How to Buy HR Software: Tips for Selecting the Right Hiring Tools

JOSH TOLAN: Well, Phil, thank you so much for joining me. We’d love to kick things off by just giving the audience a little bit of info about your background.

PHIL STRAZULLA: Sure. So I run a business called Select Software Reviews, where our north star is to help HR professionals find and buy the right technology.

There’s around a hundred thousand companies a month that use our research, and you can also book a call with one of our staff members totally free to get tailored advice for your company, what HRIS, ATS payroll system you should be looking at.

JOSH TOLAN: Awesome. And what made you start the business?

PHIL STRAZULLA: So I originally started my career off working in venture capital doing early-stage software investing. I went to business school because I wanted to start a business taught myself how to program, and I built this platform that allowed people to record their career stories. So here’s what I do. Here’s how I got into it.

And a bunch of HR people found it, and this was in 2014. Glassdoor is kind of exploding. Glassdoor was mostly, you know, the person who got fired complaining about their ex-boss or something like that. 

And HR teams were like, hey.

“Can we make these stories for our company and build our employer brand,” which is sort of a new term at the time? And I was like, yeah. Cool. And so we we built this platform, and we started charging for it.

And we built a sort of a niche SaaS within the import branding space.

In 2017, I hired somebody to run that business as a general manager.

I wanted to start something else. I continuously saw that most HR teams and TA teams really struggling with tool selection. It’s just like it’s not part of your job for the most part. It’s complicated. The landscape’s changing all the time. There’s internal stakeholder management issues. And so I started SSR to basically help the ecosystem with that problem.

JOSH TOLAN: Love it. And at Select Software, are you guys working with specific types of companies, industry, company size? Who’s coming to you guys for advice?

PHIL STRAZULLA: Yeah. So the people that come to us are generally people that are looking for new HR tech, and they come from a variety of geographies and personas.

It’s – there are there are Fortune 500 companies that are using our site, but most of it is is SMB. Our sweet spot is companies between 50 and 1000 employees who are trying to figure out, you know, how do I use AI sourcing tools? What EOR should I use?

We wanna move our HCM suite to a new HRAS. Like, which we’ll be looking at? So the it’s kind of all over the place.

I always joke that, like, you’re on our site because you’re either buying HR tech or you have insomnia.

There’s really you know, there’s not, like, a fun reason to be on our site reading the research.

And, you know, all sorts of different people buy HR tech. So those are the folks on SSR.

JOSH TOLAN: And with companies of that particular size, is there a general theme you see play out? Like, I know there’s a bunch of different scenarios and tools they could be looking at or tools they’re trying to replace. But thematically, is there a general problem you see that companies of that size are facing across the board?

PHIL STRAZZULLA: There are a couple of big buckets. So one is we have a legacy set of tools, and it’s just, you know, enough is enough. The customer service isn’t good. It’s not intuitive.

The employees can’t use it. And we just we can’t use x y z platform anymore. I won’t mention any names, but, you know, it’s all the legacy players in our space on the HRIS, ATS side of things, and that’s a big catalyst. Another is M&A.

Another is growth.

We need a new toolset to support, a new strategy for the business. And I think a lot of HR professionals are really thinking about how does what I do relate to the rest of the company. And when I say HR, I mean, generally, you know, folks in the people function. So that’s people operations.

That’s HR. That’s talent acquisition.

So those people are coming to us, and sometimes it’s simplification. So it’s like, hey. We’ve got ten different things, and we want a suite to kinda manage everything. And sometimes, we have this burning problem where we’re unable to recruit enough XYZ types of people, or we have a churn problem. We need a better onboarding process, or we’re we’re growing. We’re we’re expanding globally, and we need, you know, a solution that supports a global workforce.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. Makes a lot of sense. And as we sit here in May of 2024, are there specific things that you’re seeing as it relates to the market that are playing out in, you know, the research of solutions? Like, are you hearing a lot of things from buyers about consolidating tech or I guess, what are you hearing right now?

