Cloud based simple employee management information system: A model for African small and medium enterprises

Abstract

Cloud computing is gradually becoming accepted in different sectors and businesses are beginning to adopt the concept’s shared infrastructure and applications. The aim of this paper is to design and implement a simple prototype of a cloud based application for SMEs to manage their human resources challenges. The choice of an Employee Information Management System (EIMS) is due to the fact that one of the basic challenges of SMEs is human resource management and how to effectively manage employee information. The prototype developed in this study is targeted at the Software as a Service (SaaS) layer of the cloud framework. It leverages on existing cloud platform providers to deliver four core modules, which include: payroll management, record management, leave management and staff appraisal. Among the things this study seeks to achieve is a cheaper and cost effective solution to some basic issues affecting human resource management in SMEs.