The two major types of products

A closer look at the various HRMS products available today reveals two major types of products. The first category of products use the Least Common Multiple approach and provide the basic standard features. They also is most cases make available user defined fields and highly flexible architecture that makes it possible for clients to build the features they desire on top of the basic product.
The other category of products provide a comprehensive product which can be configured to provide only the desired functionality. Peoplesoft HRMS is a good example of this.

Both the above approaches have their advantages and disadvantages for users. The first category is usually available at a lower price. The basic functionality can be rolled out at very less time. But the basic functionality will have less features and the customer will have to invest effort into building the features the organization needs. This gives rise to more effort in maintaining the installation and upgrading it at a later point.

The second category requires much lesser customizations and since the entire package is being maintained by the vendor, customer can afford to have a smaller team for maintenance (as long as the customer has stayed away from customizations). But then customer usually pays for the entire pacakge, the features that they use plus the features that are available anyway. Also, any tweaking of the package becomes complex as the package is already fully loaded.

It helps to review a product from this perspective.

Septemaber 2009 edition of HRO Today magazine has a comprehensive review of all the major HRMS products available.