PHIL STRAZZULLA: There’s a ton of consolidation, and I think you’re seeing the strategy from most HR tech vendors is let’s start with something, and let’s add in everything else. So let’s start with EOR, and let’s add in HRIS and performance and engagement and and all this other stuff. Or, you know, we’re in HRIS. We’re gonna add an ATS.

We’re doing payroll. We’re you know? And I think that the majority of the company is under a thousand employees. They’re looking for an all in one suite because it’s just easier.

It’s probably cheaper. And, having that unification allows for better data analysis as well.

The other main theme is around AI. You know, everybody’s abuzz with AI, and I think we’re starting to see some interesting applications.

So, on the talent sourcing side of things, we’ve seen some tools that can basically ingest a job rec, understand who the target would be from a candidate persona, reach out to those people through email, schedule people on a recruiter’s calendar, and all of a sudden, you know, that that top of funnel sourcing, list of things to do, which isn’t the most fun work in the world. Right? Like going on LinkedIn and sending a bunch of emails, it’s kinda done for you, to some extent. I think we’re also seeing AI for answering common employee questions. You know, how do I put in for PTO, questions about open enrollment, etcetera.

And I think the last probably most interesting AI application is around, data management and so using natural language to build queries, on your data. So instead of building out, you know, a dashboard, being able to ask a question like, you know, what percentage of our sales reps are on quota?

You know, what percentage of our managers above employees are female? Things like that.

JOSH TOLAN: Interesting.

And I wanna touch on both of those, both the consolidation side and AI. So when you’re talking to customers about consolidation of their tech stack, are you finding that it’s more driven by budget, or is it more driven by usability, better integrations?

Like, where what’s the core driver here?

PHIL STRAZZULLA: Budget’s always gonna be a factor when it comes to HR and TA tech just because, unfortunately, I think most CFOs look at this function as a cost center, And that’s just sort of the way it’s always been, and it’s changing. But I  think many organizations think that way. However, I think that the main catalyst is around ease of use both from the the HRTA perspective as well as the employee perspective. 

And I think that a lot of these suites historically, they had one thing that was really good, like maybe payroll, and they sort of bolted on, like, this other stuff that wasn’t that good, and they just cross sold they just kinda jammed it down your throat. Like, hey. We’ve got an HRS now. We’ve got an ATS now, etcetera.

But I think that this sort of, you know, the latest generation of HR technology vendors, they’re able to build really good software for these other solutions. So it’s not that they have a really good ATS and they’re jamming in some other module. It’s like, hey. We’ve got a really good ATS, and we built something else that’s really good. And we built something else that’s really good.

So ease of use is probably the number one, catalyst, and it’s really a function of just the vendor ecosystem and their ability to deliver.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. Makes a lot of sense. And now, when you’re talking to customers about AI, I wanna jump back to that for a minute. How are HR talent acquisition professionals navigating that landscape? Because virtually every tool now has implemented some version of AI, and that can mean a variety of things.

And we, being on the vendor side of things, you know, get on calls all the time where customers are asking about AI, but they don’t necessarily know what they’re asking for, what application they’re asking for. It’s almost like somebody’s told them, hey.

Ask if they have AI. So how are you helping vendor HR professionals, TA professionals navigate that landscape when they’re talking to vendors so they can, you know, sort out what’s actually practical, what’s gonna actually solve their problem, and, ultimately, what are they looking for? What should they be looking for?

PHIL STRAZZULLA: I think you’re exactly right. Like, people are there’s somebody that whether it’s the news media or the CFO is saying, you know, ask about AI, and how a vendor is gonna be able to utilize it. And the reality is this ecosystem is evolving so fast. Like, I forget actually when ChatGPT was released.

It was probably eighteen months ago, I think. And the use cases are just like they’re changing on, like, a monthly basis. And I consider myself, like, a fairly tech forward person. And to a large extent, like, I’m trying to figure out, like, how do we use AI in our business.

