A strategic analysis for enterprise and government human capital management by Francis Tots Introduction Every organization that employs people faces the same fundamental challenge: the need to accurately translate the complexity of the employment relationship into a correct, timely, and compliant payroll. That sounds simple. In practice, it is one of the most technically demanding computational problems in enterprise software — and the way an organization chooses to architect its people systems will determine whether it succeeds or fails, not just at go-live, but year after year as legislation changes, workforces grow, and business models evolve. The prevailing market narrative suggests that HR and Payroll are best served by bundling them with major enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors, and their equivalents offer sufficiently capable integrated suites where everything is purchased from one vendor. This essay challenges that narrative on several fronts. It argues that HR/Payroll system selections should be made...