Your HRIS does not cover 100% of your needs? Building your own HR tool is now within reach

The starting point: no HRIS covers everything

An HRIS covers the core well: personnel administration, payroll, training, appraisals. But every company has its own specifics. That is where the tool stops.

What we see most often in the field:

• Certifications and fitness to work: forklift licences, electrical certifications, rail or construction authorisations, each with an expiry date.
• Mandatory training: deadlines, reminders, evidence for the audit.
• Payroll checks: verifications before the close, month-on-month variances, consistency of statutory filings.
• Variable pay: bonuses and incentives computed with complex rules (targets, tiers, pro rata, multiple criteria), with their approval and payment workflow.
• HR reporting: dashboards that cross several sources the HRIS does not connect.

For want of anything better, these processes live outside the tool: Excel files kept up to date by hand, in several versions; exports and imports repeated every month between the HRIS and other tools; polished slide decks rebuilt for every committee; reminders by email and visual checks.

It is time-consuming, error-prone and dependent on one or two people who "know". And changing HRIS for these few needs is expensive and takes months.

Three ways to close the gap

The right choice depends on the need, the data volume and the in-house capacity to maintain the tool.

1. No-code or low-code. Airtable, Notion, Make or Power Apps let you build a mini-tool in a few days: onboarding tracker, certification register, request form. Ideal for testing a need.
2. Third-party tool connected by API. A specialist solution (recruitment, scheduling, wellbeing) plugs into the HRIS and exchanges data automatically. The vendor handles maintenance.
3. Custom development. A module designed for your organisation, your rules and your data. The best option when the need is specific to your sector or your collective agreement.

The three approaches compared

With AI, you go further

Not long ago, a custom HR tool was reserved for large groups. It took a development team, long months and a sizeable budget. Everyone else stayed on Excel. AI changes that equation.

• You build faster. AI-assisted development tools cut design and build time sharply. A tailored tool ships in weeks, not months.
• It costs less. Custom-built becomes affordable for small and mid-sized companies.
• You answer the real need. No more bending the process to fit a standard tool. The tool adapts to your rules, your collective agreement, your organisation.
• You automate what was manual. Exports, Excel consolidations and committee decks are replaced by connected data and up-to-date dashboards.

HRIS platforms, for their part, are opening up: APIs, usable exports, secure cloud building blocks. Everything is in place to get out of manual processing. The key is no longer the technology. It is the quality of the functional framing.

The JOY Talents method in five steps

We run these projects as HRIS projects in their own right, with the same rigour.

1. Map the need. Who uses the tool, for which decision, with which data? We start from real processes, not features.
2. Exhaust the existing HRIS first. Configuration, an unactivated module, a change planned by the vendor: part of the need is often already covered.
3. Check connectivity. APIs, exports, synchronisation frequency. The goal: zero double entry and a single source of truth.
4. Secure the data. HR data is sensitive. Hosting, access rights, retention periods and the GDPR register are validated with your DPO from the start.
5. Deliver, test, hand over. Development in short steps, acceptance testing with users, documentation and a maintenance plan. The tool must live on after we leave.

Security is covered

An HR tool handles personal data, sometimes health or payroll data. We treat security as part of the project, not as a box to tick at the end.

• Choice of hosting: in France or in the European Union, with a host chosen with you, with backups and encryption. Never on a workstation or a shared file.
• Access and traceability: single sign-on when your IT allows it, rights by profile and by scope, change log.
• Compliance: purposes, retention periods and the processing register written with your DPO; the tool reads the HRIS reference data, it does not duplicate it.
• Tests to validate the solution: test cases built on your real situations, acceptance testing with users, checks of interfaces and permissions before go-live.

Pitfalls to avoid

• Rebuilding the HRIS next to the HRIS. The complementary tool covers a precise gap, not the whole scope.
• Duplicating reference data. Employees, positions, organisation: they stay in the HRIS. The tool reads them, it does not re-key them.
• Forgetting maintenance. A tool with no owner and no documentation quickly becomes a new hidden spreadsheet.
• Neglecting adoption. A useful tool that is badly introduced will not be used. Plan a short training session and a point of contact.

What you gain

How JOY Talents supports you

JOY Talents brings together more than fifteen years of HRIS consulting: payroll and statutory filings, collective agreements, Cornerstone (learning, performance, recruiting, compensation), management of migration projects. This dual expertise, functional and project, lets us:

• diagnose what your HRIS can still cover, and what it never will;
• choose the most suitable approach: no-code, third-party tool or custom-built;
• design and deliver the complementary tool, connected to your HRIS;
• secure the project on data and compliance, tests included.

Frequently asked questions

Where to start

Does your HRIS leave a gap your teams fill by hand? A first thirty-minute conversation is enough to identify the right approach. See also our development service, and let's talk.

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