And so I think that the conversation’s gonna continuously evolve and, like, the best practices here are gonna come out. And so what I would encourage people to do, who are buyers of software is, one, I personally feel insecure about this technology generally, and sometimes getting on the phone with vendors if I don’t completely understand it. And so try to let go of your insecurity and trying to, like, sound smart by asking about AI. And try to sort of understand, like, what’s the philosophy of using this new type of technology in this system.

And what I mean by that is, like, basically, every vendor where they are with AI today in May 2024r, it’s gonna look completely different a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. And chances are you’re gonna be with the same vendor. You know? Like, you’re not gonna you’re not gonna switch out that quickly.

And so you need to understand, like, how that company thinks about utilizing this technology going forward and, therefore, the value that you’re gonna get out of it. And if somebody’s saying, hey. We don’t think this is, you know, a viable accelerator for our tech, that’s probably a big red flag. And if somebody’s saying, hey.

You know, our we’re AI AI. You know, it’s just like all this, like, fluff and and buzzword. That’s probably a red flag as well. But if somebody has, like, a well-articulated, like, you know, here’s how it’s gonna augment different workflows and specifics around how it’s gonna be useful, that’s what I would look for.

And then you hope to see the execution from your vendor over the next eighteen to twenty-four months.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. Makes a lot of sense. Thanks for that. We’d love to jump into the buying process with you a little bit, Talk about the different stages that practitioners go through and some of the roadblocks that they may encounter and how you may advise them to overcome those roadblocks or think about it in a little bit of a different way.

So if we think about, like, the first thing that happens, like, when clients are coming to you guys for the first time, have they already identified a pain that they’re trying to solve for, or are they just in the market looking at tools and seeing what’s out there? Where do you see most companies starting?

PHIL STRAZZULLA: When people get to us, they’re in the research mode. And so they’ve identified a pain, and they’ve decided we’re gonna do this in the next twelve months. Like, it might not be a right now thing, but it’s like, what let’s start actually spending cycles on it. I think this the step before that is probably even more important, which is, like, what do you focus on?

Because as an HR professional, you’re under-resourced. Right? Like, you’re always running around. There’s too many things to do.

And so do you buy the HRIS this year, or do you do you deal with the one you’ve got for another year?

I think it’s really important to understand what matters to the business and what’s the strategy of the business going forward, and therefore, how does HR and TA support it? So, hey. You know, revenue is huge. We’re gonna start hiring tons of salespeople. Okay. Maybe we should start thinking about applicant tracking systems, about AI sourcing tools, about screening tools, etcetera.

So it’s really important to talk to the other functional leaders in your organization to understand what’s going on, how can people, TA, HR support that.

When they come to us, it’s basically, how do we understand which vendors to talk to usually.

So which is extremely important. So we had a a company came came to us last week that it’s a five person startup, and they’re talking to Workday for their HRIS.

Not not a fit. Right? They’re talking to Workday, Oracle, Gusto.

Like, it’s sort of all over the place. Right? And I’m and I’m laughing because, like, this is what I live and breathe. Yeah. But if you’re an HR professional I was at a conference this week, at a SHRM, conference in Connecticut, and I was talking to somebody else who’s looking for HR. I asked for, like, a three hundred employee company.

And I asked her, how did you come up with this list? Because it’s a it was a bit of a random list of six companies. And she said, once I started, searching online for something, my Instagram just became, ads for HR technology companies. And that’s how I came up with the list, whoever advertised me on Instagram, which is honestly, like, it’s better than just kind of maybe going online and and researching.

But I think, you know, I’m biased. Right? Like, come to us, and we’ll help you tailor a shortlist. That’s kinda what we do.

But, let’s say you didn’t wanna use us for some reason, and it’s free, by the way, I would have – I would take a multi-pronged approach. Like, you definitely wanna ask your peers, you wanna ask your peers why a lot because a lot of people hate this or love this for not the best reasons. Like, maybe they had a good rep or maybe they had a bad rep. Maybe there’s, like, some feature that doesn’t matter to you that is why somebody wants or hates it.

