WHY YOUR SAAS IMPLEMENTATION UNDERDELIVERED
~ Five years ago, SaaS (Software as a Service)was at the peak of its hype cycle. CIOs, CHROs, and CFOs were sold SaaS solutions that would help them efficiently and securely consolidate and manage critical information, scale, innovate, and plan for work while effectively reducing operational costs. CHROs were sold on the promise of a better user experience, driving the adoption of employee and manager self-service, lessening the administrative burden on their teams, and reducing the reliance on engineering.
Well, did it happen?
I mean, partially. Maybe? Listen, the cloud has been clouding. It works, although it's added some unanticipated complexity.
We're happy not to have servers, etc. on-premise. But did CFOs get their value, and were CHROs able to deliver a better user experience? I suspect the answer is a pretty resounding "not yet."
So why has the shift to SaaS been so challenging, especially in HR? We have some thoughts:
Overblown expectations - the mistaken belief that technology alone could change how work in HR gets done.
Flawed business cases - to gain efficiency and promise out of SaaS, HR needs different skill sets and ways of working to manage sometimes enormous quarterly releases. Many initial business cases did not consider that HR and HRIS teams needed to change and, in some cases, grow to take advantage of all SaaS offers.
Letting vendors set the HR strategic roadmap – the opportunity to continuously improve through technology is a new muscle for HR teams. We're seeing HR leaders being sold solutions on a vendor roadmap that may not even address their primary strategic challenges. The chasing shiny objects syndrome is real.
Skills and organizations not aligned to a new way of working - With quarterly releases, you need a team that understands legacy technology, the latest technology, current workflows, and the future state of those workflows. This is not just a config team, and it's not just an implementation team (both are often woefully understaffed in our experience) but an actual HR product team that intimately understands the current use case and owns the actual transformational strategy.
Five years later, senior leaders stare at the infrastructure they purchased and installed and wonder what happened. They see new hype around Skills and AI and wonder if they should buy additional solutions to keep up with the innovation cycle… Sure, there have been advancements in their tech stack and capabilities, but the hype has generally yet to live up to reality…
We can help you change that. We can help you and your teams clearly define the gaps in expectations vs. reality. We can partner as you think through your organizational design, working methods, and the investment and return you should expect to see. Most importantly, we can help you set your strategic roadmap where technology is an enabler of change, not the only change.
Please drop us a note; we look forward to connecting with you!