Owners, sponsors and resposibilities

As I have mentioned – my department is going through a prolonged system upgrade. This morning we had a general discussion about business side and tech side involvement in an HRIS system and what it means to have “ownership” of a system. Does the business side own the functionality? Does the tech side own the ability to set boundaries (what is and is not available for what amount of money and time)? Where does the line lie that separates the two partners?

I personally think that these role and responsibilities will vary – depending on internal vs vendor systems, the size of the departments involved and the overall size of the system impact. A small business department working with a vendor created and implemented system will be quite different from a large business department working with a small internal IT department. If the HRIS system is a small competency management for a specialized workforce - the business might own a larger portion of the system than, say, a compensation system for an entire company. The business side (which I am on) seems to have differing levels of sponsorship; an executive who funded the work and gets to announce the success, department owner(s) whose team(s) is/are responsible for the planning, management, support and user acceptance.

Which brought up my question – to what level should a business sponsor understand how the system works? Beyond understanding the requirements they have and providing input on the user interface – what responsibilities does a business sponsor have to understand how the system performs and what it is made of? Is it fair to require an HR executive to have a working understanding of the HRIS?

Personally – I believe that business sponsors have a responsibility to understand the basic building blocks of the system. As public spokespersons for the system, project and results, sponsors should be able to answer a certain level of technical questions. As the “face” of the system to the rest of the company, communicating the project they will undoubtedly be asked questions by other business partners. I do not think they have the luxury of seeing the system as a black box in which someone makes magic happen.

When I took my first HR essentials class, I was surprised to find how very un-technical the HR world is perceived as being. My instructor did not know what a learning management system was (although she used one to deliver the online class) and the research I did for the HR scorecard paper all pointed to a disconnect from the HR Professionals to the data/metrics required to effectively manage a workforce. Is this your perception as well? As metric driven as companies are today – I assumed that HR, as a strategic business partner, would be using tools to bring them out of administrivia and into a guiding partner for the business. What do you think?