Managing human resources used to be a pretty simple process: companies either used an automated or manual system to provision employees as they came onboard, track them, and ensure that they received their paychecks and benefits. Today, that process has evolved to the point where it has its own title and acronym. Using human capital management (HCM), today's firms view employees as capital assets and treat them as such, often using technology to handle some or all of the management itself.
"Human resources is more complicated and strategic than ever," says Joshua Greenbaum, principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting in Berkeley, Calif. Companies need to spin up work teams to handle specific jobs, for exa...