So selection is unbelievably important because you’re gonna spend so many cycles on this. You gotta talk to the right vendors. And that also points you in the right direction to make the right choice at the end of the day, which is a make-or-break decision. Right?

It can have a huge impact on your company, your career, your employee health. Yep. Yeah. And I’ll stop there before I keep rambling.

JOSH TOLAN: No. That’s a really good point. It was actually one of the questions I had written down because I’ve had similar conversations. I was just at Sherm Talent about a month ago, and I was talking to somebody and they were looking at HRAS platforms.

And it was just what you said. They were like a small business, and they’re like, yeah. We’re looking at BambooHR, and we’re also looking at Workday. And I’m like, okay.

Why? You know? It’s like they’re so different, and those vendors are meant for very different types of companies.

And so it’s good insight as far as how folks are coming across those companies. But I think once if you’re a practitioner, when you reach out to these vendors like a Workday or Bamboo when you’re looking at an HRX platform, what are questions?

You know, obviously, the vendor is gonna try and help qualify, right, if you’re a good fit customer for them. But on the flip side, as a buyer, what are some of the questions you can ask the vendor to quickly suss that out as well? Like, you don’t wanna be on demo number three to realize, like, this is not a vendor for what our company looks like.

PHIL STRAZZULLA: Yeah. It’s a good question.

So I think you have to get as specific as possible.

So, for example, a lot of people have a list of integrations that they need to have. Right? So maybe you’re gonna buy an HRIS that, and you’re gonna have a different payroll provider, or you’re gonna stick with your existing benefits provider or whatever it is. Right?

You need to get into the weeds on how does the integration work and how many customers do you have live with this integration. You need to get specifics because, no offense to, you know, any salespeople out there. I’ve done a lot of sales, but, like, you’re incentivized to get the deal done. Right?

And so if somebody says, hey. Do you integrate with ADP payroll? Oh, yeah.

Hundred percent. You know? We integrate with them. It’s like, okay. What does that mean? Does that mean I have to, like, download some CSV and, like, make some changes, like, run a macro and, like, upload it to some, you know, other solution every week or something like that.

Like, I think you you really need to understand those key integrations. You need to understand the key workflows for you. So if you use your applicant tracking system for probably, like, you know, five to ten kinda core workflows, you and you wanna make sure the new one has them, I would ask the sales rep to to walk you through those. And and, hopefully, they know the system well enough to to do that.

I think a couple of pitfalls here are people get really hung up on small things. So let’s say, for example, you really like how easy it is to, I don’t know, share your interview notes from a candidate with your colleagues, and it’s like a one-click share share in the system that you have. And you’re looking at has basically everything you want except for that. Sometimes you just gotta live with, like, little features like that not being there, and you can suggest it to your new vendor. But, like, if if something’s gonna kinda ten x, like, your productivity, you you gotta kinda walk away from the smaller features.

I think a lot of times you have to trust your gut on vendor selection. So we’re taking in all this data from the credibility of the sales rep, to how sleek this product looks, to responsiveness, to specificity of answers.

And your gut is gonna kinda tell you over time, hey. I trust this particular vendor, and I don’t trust that one. And sometimes that’s actually your best barometer, for picking the right company when you’ve narrowed it down, when you’ve done a smart job of narrowing it down to two to three vendors.

So that’s really important. I mean, pricing, it depends on the solution, but some of the pricing schemes can be quite complicated.

I was talking to somebody last week that switched PEOs and PEOs, you know, probably the most complicated, but there is basically, like, four hundred thousand dollars of benefits that wasn’t covered in their new PEO that they didn’t understand.

And so they thought they were gonna save a lot of money, but, like, IVF and a few other things, like, weren’t covered in the new plan. And all of a sudden, it’s like, oh, okay. We’re this is gonna be a huge disaster.

And so really understanding, like, what is the pricing model here?

How’s my price gonna change over time? And is this a system that’s gonna grow with us and and be the right one for us over the next couple of years is super important.

