Employers typically hear how technological advances related to payroll and accounting will benefit their business. With every year of innovation, core business functions like payroll, workforce management and human resources enjoy improvements in ease of use, user experience and availability of time-saving functionality.
While accuracy can of course benefit employers and give them greater insight into cost analysis, operations management and supply chain management, it can also lend advantages to agencies who are monitoring, auditing and investigating employers as well. Before recent advances in cloud technology, artificial intelligence and workplace communication, employers had more time and greater latitude for delays and minor inaccuracies in reporting. Now, the game has changed.
Agency workplace communication
Government agencies like HUD are using modern technologies such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and Zoom to communicate. With increased speed of communication, they can discuss new requests, complaints and reports within seconds of receipt. Even as many state and local agency web pages appear dated on the surface, their internal technologies are quietly improving behind the scenes:
- Modern workplace technologies have a low cost of adoption, making them easy for government agencies to evaluate and purchase.
- Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic forced “slower” agencies to adopt modern technologies for workplace communication
As Agencies learn to communicate faster internally and also externally with employees and the public, they will be able to spot potential violations more easily.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning benefit agencies
As large tech companies such as Google and Microsoft continue to innovate in the areas of artificial intelligence and machine learning, they are also learning to market these technologies to very large customers such as state and federal governments. Artificial intelligence is a broad study and can impact government surveillance, historic data analysis and public relations.
Machine learning is, perhaps, more closely related to the problem sets faced by government agencies who monitor and audit employers. With machine learning, agencies can perform faster analysis of new submissions, and identify potential fraud or inaccuracy in seconds rather than years. In theory, employers can access the same (or better) technology to self-audit and control the accuracy of their submissions to government agencies; in practice, government and business technology will never align perfectly and agencies will continue to discover new ways to identify inaccuracies and pattern-breaking submissions.
How are you self-auditing HCM processes?
Before you submit to new agencies – use Valet Data Platform analyze your current and historic data sets for accuracy.
Cloud technology
By default, most employers are now using cloud technologies – they can adopt CRM tools like Salesforce or Zoho CRM easily and more effectively than ever before. With regard to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Human Capital Management (HCM), systems like Oracle Fusion and multiple Cloud HCM Technologies are becoming standard, and have surpassed legacy on-premise technologies by most measures of popularity and level of investment.
Predictably, in 2020, agencies are beginning to adopt the cloud as well – years behind private enterprise but still with significant impact. As agencies are able to deploy superior hosting, data storage, data management and analytics technologies simply and at a low cost, their overall capabilities will continue to increase.