Josh Bersin report found more than 12 million employers spend over $5 trillion on payroll, benefits, and other employee programs in the U.S. alone. At the same time, companies are throwing money at HR tools, searching for ways to transform their workforce, make people more productive, while improving their quality of hire, skills development, and employee engagement and retention. By far, the most essential part of the HR technology landscape adopted by companies is in the market core for HR platforms, which includes cloud-based HRMS, payroll, and employee engagement systems. This market includes large vendors such as Zoho, Namely, BambooHR, etc.
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Whilst the above systems are important at streamlining HR jobs, which vendor does HR need to purchase for the success of the company?
Selecting a new HR solution from hundreds of options available on the market can be a daunting task. HR leaders need a way to sort through the features and identify a solution that will best meet their needs. But where do HR leaders need to start?
Kronos survey mentioned that when evaluating solutions, HR should look for a trusted partner who understands their unique business needs. Thus, when starting the move, make sure to ask these five questions to your vendor. These questions can help you uncover the DNA of the solutions you are evaluating and determine a shortlist of vendors of your level.
1- Is the technology platform built to meet your current and future needs?
2- Can the solution enhance employee experience and support data-driven HR decisions?
3- Does the vendor understand your organisation specific needs and its employees?
4- What is the vendor’s approach to customer success?
5- What resources are available to help HR reduce compliance risk?
The questions above will give you a clue to which vendor you should get deeper information. After you sort out some of the best vendors you’d like to use, there are other considerations you should take into account.
Vendors will explain everything you need to know about the product, but you should not just believe in what they say, advised Paul Thatcher. You need to do your own research. In a recent selection process, HR team should do independent work to identify companies that use vendors on your list. The opinion of these companies later will bring a better solution and more consideration for which vendor you should collaborate with. Your research should encompass the following aspects.
You have a shortlist, so it is time to go for a more extensive demonstration. You should try the vendor yourself by optimising the trial option if any. This process might bring issues to light that your team has not previously considered. While doing the test drive, ask narrower questions to find out how much the solution can be adapted to meet your preferences and whether doing so will incur additional costs.
One of the important homework HR should do is to step in the venting process by talking with a handful of current and former clients to gauge their real-life experience using the solution. It might sound like a lot of effort but worth the time investment.
You should ask vendors for a variety of references, including a client currently in the implementation phase, one that implemented the tool a year ago and one that has stopped using the vendor. This will give a broader perspective on the solution and vendor.
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