Overview
MIT University, Shillong is a private university in Meghalaya (India), offering a broad range of programs — undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral — across engineering, management, design, arts, and liberal sciences. As the institution expanded, managing HR processes, recruitment, onboarding, attendance, payroll and employee data manually became increasingly cumbersome. MIT University partnered with a certified Zoho implementation partner (e.g. ITOT Cloud Systems) to deploy Zoho People, Zoho Recruit, and Zoho Payroll under the Zoho People Plus plan — to automate HR workflows, simplify recruitment, unify employee data, and ensure accurate payroll management.
Executive Summary
MIT University, Shillong — a leading multi-disciplinary institution — faced significant HR challenges as it grew: disparate recruitment records, manual onboarding, attendance tracking, payroll errors, and lack of centralized employee data. These inefficiencies impacted staff management, administrative overhead, compliance, and employee satisfaction.
By deploying Zoho Recruit, Zoho People, and Zoho Payroll (People Plus plan), MIT Shillong created a unified HR ecosystem. End-to-end automation transformed recruitment-to-payroll processes, centralized employee data, enabled attendance and leave tracking, and automated salary processing. The result was improved HR efficiency, reduced manual errors, transparent workflows, and better employee experience.
Introduction
Established in 2011, MIT University, Shillong provides a wide array of academic programs with a mission to deliver transformative education grounded in innovation, critical thinking, and social impact. mituniversityindia.edu.in+1
With expansion across disciplines such as engineering, design, management, arts, and more, the institution’s staffing requirements expanded — recruiting faculty, academic staff, administrative staff, and support staff. However, HR and administrative operations continued to rely on manual processes: spreadsheets for recruitment pipelines, attendance registers or standalone attendance tools, manual salary processing, and separate record-keeping for employee data. This manual burden created inefficiencies and risked inconsistencies as staff numbers increased.
To support institutional growth, ensure compliance, streamline HR operations, and provide a better employee experience, MIT University, Shillong opted for a modern, integrated HRMS solution. Zoho People Plus (Recruit + People + Payroll) was selected to digitize and unify their HR, recruitment, attendance, and payroll workflows.
Business Overview
MIT University, Shillong serves as a comprehensive academic institution offering:
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Undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral programs across Engineering, Design, Management, Arts, and liberal sciences.
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A spectrum of departments including academic faculties, administration, support staff, and auxiliary services — necessitating consistent recruitment, onboarding, attendance, leave, and payroll processes.
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A vision to support growth in student strength, courses offered, and campus operations — requiring a scalable HR infrastructure to manage staff lifecycle from hiring to payroll and retention.
Given the evolving complexity in human resource needs and compliance requirements, the university recognized the need for a fully integrated HRMS system to replace fragmented, manual workflows.
Problem Statement & Key Challenges
Before adopting the Zoho People Plus solution, MIT University, Shillong faced the following challenges:
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Disparate Recruitment Tracking — Recruitment for faculty and staff was managed through manual spreadsheets, emails, and paper forms. Candidate details, interview schedules, offer letters, and onboarding tasks were scattered and hard to track.
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No Central Employee Database — Employee details (personal info, role, contact, salary history, leave records) were spread across multiple documents or manual records, making it difficult to access up-to-date data when needed.
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Manual Onboarding & Joining Formalities — After hiring, onboarding involved paperwork, manual checklist completions, and separate databases — causing delays and inconsistent record-keeping.
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Attendance & Leave Management Issues — Attendance tracking, leave requests, and shift scheduling (if any) were not integrated with payroll or employee records — leading to errors, delays, and lack of transparency.
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Payroll Complexity & Errors — Salary processing was manual or semi-manual; reconciling attendance, leaves, deductions, and benefits posed a risk of mistakes and compliance issues.
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Lack of Compliance & Audit Readiness — Without a unified system, statutory compliance, record-keeping, and auditing became time-consuming and error-prone.
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Operational Overhead & Administrative Burden — HR and admin teams spent significant time managing spreadsheets, chasing paperwork, coordinating interviews/follow-ups, and performing repetitive tasks — diverting focus from strategic HR functions.
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Poor User Experience for Staff — Employees lacked self-service facilities for leave applications, updates, payroll slips; communication and transparency were limited.
These challenges hindered the institution’s scalability, operational efficiency, employee satisfaction, and compliance readiness.
