Braudit and HRIS platforms: Choose one or both?

Most companies start with an HRIS. It makes sense. You need a system of record for employees, a way to handle payroll, benefits, leave, compliance, and sometimes even performance reviews. It’s the digital backbone of people operations.

But at some point, especially in growing teams, something interesting happens: leaders look at their HRIS and assume it’s enough. After all, many HRIS platforms today proudly list “performance management” among their features. Goals can be set. Reviews can be logged. Ratings can be captured. On the surface, it feels like the whole story.

So why add another layer like Braudit? Isn’t that duplication?

The short answer: not at all.
The longer answer: HRIS platforms and Braudit live in the same orbit but serve fundamentally different purposes.

HRIS platforms weren’t built to drive performance. They were built to manage records. And when it comes to the real, day-to-day work of optimising productivity and outcomes, the difference between an HRIS and a platform like Braudit couldn’t be clearer.

A record, not the reality

Think of an HRIS as the infrastructure that keeps the company’s people operations stable. It’s the database of truth for employee information — contracts, compensation, time off, job titles, tax forms. HRIS tools are invaluable because without them, you’d drown in paperwork and compliance chaos. What they don’t do, however, is improve your team's performance and how work gets done.

Most HRIS platforms include performance management modules because it checks a box. A company looking for a one-stop shop will see “performance reviews” in the feature list and assume it’s solved. But under the hood, these modules are designed for administration, not optimisation.

Here’s what that typically looks like:

• Annual or semi-annual review cycles.
• Goal-setting frameworks (OKRs, KPIs, or custom fields).
• Manager feedback forms.
• A rating system (stars, percentages, or scales).

Useful? Yes.
Complete? Far from it.

HRIS platforms capture performance data the same way they capture payroll data — as static records. A review is logged, a rating is stored, and the data is archived. performance management in HRIS tools is simply retrospective and administrative. It's more about documenting performance than about driving performance forward. That’s the critical gap.

An HRIS is excellent at answering questions like:

• When is John due for his review?
• Has Sarah’s compensation adjustment been approved?
• Did the manager complete feedback for all direct reports?

Those are essential HR functions — but they’re not the same as understanding performance.

Braudit is where work speaks

Braudit was built for something entirely different. It’s designed to live in the flow of daily work — tracking what’s being done, how well the people doing the work are executing, and how those patterns translate into performance and productivity. Braudit doesn’t replace your HRIS; it sits alongside it, addressing the blind spot.

Instead of waiting for an annual review to capture a blurred snapshot of performance, Braudit tracks the daily reality of work: tasks completed, goals achieved, KPIs met, projects closed. It connects the dots between productivity (output) and performance (quality) to reveal patterns over time.

Braudit doesn’t just “store” performance reviews. It generates them — grounded in actual work data, enriched with context, and benchmarked against past trends. Where an HRIS helps you tick the box of a review cycle, Braudit helps you see the real flow of work:

• Who is consistently delivering outcomes?
• Where are productivity bottlenecks forming?
• Which goals are being hit, missed, or quietly abandoned?

This isn’t about replacing your HRIS but complementing it with a system designed to make the invisible, visible.

This means performance is not just a number managers tick in a box once or twice a year. In Braudit, It's a living metric, visible to leaders, managers, and employees in real-time.

“We already use an HRIS...”

This is the most common objection we hear. And it usually comes from a place of assumption:

• “Our HRIS lets us set OKRs, so we’re covered.”
• “We already run reviews inside our HR platform, so why use another tool?”
• “Adding Braudit feels like overlap.”

The reality is that HRIS performance modules don’t capture day-to-day work and don't connect it to performance evaluations. They don’t show you which teams are consistently over-delivering, which individuals are struggling with deadlines, or how productivity trends fluctuate across departments.

Instead, they present performance as a static event — a once in a while assessment rather than an ongoing conversation.

Braudit changes that conversation.

Optimisation vs administration

Here’s where the distinction sharpens. HRIS platforms are brilliant at administration: making sure information is stored, accessible, and compliant. But they aren’t built to optimise performance.

Optimisation requires a different toolkit:

• Real-time tracking of productivity and performance.
• Ratings at the task, project, and goal level.
• Automated performance reviews that reflect actual work, not vague impressions.
• Benchmarks that compare individuals to team averages or past performance.
• Insights that highlight top improvements and biggest drops, rather than static scores.

In other words, Braudit isn’t a record system. It’s a continuous performance engine.

Together, not instead

The real power comes when your HRIS and Braudit work together. Think of it this way:

• Your HRIS tells you who someone is inside the organisation.
• Braudit tells you what and how well they contribute and how their contributions evolve over time.

Your HRIS might show that an employee has been in their role for two years, has taken 10 days of leave, and last received a 4 out of 5 in their annual review. Braudit, meanwhile, shows that in the past quarter, they completed 95% of their assigned tasks on time, consistently scored 4.8 stars in performance evaluations, and led the team in KPI achievement.

Without Braudit, performance management risks becoming a paper exercise that is structured but disconnected from work itself. Without an HRIS, performance insights lack the backbone of formal processes, compensation alignment, and compliance.

When the two work in tandem, you get the best of both worlds: the administrative structure HR requires, and the operational intelligence leaders need to actually grow.

One is a profile. The other is a story.

And in the future of work, it’s the story that matters.

Outcomes: The real measure

When companies run HRIS alone, performance often remains a compliance exercise: something HR teams push through once or twice a year to meet policy requirements. But when HRIS and Braudit run together, performance becomes a living discipline.

Managers don’t just “complete” reviews; they learn how their teams are growing, where bottlenecks form, and what interventions make the biggest difference. Employees don’t just receive ratings; they see their own trends, strengths, and opportunities laid bare in ways that feel actionable, not judgmental.

The result isn’t just better documentation of performance. It’s better performance itself.

Optimisation: The growth effect

This is the part most HRIS platforms can’t reach. Performance data inside an HRIS rarely leads to growth; it leads to record-keeping. But performance data inside Braudit feeds directly into action:

• Managers adjust team structures based on productivity ratios.
• Leaders set sharper goals because they understand past outcomes.
• Employees develop faster because they get real-time feedback, not just yearly notes.

It’s growth at the individual level, the team level, and the organisational level. A compounding effect that comes from treating performance not as a record, but as a practice.

Not Duplication

The belief that Braudit duplicates HRIS functionality is understandable, but only if you look at feature lists instead of outcomes. Both systems talk about “performance.” But they mean different things.

HRIS means performance as a recorded event.
Braudit means performance as a continuous reality.

Together, they give you the full picture: the system of record and the system of optimisation. The who and the how. The profile and the story.

That’s not duplication. That’s synergy.