We had the opportunity to speak with two leaders at HRchitect to find out how they approach customer relationships and their approach to HCM implementations of UKG, WorkForce Software, iCIMS, and Ceridian. Matt Lafata, President & CEO, and Brian Kimball, EVP of Implementation Services, shared how they’re using communication & culture to build positive relationships both with customers and their own employees. HRchitect offers end-to-end HR technology consulting services focused on strategic planning, evaluation and selection, change management, implementation, project management, client-side implementation assistance, and ongoing support of a broad set of HCM systems. Their overall satisfaction rating is a 9.38 / 10, on-budget delivery of 80% and team consistency outpaces their industry peers (for more on their customer ratings and reviews, check out their profile here.)
HRchitect’s Approach to Customer Relationships
HRchitect has a deep, strategic focus on building customer relationships. They pride themselves on offering a “white glove treatment” to their customers, going above and beyond to use both their industry expertise and wide range of HR system knowledge to provide the very best experience. “We have a customer-for-life concept at HRchitect,” said Matt Lafata. “We build this concept into each SOW that one year after go-live, we’ll come back to the client and do a free system health check to see what they’re struggling with or if anything needs to be tweaked or optimized.”
HRchitect also makes it a point to share their knowledge with the customer, which means explaining why their team makes the choices that they do. Sharing the knowledge, for them, means building trust to become a partner for life.
“We never assume success. We know that success is something you have to plan for, and if you make that central with every engagement, you’re just that much more careful. The results are happy clients.” said Brian.
Matt added, that they don’t take any client relationships or project successes for granted. In every engagement, they take it upon themselves to prove their expertise and reinforce why the client chose HRchitect time and time again.
Hiring the Right Consultants
HRchitect takes the hiring process very seriously and looks for people who were practitioners in past positions with tangible experience and the ability to put themselves in their clients’ shoes.
“Obviously, they have to have skills and understanding of what they’re doing,” said Brian. “We love people who are practitioners because they’re bringing in their real-world experience with how a system will work after it goes live. If somebody’s never used a system like that, it’s going to be hard to see that viewpoint.”
Additionally, they look for people who are willing to learn, are passionate, and want to be collaborating with a team to drive customer success.
“When I interview people, I’m not tactical and trust my instincts,” said Brian. “I look for a connection and someone who is an active listener and solid communicator during the interview. If they can’t do it with me, they aren’t going to be able to do it in an implementation.”
Brian continued, “I also look for people that demonstrate adaptability. Because if you can’t change or adapt what you’re doing now, you’re not going to make it in the consulting world that we’re in.”
Culture
Even before the pandemic impacted organizations around the world, HRchitect was a predominantly virtual organization. To help promote a positive culture within a remote workforce, their team regularly participates in happy hours and trivia nights with the team.
“We try to do things that bring people together. People genuinely like each other here. Before the pandemic, we used to get together for team outings a lot and I look forward to being able to do that again,” said Matt Lafata, President & CEO of HRchitect.
Despite the company’s positive contribution to employee culture in such a challenging time, fatigue is still a real challenge – both internally and for their clients. To help combat implementation fatigue, HRchitect has invested in fatigue management training to prepare their team for the challenge that it brings. Keeping this in mind, HRchitect’s consultants work to keep their clients interested and excited about the project and infuse this energy into everything they do.
HRchitect views their team as family. Their full team has access to their executives day or night – even on the weekends.
“A lot of people know about HRchitect and want to come work here. We have an incredible culture here. People can do similar work at other companies, so why HRchitect? I think it’s because we treat them like family,” said Matt. “You treat people the way you want them to treat your customers.”
“I’ve been up at two or three in the morning with our consultants when they’ve been on hard projects and are pushing through. Even though I wasn’t doing anything, I was acting like a cheerleader for them. I think that this helps them to realize that one of the owners of the company stays up with them and gets no sleep night after night to urge them on, that creates a different kind of culture in the organization,” said Brian.
Handling Challenges During Implementations
Having been in the HR industry for a while, HRchitect knows that challenges arise from time to time. Their advice on handling issues is to have the hard conversations right away. Regardless of who’s at fault, they look forward and put emphasis on the resolution, rather than getting involved with the blame game.
“First, you do everything you can to avoid it [challenges]. We do everything possible that we can upfront to get it right the first time,” said Brian. “But once you’ve had the hard talk, the focus can’t be on everything that’s going wrong. Whenever I get on a call with the client, the goal of that call is the path forward, not backward.”
COVID-19’s Impact
Brian Kimball said that their delivery and implementation methodology wasn’t impacted very much by the world’s pivot to a remote workforce, as their consultants were already used to remote work.
“The biggest impact throughout the last year is that our consultants haven’t been onsite during implementation,” Brian said. “Over 80% of our project work had already been done remotely.”
Brian noted that they’ve become more conscious of communication. While HRchitect was already familiar with remote work, most of their clients weren’t, so putting more emphasis on communication helped to ensure the projects were a success.
“The success of projects really boils down to how effectively we communicate. If we don’t communicate well, we’re going to be in trouble. So because of that, our teams put even more emphasis on communication to address the gap,” continued Brian.
Advice for Customers Planning an Implementation
When looking for the right implementation partner, HRchitect’s team suggests keeping these questions in mind:
- How long has this partner been around?
- Does the partner have tenured employees?
- Does the partner regularly publish case studies and success stories?
- How many different products does the firm work with?
“Diversity of products that you work with is important,” said Matt. “If you’re solely working with one vendor only, you’re going to develop tunnel vision. Having worked with multiple systems over the years, we take the best methodologies that we find and build that into our approach.
What’s on the horizon for HRchitect in 2023?
HRchitect looks forward to the growth of all segments and anticipateg seeing particular growth in their Strategic Services division.
While HRchitect does not have a preferred type of client in terms of size or industry, their team is excited to work with more like-minded clients who view HR system implementation as an opportunity to grow and transform their business.
“Companies that want to improve and view the project as an opportunity to do things differently, or clients who are looking for advice on how the technology will enable them to improve are the clients we want to work with,” said Brian.
HRchitect also plans to continue to heavily invest in their people and training. Since HRchitect offers HR services, not products, they continually look for ways to keep their people happy and prepared for the client work ahead of them.
To read more about HRchitect and view all of their customer reviews, visit their Raven Intel profile for more information!