With an abundance of HR technology being created and distributed, there can be issues as companies download and implement it into their business processes. From a new platform being more trouble than it’s worth to relying on the wrong partner, here are some horror stories from executives and HR leaders of implementing new technology.
Disappointed With a New Platform
I once worked on a project implementing a newly designed HR technology platform that was supposed to reduce manual data entry and provide more accurate data to the HR team.
Unfortunately, the platform was so buggy and unreliable that it required manual input and data verification to keep running. We experienced frequent crashes and slowdowns and had to spend hours manually entering and verifying data. In the end, the project was an enormous waste of time and money, and it left the HR team with a system that was more trouble than it was worth.
Christa Reed
Head of Job Market Research, JobSearcher
Trusted the Wrong Certified Partner
We were doing a large HCM implementation and used one of the certified partners to lead the project. The team comprised 8-10 full-time individuals who functioned as project managers, implementation specialists, business analysts, and testers.
We were told we were getting the best consultants they had to tackle the project. What we ended up getting was a different story. The project manager was knowledgeable, but eventually we came to find out, she had five other projects that she was also managing. This led to a lack of communication and glaring holes in the project plan, which ultimately was deemed a failure.
Their goal was to get the product installed as quickly as possible (which they did). Their team did not spend any time working with our business units to determine their current business processes and how those would transfer over to the new software, along with improving efficiencies. We trusted the “certified partner” tag, which cost us a ton of time and money.
Matthew Wright
Partner, Surety Systems, Inc.
Misaligned Expectations Created Big Problems
I oversaw an HRIS implementation that had multiple issues. The first one was that the technology platform we had chosen was not designed to handle the integration and data we needed to make the system work. We had to make lots of modifications to adjust to our environment to make the core platform work the way we needed it to.
Another issue was that some stakeholders had different ideas of what the final product should look like and kept changing their expectations. This led to a lot of back-and-forth and edits made, with everyone trying to agree on a final product. The project ended up taking twice as long as expected, and the results weren’t as great as we had hoped. We had to redo a lot of the work, burn cycles with our implementation partner and stretch the team because of the constant changes in expectations.
The end product wasn’t as comprehensive or efficient as we had wanted. It worked and was adopted, but it was a costly and difficult lesson to learn.
Tony Deblauwe
VP, Human Resources, Celigo
Almost Lost Years of Work
We currently have an HR database that houses all our employee information (documents, benefits, training, salary, etc.). The company informed us that our version was outdated, and we needed to upgrade. Once the new upgrade was installed, we logged in to find our custom fields were no longer available. This was years of work! Luckily, we called our company, and they could eventually reverse the changes and restore our information.
Lindsey Hight
HR Professional, Renue Commercial
Software Didn’t Match the Demo
I thought evaluating a handful of cloud-based payroll vendors would be enough for my project, but it turned out to be a nightmare. I was shown one software and provided with a completely different HR software.
The story begins when I hired a software development company to outsource the product. Although I had never heard of the company, I still trusted it. This is where I made a mistake. I did not know about the prototype they showed me, but they sold me on its various uses and why it would be crucial.
They won my trust, and I agreed to further software development. Within two months, I had the product with me, but I had to ask for the developers support on multiple occasions to even be able to run the software.
Yogesh Kumar
Digital Marketing Manager, Technource
Image: Canva
