Guild Companies

As expected, Kronos has announced the immediate availability of Workforce HRMS, its new suite of Web-based payroll and human resources software that runs on Microsoft technologies. The move, made as we were going on holiday, marks Kronos' formal entry into the payroll and human resources software market, which Kronos has characterized as extremely fragmented. The aggressive Chelmsford, Massachusetts, company announced its intentions to enter--and in fact, to dominate--the midrange portion of this market last year.

Workforce HRMS consists of two main applications, Workforce Payroll and Workforce HR. Kronos acquired the rights to sell these two applications from Best Software earlier this year. Best Software, which is a subsidiary of the British software giant The Sage Group, sold Kronos full rights to sell and modify the source code to Abra Enterprise, while at the same time retaining full rights to sell the software itself. For the full account of this acquisition, read the March 25, 2002 article in our sister publication, The Four Hundred.

Sources at the company have said that the payroll and human resources applications will be rolled out in a two-step process. The first step, which just occurred, includes releasing Workforce HRMS as an application that doesn't share the same Microsoft SQL Server database objects as the core Workforce Central application. Another aspect of this first step is that Workforce Central will be sold by a restricted number of Kronos sales personnel who have received the appropriate training.

Workforce HRMS will see wider availability this fall, sources said, when Kronos sales personnel in every geographic location have been trained to sell the application. Additionally, at this later availability date, Workforce HRMS and Workforce Central will be able to share Microsoft SQL Server database objects, the sources said. Whether or not Kronos will develop a version of Workforce Central that uses the Oracle database has yet to be seen; Workforce Central runs on Windows and Unix servers and gives users the option of Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle databases. Abra Enterprise, which Workforce HRMS is based on, was designed for Windows NT and Windows 2000 servers.

Kronos says Workforce HRMS helps companies by streamlining the way that employees and managers access employment related information. A key element of this streamlining is employee self-service, in which employees use their Web browsers and the Workforce HRMS portal to access information about items such as health insurance or employee benefits, instead of going through the human resources representative to get this information.

Specific features available with Workforce HR include benefits administration, personnel tracking, training tracking, health and safety, position management, organizational management, attendance tracking, and point-in-time reporting. In addition to standard payroll processing, Workforce Payroll provides simplified earnings and deduction management, federal, state and local tax calculations and filing, check reconciliation, exception processing, and reporting.