Evaluation of the Problem
An assessment conducted by the implementation partner revealed:
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Multiple unmanaged spreadsheets for recruitment, employee master data, attendance logs, leave records, and salary details.
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High time consumption in recruitment follow-up, interview scheduling, offer letter generation, and onboarding.
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Frequent discrepancies between attendance/leave records and payroll calculations.
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Delays and errors in salary processing, especially for new joiners, leave deductions, or increments.
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Difficulty generating consolidated reports for workforce strength, leave/attendance, payroll costs, and staffing analysis.
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Lack of transparency and delayed communication with staff concerning their payroll, leave balances, or personal data updates.
Given these findings, a holistic HRMS implementation was needed — one that could integrate Recruit → People → Payroll, automate workflows, centralize data, and provide self-service portals for staff.
Proposed Solution(s)
To address the identified challenges, the following solution architecture was proposed:
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Deploy Zoho Recruit to manage end-to-end hiring — from posting job openings to candidate management, interview scheduling, offer letter generation, and onboarding workflows.
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Use Zoho People to maintain a centralized employee database, manage attendance (with optional geo-fencing or kiosk setup), leave & shift management, employee profiles, document storage, and self-service portals for leave/changes.
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Implement Zoho Payroll integrated with People, to automate salary computation, attendance-based payroll, deductions, benefits, and statutory compliance.
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Configure automation of workflows — e.g. offer letter issuance, joining form submission, onboarding checklists, leave & attendance approval flows, payroll processing — to reduce manual intervention.
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Set up dashboards and reports for HR and management: headcount, attendance summary, leave balances, payroll summary, cost analysis, compliance tracking.
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Provide user training and change management to ensure staff adoption and smooth transition from manual to digital.
Implementation
Phase 1 — Recruitment & Onboarding Digitization
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Set up Zoho Recruit: created job opening templates, career page integration (if needed), defined recruitment pipelines (application, screening, interview, offer, acceptance).
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Configured candidate stages, interview scheduling, automated notifications, and offer letter templates.
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On offer acceptance, triggered onboarding process to Zoho People: created employee records, sent digital joining forms, stored documents, and created user login for self-service.
Phase 2 — Employee Database & Attendance Setup
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Migrated existing staff data into Zoho People (master data, banking, contact info, role, department).
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Implemented attendance tracking: configured attendance policies (shift timings, leave types), optional geo-fencing or login-based punch-in/punch-out.
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Enabled leave & shift module for leave application, approval workflows, and leave balance tracking.
Phase 3 — Payroll Automation & Integration
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Configured salary components, pay structure, allowances, deductions, statutory components as per university policy.
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Linked attendance and leave data with payroll module to calculate working days, deductions, overtime, etc.
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Enabled automated payslip generation and distribution to employees.
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Set up payroll schedule, approval workflows, and compliance reporting features.
Phase 4 — Reporting, Self-Service & Change Management
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Created HR dashboards: workforce headcount, department-wise distribution, attendance summary, leave balance, payroll cost summaries, employee turnover analysis.
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Enabled employee self-service: leave application, profile update, payslip access, document uploads.
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Conducted training sessions for HR/admin and staff; provided user guides and support for initial weeks.
Results
After implementing the Zoho People Plus suite, MIT University, Shillong achieved the following improvements:
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Centralized HR Data — All employee records, recruitment history, attendance, leave, and payroll data consolidated in a single system.
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Faster Recruitment Cycle — Automated hiring workflows reduced time from job posting to onboarding; interview scheduling, offer letters, and joining formalities became seamless.
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Accurate Attendance & Payroll — Attendance and leave data automatically reflected in payroll calculations, eliminating manual errors and delays.
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Improved Transparency & Employee Experience — Staff could access payslips, leave balances, and profile data via self-service portals, improving satisfaction and reducing HR queries.
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Reduced Administrative Overhead — HR and admin teams experienced significant reduction in manual paperwork, data entry, and follow-up tasks — shifting their focus to strategic HR functions.
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Compliance & Audit-Readiness — Automated record keeping, digital documentation, and standardized processes enhanced compliance readiness and ease of audit.
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Scalable HR Infrastructure — The system now supports growing staff numbers, varied roles, and future expansion without proportional increase in administrative load.
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