There’s a million questions you can ask, but that’s what I would stick to you and really push people on the specifics that matter to your company. Because every every rep can walk you through a really awesome sales presentation, And so you gotta kinda throw them off a little bit with the stuff that matters to you the most.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. Makes a lot of sense. Love it. Now let’s talk about switching vendors. So you don’t you know, there’s there’s obviously the buying process when you’re buying a net new solution.

But now if you’re switching vendors, and I would say we see this a lot on the ATS side where there’s this inertia of, you know, renewal timing and the cost of switching and migrations.

And then to your point, we use all these integrations with our current ATS. So if we were gonna go to a new one, we wanna have all these integrations, and that just creates a lot of friction. And, you know, I’ll speak again about when I was at the term talent conference about a month ago. I talked to multiple folks that were like, we really don’t like our ATS. We want to switch.

I’m like, okay. What’s preventing you from making that move? You’re like, oh, we had to renew. Like, we had to renew.

Why did you have to renew? Our renewal timing came up. We didn’t have enough time to think about it. We didn’t wanna research the integration, so we just, you know, sign another two-year deal.

It’s like, okay. So now you’re gonna live unhappily with the solution for the next two years, and what impact will that have on the business? So as you think about these things, let’s start on the integration side first because this is interesting to me is how can companies think about it in a way of, like, if they feel the need to switch ATSs because it’s not solving the business problems for them, but they have all these integrations and other like you said, other ATSs might not have some features, but they also might not have some integrations that that customer’s needs. How should they go about thinking about that?

Because I can see how it’s overwhelming to think about replacing now all these integrated solutions. But, like, does it just come back to working with the vendor and figuring out how whether it’s with other partners or whether it’s with functionality they already have, how they can help you solve those same problems that are the core problems you’re solving, and you’re happy at least with the other ATS today. Now that’s kind of like a loaded question, but curious for your take.

PHIL STRAZZULLA: I think always switching vendors is gonna be it’s gonna seem extremely overwhelming, and you just have to remember, like, there’s a reason why you wanna do it in the first place. And you’ve gotta be, yeah, super cognizant about your renewal date. The reality is, like, a lot of these renewal dates can be pushed out. Right? Like, if you’re if you’re like, hey. Like, can we push this a quarter or two? Like, you’re you’re just saying vendors gonna do it versus lose the customer.

And so you usually have that flexibility. But, yeah, I would say, like, it’s all about mapping what you’ve got to what you need in the or the new vendor. And the nice thing is on the new vendor side of things, like, you’ve got a sales rep or account manager who’s, like, extremely incentivized to, like, do the work to help you map that. And so they’re gonna it’s like, hey. Like, you know, we we use, like, this preemployment assessment.

Currently, you guys don’t have that.

And it’s like, well, we’ve got these three other options, and, you know, here’s here’s why it’s different, but here’s why it might be better.

We actually just changed our payroll provider, and we have, like, a time tracking solution that we were using previously.

And in the new one, they didn’t have an integration with it.

And we actually are now using a solution that is better in many ways. And so, you know, it was actually nice to discover that.

It’s overwhelming. Right? Like, you don’t wanna screw this up. You don’t wanna create extra work for you, but you just have to carve out the headspace and the time because it’s gonna be it’s gonna make the next two years of your life a lot easier.

And I think you have to think about the other kind of selfish motivations here. One is you get to evangelize in the company like, hey. Like, you know, we did this thing, and here are the results.

So we switched applicant tracking systems, and our time to hire went from sixty days to forty-five.

And that mean and that was, like, a big catalyst for us hitting our revenue targets. And I think the your your average HR or TA professional isn’t very good at that, like, self promotion.

And I always encourage people to brag because that’s how you get the internal juice to do the the thing that you’re passionate about. Right? Like, you wanna update the career site. You wanna go to an event. You wanna, reskin your diversity program.

The way that you get the the internal juice for that is by doing a really good job on the ATS, switch. The other kind of selfish thing to do or reason to do this is just because the more reps that you have on switching solutions, the more valuable you are in your career.

