Elusive hunt for the right solution

Shopping for a new HR solution is relatively an enjoyable experience for the HR and IT team members who later become part of implementation team. This is because the journey afterwards is generally uphill. The evaluations process is marked by all day meetings with internal process owners to agree on the current or as-is processes, spending weekends formulating and documenting the requirements and the presentations running into late evenings by vendors claiming to have the best fit solution for their requirements . There are deep dives and reference visits along with the sumptuous working lunches and dinners delivered from the nearest pizza outlet. There is generally a sense of satisfaction in the team going into the final phase of commercial negotiation. Once the negotiations are over and the procurement team gets the ‘best-price’ from the winning vendor, the newly formed project team is all set and raring to go. The organizational air is quiet thick with expectations.

Yet within weeks of the of the project launch, the team finds itself in the midst of an impending storm. The solution does not seem to fit the requirements and there are huge disagreements on the To-be process definitions. The process owners are not ready for any changes or work arounds and want to stick to the current processes. The implementation partner is not able to fully explain the cost and benefits of the proposed processes vis-à-vis the current processes. The differences are generally resolved through agreeing to large amount of customizations which in turn results into change requests for additional services from the implementation vendor. The financial implications of these additional change requests take the matter to steering committees where there arguments and more arguments. Finally there is a compromise reached on the services fees charged by the implementer. However, there is hardly a discussion on possible re-engineering of the process or the best practices due to lack of right resources and capabilities on both sides of the table.

The impact of this initial chaos is multi-fold. First and foremost is the high risk of time and cost overruns impacting project lifecycle in fundamental way driving the cost of ownership up and delaying the realization of expected benefits. Second, it dents the organizational confidence in the implementation team and introduces friction between the customer and implementation partner teams having long term impact on the team morale. Last and most important, process improvements expected from the implementation are never achieved as the project ends up automating the current process inefficiencies and does not seriously evaluates the re-engineering and best practices.

There are primarily three reasons why the search for the right solution turns out to be so elusive. The vendor evaluation team hardly ever includes an HR technology expert who could understand the process requirements and translate it into a system requirement, thereby ensuring the right requirement formulation. This flows from the fact that members from the HR team only have process understanding whereas members from IT only have systems understanding and there is no independent voice bridging the two. Typically this results in the relevant questions not being asked by the evaluation team and general discussion hovering around whether the system can take care of the current processes.

Second issue originates from the lack of mandate for process standardization/improvement as part of the technology implementation. Process owners are extremely protective of their processes from any scrutiny and any attempt for re-engineering becomes an extremely political issue. The absence of executive endorsement and an independent voice recommending the process changes at the system level ensures that best solution is never ever comes up for discussion.

Insufficient resource commitment from the implementation partner is another important reason the failure to implement the right solution. The functional consultants working on the implementation are generally product gurus but have do not have in depth grounding in HR processes. As a result, they seriously lack the ability to present alternative solutions explaining the costs and benefits of each of the alternatives. The lack of real alternatives forces the process owners to stick to the current processes which are low risk from both automation as well as user adoption perspectives.

Looking at all these factors, the need for an independent voice that understands both HR process and technology is imperative to work as a bridge between customer and implementation partner teams. This group can work as independent consultant in helping the customer team evaluate different solutions, work closely with process owners in standardizing and improving current processes and work with the implementation partners in defining and vetting the alternative solutions. Without such a mechanism in place, an HR implementation that gives a strategic edge to the HR practices and processes in the organization will remain an elusive dream.