RESEARCH
Gartner®
Embedding an ‘Eyes Wide Open’ Mindset Into HR Technology Selection
“No one vendor provides best-in-class process support across all HR functions, and project teams may need to evaluate offerings from multiple HR software submarkets.”
Selecting, implementing, and managing HR technology is a complex and time-consuming endeavor. Evaluation frequency has continued unabated over the past five years as enterprises continue to fully transition to the cloud, at times replacing their initial cloud investments with “next generation” alternatives.
The Gartner® Embedding an ‘Eyes Wide Open’ Mindset Into HR Technology Selection report observes that despite the high stakes, many organizations find their due diligence activities and selection don’t always achieve the desired outcome of a “best fit” solution.
Embedding an ‘Eyes Wide Open’ Mindset Into HR Technology Selection
See the Gartner® report on how teams responsible for deciding on their organization’s next HR technology investment can set themselves up for success.
See the Full Report“HR technology leaders struggle to choose the right HR solutions due to competing internal priorities and a complex vendor landscape. They should ensure proper team resource mix and use critical use cases to drive detailed requirements for RFIK/RFP and vendor demonstrations to overcome these challenges and select best-fit technologies.”
Key Findings
“Organizations often lack a comprehensive HR technology strategy and thus respond reactively to a specific functional need, desire, or crisis. As a result, project teams allocate insufficient time to gathering requirements and properly evaluating provider alternatives.
No HR technology is perfectly suited to all industries, geographies and employee size segments, and thus trade-offs are inevitable. Unfortunately, most selection teams encounter conflicting internal priorities and struggle to gain stakeholder agreement on which functional and technical requirements are highest ranked.
The HR technology marketplace is complex, with multiple providers competing across market segments. Standard vendor demonstrations highlight a product’s best features and differentiators, but rarely provide the level of detail end users require to determine which product will best meet their needs.”
Strategic Planning Assumption
By 2026, 75% of global midsize and large enterprises will have invested in a cloud-deployed human capital management (HCM) suite for administrative HR and talent management (TM) but will still need to use other solutions for 20% to 30% of their HR requirements.
This graphic has been created by WorkForce Software based on a quote from the Gartner® report ‘Embedding an ‘Eyes Wide Open’ Mindset Into HR Technology Selection’.
Ensure Proper Team Resource Mix Across Project Phases
Most HR technology evaluation teams are charged with driving the selection process within a relatively short time period. Often, team composition is weighted toward available corporate functional and technical staff over which project executives have direct control. The tendency is to keep the team “small and lean” to expedite results.
This approach may be faster (as well as initially cheaper), but any speed advantage can be offset with issues. For example:
- Not gathering fully developed requirements in support of critical use cases to drive sufficiently detailed vendor RFI/RFP responses or reveal enough differentiation in solution demos
- Underestimating the time needed to gain consensus from stakeholders on which competing internal priorities are highest ranked
Gartner clients should reject the temptation to cut corners in the evaluation phase. Instead, staff a somewhat larger team that includes representation across involved geographies and primary user roles, such as:
HR Process Owners
HR System Administrator
HR Business Partner Generalist
HR Data Specialist
Manager
Employee
This graphic has been created by Workforce Software based on quotes from the Gartner® report ‘Embedding an ‘Eyes Wide Open’ Mindset Into HR Technology Selection’.
Recommendations for HR Technology Leaders Conducting Selection Project
- “Require that the evaluation team includes a mix of functional, technical, and line of business (LOB) staff, as well as “typical” employees and managers. This resource mix is especially critical to properly assess how emerging technologies, such as applied AI, HR virtual assistants, and hyper automation, might affect solution user experience (UX) and overall employee experience (EX).
- Ensure understanding of desired outcomes by using critical use cases and business capabilities modeling to drive detailed requirements for RFI/RFP and vendor demonstration scripts.
- Take charge of the demo and include time for “test driving” by primary end-user roles. Schedule follow-up sessions (technical, implementation, and support) with vendors to cover any topics not completely addressed during the primary demos.
- Review and scrutinize to what degree the solution’s customer community has influenced product direction and affected the vendor’s subsequent delivery of product enhancements.”
Your Next Step
See the Gartner® Embedding an ‘Eyes Wide Open’ Mindset Into HR Technology Selection report to “ensure proper team resource mix and use critical use cases to drive detailed requirements to overcome these challenges and select best-fit technologies.”
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Source: Gartner, Embedding an ‘Eyes Wide Open’ Mindset Into HR Technology Selection, Ron Hanscome, Harsh Kundulli, 30 January 2024.
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