The Position Management module within Built provides powerful tools for planning, managing, and tracking position data. This article describes how Position IDs and the External ID field will help your organization practice true position management/control.
Built integrates with many payroll, HRIS, and ERP systems so your employee data can be used with your position management activities. Unfortunately, some of these other systems only provide a way to add an employee’s title and therefore don't truly support having "positions" within their information/data structure. Others have a simplistic positions feature but don't provide a unique, unchanging ID for each position.
Here are a couple of examples of what happens within systems that don’t use fixed Position IDs:
When you promote a person to fill a new position, they will receive a brand new Position ID. Their old Position ID will be removed entirely, rather than leaving behind a vacant position that someone else can now fill.
When a person leaves the organization, their position is automatically removed at the same time. When you hire a new person to replace them, that new person gets a new position with a new Position ID.
Not having unique, unchanging IDs for each position is a serious problem for at least a couple of reasons:
Viewing the history of a position is impossible because positions are temporary, lasting only as long as the person's current tenure in that position.
Planning, budgeting, and other position data are also lost each time a person leaves a position, requiring you to set all these important attributes again with each new hire or employee change.
Built completely solves these issues by creating and maintaining unique, unchanging Position IDs for each position in your organization.
Built works with your existing systems by storing External IDs.
You might be wondering, “My payroll system has Position IDs (even though they might only be temporary). What happens to those IDs in Built?” Built will import the Position ID from your other system and store it in the position's External ID field. The External ID field provides a way of recognizing and storing the ID of another system you’re currently using for this position." While Built is the true, authoritative source for Position IDs, the External ID is searchable from within Built, allowing you to reference it when needed to identify a position.
Here's an example use case for when it might come in handy to have the External ID:
Imagine you are in your payroll system looking at an employee's record. On that record, you can see that your payroll system has assigned 8567 as the Position ID. If you wanted to find that position in Built and see what the position budget is, you could search by that External ID within Built.
In summary, true position management/control requires that positions have a unique ID that never changes. Budgeting, planning, history, and other important features all rely on this unique Position ID assigned by Built.
Please contact our Customer Success Team for additional assistance.
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