Raven Intel recently spoke with 100+ companies’ HR teams about their recent implementation of Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, Ultimate Software, ServiceNow, Cornerstone and Oracle HCM. All of these vendors (as do most major Enterprise software vendors) rely largely on Consulting partners to implement and provide services around their software.
In a majority of these projects, Consulting partners were chosen based upon 2 factors:
1. The recommendation of the chosen software firm’s salesperson / customer relationship manager, or
2. The chosen Consulting firm had done a previous project with the company (typically non-HR related).
The majority of customers we spoke with received 2 or fewer proposals, and spent far less time on partner selection than they did selecting their software. We even spoke with one large organization who said, “We had a choice in partner?”
Despite the implementation process being absolutely critical to the success of a new software roll-out (perhaps even more critical than the choice of a software) and an even larger capital investment than software licenses, it’s clear partner selection is in most cases, an afterthought.
Why exactly is this? To investigate causes, I went through the partner shopping experience as a “ghost shopper.” I approached each HCM Software vendor’s website as a customer who hadn’t yet made a decision for their particular software, wanting to independently research, interview and select qualified Consulting partners.
In short, there is a reason that little due diligence is done in partner selection.
The process for a customer is widely inconsistent, antiquated and massively time-consuming.
There is great irony in this, as the very reason companies are out partner shopping is to streamline and modernize their own HR processes and use big data to drive decisions.
Walking a mile in the HR Customer’s shoes: It’s painful
Using both Google search and HCM Software websites, after an average of 4 clicks I could get to some kind of ‘partner finder’ page (some were easier than others). For all, I needed to navigate through the sea of other partner types (e.g. software partners who don’t provide HR transformation, implementation or services) to locate Consulting firms.
Some HCM Software sites provide ‘drill-down’ tools to search partners by industry or specialty, but in general the information is a logo dump of those who are part of the network along with a link their website and some basic information–not exactly big data.
In addition, if you hadn’t yet chosen an HR software and were looking at partner selection at the same time, you would have to go thorough this multiple times making the process exponentially more time-consuming. (No thanks.)
Gold / Silver / Platinum / Titanium Designations–with little context don’t mean much
Customer Project Examples by partner? Voice of the Customer? Nope.
While HCM Software sites do a good job touting customers who use their software, there are no examples specific to partner work in the search area. (ServiceNow did have stats in terms of # of certified consultants and ratings, but there wasn’t anything specific about who did the rating or the type of projects that were done (or when.)
Needles and haystacks…
Particularly for the large ERP vendors (SuccessFactors and Oracle), the search was even more daunting as the list includes every software from supply chain management to on-prem applications. On some they denote a particular specialty (e.g. SuccessFactors uses a term called “REX–Recommended Expert”), but even here it is highly difficult to narrow down unless you know what you’re looking for.
What makes things even more complicated is on several HCM Software sites, many of the partners were listed by country and repeated (e.g. as a shopper, I don’t need 25 by-country listings for Accenture, Deloitte, etc. ) Many listings were not in English.
Want a call back from a Consulting firm? Sorry, this voicemail box is full.
Assuming I was a maverick-y enough a customer to narrow the partner search, I went through the ‘Contact Me’ experience. This went one of two ways:
1) the HCM vendor’s site would direct me to that Consulting firm’s website (where I then would have to hunt and peck for a “Contact Me” area for each and every partner I wanted to engage) or
2) I could fill out the HCM vendor’s online lead capture form and have them route the lead
On one major HCM site, I used their partner lead form to engage 8 different partners (re-entering my contact data and CAPTCHA verification 8 times)
The result? I received 8 automated email responses, “thanks for your inquiry”.
14 days later, I am still waiting for an actual reply from any of these Consulting firms–still nothing. These vendors probably spent hefty entrance fees for partnership status, advertising and marketing — and leads don’t even get email replies back.
Hold the phone…no really.
I even went old school and dialed phone numbers provided on the site as well (here again, many were international numbers).
– 4 of the 8 calls went to general numbers and some just rang and rang. One went to a mailbox that was “full”. Another number was no longer in service.
– During business hours between 9 – 5, I dialed a few of the well-recognized firms’ front desks.
In both instances, I was told that I would need an actual contact name in order to be ‘transferred’. Ok, then!
I did make contact with 2 firms by going to their direct websites, but even this process seems hopelessly dated.
I surrender!
By this point, if I were an actual customer, I would have given up, called my salesperson and asked them hook me up. The idea of doing my own ‘due diligence’ and running a process independently in the current environment just isn’t the way things work.
Have you gone through a partner selection recently? What was your experience?