So if you on your resume, it’s like, hey. You know, we had a seamless migration from this product to that product. When you’re going for your next job, that’s a huge selling point because there are very few people who can do this well.

JOSH TOLAN: Makes a lot of sense. And I wanna touch on the timeline thing for a second as well. How should companies be thinking about that when it comes to their renewal timeline versus when they should start this process if they’re actually serious about switching vendors? Because I think what happens, a lot of folks, they’re they get forced into renewing because they hit that timeline during the renewal cycle.

It’s like, alright. Let’s just stick this out for another year. And then they, like, just kick the can down the line again. They’re like, oh, we’ll think about this next year.

And the renewal is coming up again, and it’s like, oh, we don’t have enough time. Let’s do it again next year. And it just keeps getting punted to the next year. So how can companies think about backing their way into a timeline that’s not, like, way too early where it’s, you know, premature, and they’re doing a ton of work, and things could change so much twelve months from now in the business, but also making sure they’re giving themselves enough time to do the proper research so they could have a successful switch if that’s what they end up choosing to do.

PHIL STRAZZULLA: Yeah. I would in general, I would take, like, whatever you think your timeline is, multiply it by one point three probably, to give yourself a little bit of extra time. I think for sub a thousand employee companies, you’re probably looking at starting at six months before the renewal, just to give yourself a little bit of extra time. If you’re a sub fifty employee company and you’re, you know, HR team one or maybe you’re even, you know, just like a c level executive doing this, like, you can do it in six weeks.

Like, it’s totally doable. We’ve seen people buy software in eleven days and – but that’s gonna be a really small company. So I think three to six months is a pretty good timeline that leaves a lot of buffer in there. And it allows you to go slow.

It allows you to when you’re having conversations with peers, be like, oh, yeah. And by the way, you know, I know we’re talking about XYZ.

But by the way, like, who do you actually use as an ETS? Because we’re looking at, you know, this, this, and this this year.

And you can kinda passively learn a little bit, and work it into your day-to-day so that you’re not in a rush. And then, you know, you’ve got all the time in the world to negotiate too. Right? Like, it kinda puts the ball in your court when it comes time to sign that deal.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. Makes a lot of sense. Alright. Let’s jump to the approval stakeholder process or steps of the buying cycle now. What are the biggest challenges you see with the companies you guys work with in getting the necessary buy-in or approvals from other stakeholders within the business?

PHIL STRAZZULLA: I think the number one way we see people fall down is they don’t show that they’ve done all the work. And this goes back to the bragging point earlier as well where I think a lot of HR and TA professionals are more humble by nature. I don’t know why that is, but it’s just like, you know, high EQ, high empathy, humble person that kinda gets into this role.

And so, I what I recommend doing is when you’re starting this process, put together a short document. It could be a PowerPoint. It could be two or three pages written out. Here’s the pain.

Here’s what we’re gonna do about it. Here are the results that we think we can get. And when you talk to the powers that be, the person that has the purse strings in your next interaction, hey. Just as a heads up, this quarter, we’re looking for a new applicant tracking system.

I wrote it up. I’m gonna email it to you, but the high level is we you know, our time to hire is sixty days because we’ve got this broken process, blah blah blah. So we’re gonna get a new system, and the results that we’re targeting are forty-five day time to hire. That’s gonna help us hit revenue targets.

And that way, it’s in the back of their head, they’re like, oh, okay. And by the way, that makes sense economically. Right? Like, that helps our business achieve the objectives.

I think when you then go through the process, you wanna keep people in the loop. Hey. You know, we’ve talked to four vendors. Here’s what we think of the market.

And then when you make that final recommendation, and we actually, like, put this deck together and we send it to people that we work with, so that it’s just like a cheat code for them. They can just, like, share it with their, internal team. But you basically wanna say, okay. Again, here’s the problem.

Here’s why we’re doing this thing. Here are the vendors we looked at. Here’s the pros and cons of each of them. Here’s the pricing.

Here’s what the landscape looks like. Here’s the one we’re selecting. Here’s why we’re selecting it, and here are the projected results from the selection. And it’s just like, wow.

