Business software provider, Pegasus Software, last week launched an “an on-demand virtual HR department for SMEs.” Jon Wilcox reports.

The Pegasus HR service, a depository of legally compliant forms, FAQs, employee handbooks and advice is free for customers with a valid maintenance contracts, but also as a standalone service.

Customer support phone lines are available to users of Pegasus HR, though these will be charged. However, the solution does not mark Pegasus Software’s shift towards the fashionable computing Cloud, according to Pegasus commercial director Kevin McCallum.

“This is part of the maintenance contract investment people make on an annual basis. Most of our competitors who do provide [a similar service] would charge for the privilege of having this resource availability, let alone any kind of further contact and communications from their on-demand service."

McCallum defended the company's use of the latest marketing buzz phrase: “The HR service is charged per hour that you have on the telephone rather than on a major upfront free. That’s ‘on demand’ if you like; you use it when you need it rather than have to configure a lot of investment on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis.”

The idea of an online reference library for HR systems will be familiar to users of Pegasus Software’s rival, Sage, which has similar solutions in Sage HR Advice and Sage HR Advice Professional. Sage HR Advice is currently available from £130 exclusive of VAT.

McCallum didn’t waste any time citing Sage in his comparisons: “Sage has been selling this kind of service for a while, but it’s chargeable rather than being something that’s included as a value add.”

Pegasus is defying recent trends towards launching an HR solution entirely into the Cloud, favouring instead a hybrid of traditionally installed software and web-based solutions.

“What’s increasingly happening, and it’s something that we’re looking at, is adding web components and web services around the core systems and the standard systems,” offered McCallum. “One of those will be self-service HR systems in the sense that employees can have access to their own details, and handle their own holiday requests and even in-year forms they may want to have.”

“That’s the technology on the table on the moment, and it’s the way that things are going to go, ultimately. But right at this moment in time, I would say that business systems don’t lend themselves as well as something like a standalone CRM solution would do in an entirely hosted or entirely ‘in the Cloud’ solution.”

McCallum described the current market as in a “transitional” phase, remarking that the most interest in entirely Cloud-based solutions is currently at the micro-level of business: “That way of thinking hasn’t been adopted at the mid-level tier where we are at, as much as it would be at in other areas. There’s interest at the very micro-level of business because it’s going to be simple book-keeping, rather than involved analytical, multi-user reporting that you would perhaps have to have from a system like Pegasus.”

He added: “I don’t think as a whole that the demand is fully there in the UK for the entirety to be in the Cloud. One reason is data integrity, and the second is availability. We do live in a world where somebody in a JCB digs up the phone line next to you, and that’s you not working for a while.”