AcquireTM Blog and general information regarding T

Signs of Life?

With what seems to be an endless stream of mixed messages regarding jobs and employment these days, I thought this new Index from Intuit offers a bright spot that’s worth sharing. While the numbers aren’t earth shattering, they certainly bare out what we have been seeing and hearing from our own customers.

According to the just released Intuit Small Business Employment Index, small businesses, companies with fewer than 20 employees (as defined by Intuit) have been cautiously adding to their payrolls.

The Intuit Small Business Employment Index, released March 1^st, is based on data from 50,000 customers of the software maker's online payroll service. It finds that Companies with less than 20 employees have been adding new jobs since June 2009.

According to the index, “employment grew nearly 0.8 percent over the past eight months, which is 1.1 percent at an annual rate. This translates into nearly 40,000 new jobs for February 2010 and nearly 150,000 new jobs since June 2009”.

“Employment for these small businesses began trending upward in mid-2009, a good sign for the overall economy,” said Dr. Susan Woodward, the nationally-recognized economist who worked with Intuit to create the index. This index is an indicator that the small business employment situation may be getting better,” added Woodward, who was chief economist of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and later of the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “Small businesses generally recover faster than larger businesses because they begin hiring sooner than big businesses. To see these figures showing a rise in employment at small businesses is very heartening at a time when good news is scarce.”

At Eon Applications, Inc we have seen an uptick in sales for both our applicant tracking and recruiting software business lines from small businesses looking to manage their talent acquisition needs. 

While the index doesn’t reflect the kind of numbers that will be needed to turn the employment picture around, it’s defiantly a step in the right direction.

What makes up a good applicant tracking solution for small and mid-size business

What makes up a good hiring and applicant tracking solution for small and mid-size business? There are of course a number of factors; cost (both initial and ongoing), ease-of-use, does it require significant IT support and how well does it solve the business problem it was designed to address.  I’m sure that I can come up with others but I tend to think that they’re still derived from these four core issues. 

As a software development company focused in the small and mid-size market space, we take each into consideration. When designing AcquireTM this was no exception; we thought long and hard about each requirement.  We started as we always do with the last item on the list:

1.       How well does it solve the business problem it was designed to address?  When talking with small and mid-sized companies about applicant tracking, we found they wanted a better way to manage the hiring process. They typically needed more than a simple ATS (applicant tracking software).  They wanted a Hiring Solution. To “solve the problem” we needed to address the entire hiring process; including managing the company’s Web Facing Career Center, engaging the hiring manager, tracking the applicant progression and then having an efficient way to bring that applicant on board. What was needed was a Hiring Management or Talent Acquisition System geared towards the small and mid-sized business.

Having a way to manage the process from A to Z, companies benefit from a fully defined methodology.  This improves efficiency throughout the hiring process and leads to better visibility in to hiring results and improvements in the time to hire. 

By providing an integrated Career Center, applicant tracking system and employee on boarding; AcquireTM provides a complete system for companies that need more than ATS but are not looking for a large and expensive enterprise HRIS (Human Resource Information System).  AcquireTM also provides a solution for companies that are looking to add hiring functionality to an existing HRIS, ERP or other HCM systems.

2.       Cost:  It’s always an important factor, but even more so for the small and mid-sized company.   To keep AcquireTM affordable we felt it was important to offer it as a complete solution, not as different modules or with add-ons that needed to be purchased separately.  As a pricing model, Eon Applications doesn’t believe that companies should have to buy separate modules so that they can have the functionality they need.    We also wanted to structure the pricing so that it scaled according to the size of the company’s users (both HR and Hiring Managers) and their hiring needs.  Offered as a month to month subscription AcquireTM is easily affordable for any small or mid-size company.

3.       Ease-of-use: It needs to be easy to learn, easy to use and easy to get going. Small and mid-size organizations are dynamic by nature. They need solutions that are flexible and that can be plugged in to their existing business culture quickly.  To this end, AcquireTM excels. AcquireTM is easy to learn. With screens that are intuitive to the way people work and to the work they need to do.

AcquireTM is easy to use. The WorkCenter is the heart of AcquireTM or maybe the brain is more apt. The WorkCenter is a single screen that gives you the information you need, like the cockpit of a plane. And, like the cockpit of a plane, the WorkCenter gives you all the tools you need to act on that information. The WorkCenter does away with the need to click through screen after screen to get your job done. Everything you need is right there.

AcquireTM can be deployed quickly. Offering AcquireTM as SaaS (Software as a Service) organizations can literally be using the system in a matter of hours. This of course can vary depending on the specific needs of the company.

4.       Does it require significant IT Support?  Typically small and mid-size companies have limited internal IT support.  The costs associated with supporting software and computer hardware can be a significant burden.  By offering AcquireTM as SaaS (Software as a Service) companies have no software to purchase, install or maintain. There are no additional servers or computer hardware to purchase and no IT issues to deal with. Everything is managed in a state of the art data center.

Of course these issues apply to any size business when it comes to technology. But with small and Mid-size organizations, with limited budgets and IT support, it’s important to get it right.

We hope that you take a look at AcquireTM and let us know if we hit the mark.