of computerized management information systems (MIS) in industrialized countries’ enterprises in the 1980s, HR functions increasingly started to deploy human resource information systems in their daily work. HRIS correspondingly evolved into more sophisticated information expert systems featuring analytical tools to support decision-making in managing human capital and to achieve this, optimization of the database and data mining become paramount and all this information provided an essential part of the control mechanism through information selected and presented in a form suitable for managerial decision making and for the planning and monitoring of the organization’s activities (Yasemin, B. Esin, E.& Serdar. B, 2012).

Some of database optimization algorithm studied includes Simulated Annealing algorithm (S A) according to Das et-al, Simulated Annealing is a random search method proposed by Kirkpatrick et-al way back in 1983 for solving combinatorial optimization problems. The method differs from the local search method in its capability to escape local optima by considering a probability, solution. The Simulated Annealing algorithm generally accepts all the solutions that improve the objective function, while those, which do not result in improvements, may be accepted by the acceptance probability criterion. The acceptance probability is determined by a control parameter defined as the annealing temperature, which decreases with the progress of the Simulated Annealing steps (Das, Lashkari, & Sengupta, 2006). A number of algorithms for optimizing queries have been proposed according to Anant, proposed an algorithm wherein cost savings are achieved by modifying the procedural queries before executing them. In another direction of refinement, considered the caching of the materialized results and caching strategies, caching in tuples, and separate caching-are considered. The last algorithm is flattening, where a POSTQUEL query is modified into an equivalent flat query, and then optimized through a traditional optimizer (Anant Jhingran, 2000).

Data mining according to Gargano et-al uses assorted toolkit of novel algorithmic models that help to automatically solve user defined questions. Each model in this array of powerful tools is intuitive, easy to explain, simple to use and understandable. These tools include artificial intelligence methods e.g. expert systems, fuzzy logic, decision trees, rule induction methods, genetic algorithms and genetic programming, neural networks e.g. back propagation, associative memories, and clustering techniques (Gargano & Raggad, 1999). Analytic hierarchy process based on genetic algorithms is useful in the process of group decision-making to help managers set priority level and make the best decision, it has been utilized successfully to solve economic, political, social, and technological problems in the group decision-making process It is also a successful tool for solving business problems (Liu and Shih, 2005; Si et al., 2009:Lin & Hsu, 2010).

2.0 Adoption of HRIS in organizations.

The HRIS is usually a part of the organization’s larger management information system. According Kassim et-al a good human resource decision is more likely to follow from a good HRIS, such a system should therefore be provided to both human resource and managers to facilitate decision making, through optimization techniques can provide a powerful foundation for the development of Group Decision Support System (GDSS) to assist organization to negotiate and make decisions that are the best and have a competitive advantage (Kassim et al., 2012).

HRIS has grown in popularity since the 1960s, According to Ball a survey conducted in 1998 showed that 60 percent of companies use the HRIS to support daily human resource management (HRM) operations (Ball, 2001). According to Ngai et-al when the HRIS function was computerized, faster decision making can be carried out on the development, planning, and administration of HR because data can be much easier to store, update, classify, and analyze. In addition, they noted that HRIS can strengthen an organization’s character (Ngai & Wat, 2006).

Using an HRIS to automate HR information management practices according to Tansley et-al 2001 can therefore enable both greater efficiency in current HR practices and, at the same time, reduce overhead costs via task mechanization and process automation through the substitution of the human agency of HR specialists (Tansley, Newell, & Williams, 2001).

2.1 Importance of optimizing human resource information system

Strategic management decisions have been vastly improved, management can use the information generated from the database to influence organization strategy, with the use of technology it is now no longer tactical and reactionary but strategic and proactive. Through optimization according to Bussler et-al the HRIS have offered simplification of processes such as performance appraisals where the software can track trends of core competencies though data mining and provides the manager with tips for employees needing improvement or coaching (Bussler, Lori; Davis, Elaine, 2001).

HRIS can provide specific reporting formats that break out the various activities being performed by purpose, time, and relative importance, eventually when all these data are aggregated by general functional or specific firm’s categories, it is possible to account very specifically for the current resources allocation (Hyde, 2013). It also aids managers with reports that summarize and categorize information derived from all databases and allow management to spot trends and is suited for unstructured decisions for future development (George , 2002).

Through database optimization HRIS can also support various practices such as workforce planning, staffing, compensation programs, salary forecasts, pay budgets and labor/employee relations, Yasemin et-al noted that it can support long range planning with information for labor force planning and supply and demand forecast; staffing with information on equal employment, separations and applicant qualifications; and development with information on training programs, salary forecasts, pay budgets and labor/employee relations with information on contract negotiations and employee assistance needs (Yasemin, B. Esin, E.& Serdar. B,2012).

Enhance information responsiveness as HR professionals are able to be more responsive, answer queries more quickly, and provide more accurate information, Kassim et-al noted that HRIS may enable these professionals to increase their responsiveness. Thus, with more extensive use of HRIS, HR professionals are able to provide increased information responsiveness which is a competitive advantage (Kassim et al., 2012).

2.2 Challenges facing human resource information system

Although the proposed Group Decision Support System is a flexible and expandable system that offers several advantages through a complete procedure for managers to determine a firm’s HR capability development strategy by appropriately combining both strategic planning and IT, still there is the need for combining the inputs of many decision makers with different backgrounds and or different geographic work locations and handling complicated and heterogeneous information to chose the most viable decision (Lin & Hsu, 2010).

2.3 Advantages of human resource information system

HRIS will make company be well equipped with information for future reference which can be easily retrieved or updated. According to Ngai et-al many authors (Hendirks, 2003; Beadles, et all, 2005, Kovach, 2002) emphasize the importance of HRIS and can be systematized as follows;

Increase competitiveness by improving the operational transactions in the HR department through the use of query database and provision of instant feed back and use of software as a service;

The ability to implement a number of different operations related to HR that optimize the use of information in the database;

Shifting the focus from the operational (transaction) HR information to strategic HR information; Include employees as an active part of the HRIS and also re-engineering the entire HR department (Ngai & Wat, 2006).

2.4 Weakness / Barriers to the implementation of HRIS

The cost of setting up and maintaining a HRIS can be high, which is the major obstacle in the implementation of a HRIS. According to Ngai et-al a survey conducted by the Institute of Management and Administration 2002 indicated that the biggest problems or obstacles to managing a HRIS include:

the lack of staff who have capacity to utilize the system fully;

the lack of a budget to set up and maintain the system ;

the lack of information technology (IT) support (Ngai & Wat, 2006).

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