Should a start-up company, usually not cash-rich, always struggle for its operations, marketing etc. or is it possible to do everything in low or almost no budget? Can automation make things feasible or do we always need expert staff? Can we do most things ourselves or should we outsource things.
When I launched my company, all I had was some confidence and enthusiasm. No cash. (don’t have it even now). But over the time, I did manage to Automate a lot of stuff which we start-ups need to do, especially if we are already a private limited company.
In this series, I shall try to share how we, a startup did almost everything at very low cost or almost free and without much need for so called experts. It was not perfect nor is it ‘gyaan’ for everyone to follow, but if anyone can find any part useful, one may emulate it.
My Second post on series “Startups don’t have to compromise” is out; “Decoding HR”
Please read at my blog.
Older post (part-1) (Document Management) is also available there itself.
Dr Bhatia
Dr Saurabh Bhatia
Rejoinder:
The above is a series in which I am handling how startups can handle the following issues with literally no budget. There is also a MoneyMeter which I maintain to show the expense that you make over them.
The topics are:
Since I will write 1 topic each week, it may be worthwhile to read it on my blog Thus Spoke Healrz
The Second Post is on HR management software and is reproduced below for convenience:
How we do it
HR Management is a sticky topic and I am no expert either. Here I am talking how we handle and manage our employees and some of HR processes in boot strap manner, which are needed from startup point of view. I will handle:
First thing I wanted to do was to have a software, where I can centralise my employee details etc. We tested several.
1. Orange HRM
2. WebHR
and a few more *who may not like their names here*.
WebHR is in general the best, and most comprehensive, and excellent customer support, too. But it has certain user limitations. Int he sense that it is a shareware or freeware with limits. I was uncomfortable investing my time in a s/w which will not allow me to scale-up when I become bigger without shelling out money. And will force us to do re-work. So WebHR, inspite of a lot of good things was abandoned by us.
We zeroed on to Orange HRM
We installed it rather easily on our shared hosting site, and integrated its links with our Company Intranet.
It allows some wonderful things and not allows some vital things. Still we went ahead.
Orange HR lacks payroll and therefore this part of HR is lacking sorely, but you can buy a module on payroll. Or develop it, as it is a PHP system.
There are several payroll management systems available. We tried 2. But found them either very slow or way too complex. It is excel sheets as of now and its doing OK, especially since we are still <10 in strength.
Conclusion:
We use Orange mainly for
a. Attendance
b. Leave Management
c. Recruitment process
d. Central Employee Database
In the above functions, we are very happy with it.
MONEYMETER: INR 0 till now
Ramanuj Mukherjee
awesome – looking forward to reading more here.
Dr Saurabh Bhatia
Thanks RM
Will post one every week and see the MoneyMeter stay near Zero 🙂