You’ve you’ve done the work. Right? I have a lot of trust that this wasn’t just, hey. You know what?

This looks cool. Right?

And so having having all of that there, it just gives you a lot of credibility, and increases your chance of success dramatically.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. And, generally, when you’re working with, your clients, who are the main stakeholders that they’re presenting this to? I’m assuming, obviously, CFO or controller or someone who’s managing the budget.

And who else is involved?

PHIL STRAZZULLA: So it depends on the scale of the organization. It could be the Head of HR.

Usually, we’re kinda working with the Head of HR, second in command, obviously, CFO. Sometimes it’s the board, especially for, like, smaller private equity-backed companies.

I also recommend that depending on the solution, you get the buy-in of other functional leaders in your company. So you get, you know, the head of sales to understand why you’re doing this. You get the head of product, operations, logistics, whatever your company kinda has. Because when you roll this thing out, you want that functional leader to say, you know, I’ve actually been aware of this process and why we’re doing this.

And, you know, the reason we selected this one is because of x y z, and I think that’s really cool. And I think that’s gonna help us accomplish our goals. And all of a sudden, all the sales people are like, okay. Cool.

Let me sign up for this thing because this is gonna help us accomplish our goals. Right? So it’s it’s really good just to have those internal leaders on your side. For bigger purchases, bigger companies, I actually recommend having them almost, like, as, like, an advisory board as you make as you go through this process.

So have, like, three or four people that you just kinda bounce ideas off of. Maybe you have two meetings throughout the entire procurement process.

But they’re just sort of, like, onboard. They’re gonna help you to make the right decision, but then they’re gonna, most importantly, evangelize it when, when it gets time to implement.

JOSH TOLAN: That’s great advice. I think that a lot of things that organizations struggle with is they do a lot of work to buy the tool, but they haven’t necessarily set themselves up for success once they bought the tool by getting the buy-in from stakeholders earlier in the process whose buy-in will be required in order to make that tool successful. Right? So it’s like if you’re buying anything, let’s say, related to hiring, and you’re going to be supporting, you know, some key hiring managers for a lot of the hiring initiatives that they have over the next twelve months, getting them bought in or at least incorporated into the selection process, not necessarily if they’re making a decision, but that they’re up to speed on what you’re doing versus, hey, we bought this tool. This is what we’re gonna use. Get on board.

If you do it in the latter way, where you have them bought in as part of the selection process, I feel like then once you actually get started, it’s such a smoother process to getting them up to speed and holding them accountable for helping you do what you need to do in order to stand that tool up within the organization.

PHIL STRAZZULLA: Yeah. Hundred percent. It’s, it’s hard to overestimate how much that can impact the success of a project.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. And now let’s talk about when a company already has a solution. And I don’t know, you know, if you have these discussions much with clients. You know, I know they’re working with you guys a lot and looking for new solutions, but the customer has, or an organization has, you know, a solution in place, and budget time comes up, and they’re reviewing in with the CFO or the controller or whoever, and they say, hey.

Like, why should we keep this tool in the budget? Or, hey. Don’t we have this other thing that does something, like, kinda similar? Can we just cut this from the budget?

Or are we going to cut this from the budget?

Again, I don’t know. You know, you can opine on, like, how many clients that you’re running into that have this, situation. But what is your advice for, you know, organizations that are in that situation where it’s like they have a solution that they feel really strongly that they believe, but they’re getting budgetary pressure to cut it or to use something else that they already know is deficient. How can they navigate that internally?

PHIL STRAZZULLA: I think it all comes back to understanding the business that you’re in and and the role that you play in it and understanding the role that that tool plays in helping you accomplish that goal. So and, you know, for example, the company that the the main goal is, hey. We wanna grow revenue thirty percent this year. How do we do that?

We probably need to hire some more salespeople. How do we do that? We need to have a really strong sales process. How do we do that?

Or sales recruiting process. How do we do that? We need to have best in class sourcing, screening, and applicant tracking. Right?

And somebody comes to you and says, hey. Can’t we cut this out of the budget? Well, if we do that, we can’t hit the revenue number. Right?

And they’re like, what do you mean? It’s like, well, how are we gonna hit the revenue number if we can’t hire the salespeople? And we’re just hire the salespeople. We need this tooling.

So I think it’s just really important to understand how does each of these contribute to the ROI of the business, and how does your team contribute to the r o to to the business’s growth, revenue, and profitability?

That’s a key aspect that we try to always push for HR teams that are always looking for more resourcing. Right? I think every CFO is always asking HR to do more with less, because they look at it as a cost center. And we always try to get people to flip the script and say, you know, we’re not a cost center actually. We’re the ones that are allowing us to hit those revenue numbers. We’re the ones that are increasing our company’s profitability.

JOSH TOLAN: That’s an excellent point because I think a lot of organizations, whether it’s buying a new tool or trying to renew an existing one, they’ll go to the CFO and talk about the time savings as an HR team we’re we’re achieving by using this solution.

And the CFO is like, okay. You know? But if they can tie it back to, A) because we have this tool, we’re able to cut our time to hire to act, and that leads us to hiring, you know, ten more salespeople in this fiscal year versus that being bumped in the next fiscal year, which means, you know, if they could tie it back to the business objectives, that gets the buy-in. It’s not what is it doing specifically for the HR team. It’s what is it doing, how is it supporting the core objectives of the business. Even if there are a ton of benefits to the HR and TA team, that’s not necessarily what they should lead with to get that internal buy-in.

PHIL STRAZZULLA: Yeah. And it and it’s hard. It’s not intuitive for a lot of folks. And so something that I would recommend is, one, if there is, like, a strategy person in your company, try to become buddy buddy with them and say, like, look. You know, sort of intuitively, like, I think we should do x, y, and z. Like, can you can you help me create a business case?

And try to do the same with the business leaders in your company. Go to the head of marketing, the head of sales, etcetera, and really, you know, be curious about their part of the business.

But then also, we’re collaborating with them to try to build a business case around how a new initiative can help them achieve their goals.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. Great point. And I think it’s it’s okay for folks in an HR TAC, like you said, to go somebody elsewhere in the business for help and be a little bit vulnerable and say, hey. Like, there’s a solution that we need or we need to buy that I know we need.

Like, I know it’s having a big impact on x, y, and z, but maybe I’m not the best with numbers, or maybe I’m having a hard time quantifying that or, you know, really putting the thoughts I have in my head into the strategic plan that I’m gonna put in front of the CFO. Like, how can we work together to make this happen? Because I feel very strongly that this is, you know, uplifting the objectives of the business. So I think that’s an important point is work with others to help come up with those resources that you need in order to present effectively.

It doesn’t all have to be on you. So, forming those partnerships is key. Phil, this has been awesome, man. I really, really appreciate it.

There’s, like, so much gold in here for people, whether they’re looking at solutions now or they’re thinking about it in the future. I feel like if folks watch this episode, they’ll know a ton more, about what to do, where to get started, how to work with folks internally. So this has just been really, really awesome, and I can’t thank you enough for your time in recording this with me.

PHIL STRAZZULLA: Yeah. Thanks for having me. It’s always great to catch up and have an opportunity to to share some of the stuff that we’ve learned.

JOSH TOLAN: For sure. And we will definitely include, you know, links and more information on how people listen to this show can learn more about you guys.

But just to wrap this up, do you want to just tell everybody website, know, where can they go to learn more about what you’re up to at Select Software Reviews?

PHIL STRAZZULLA: Yeah. So you can go to Select Software Reviews dot com. And if you want to talk to an HR tech expert, on our staff, it’s totally free. You can click talk to advisor. There’s a bunch of buttons on our website to do that. Book a call, and we’d love to help you understand what vendors you should be looking at it as well as how to think about budgeting and internal stakeholder management and some of these other more prickly topics when you go through this process.

JOSH TOLAN: Awesome. Thanks so much, Phil.