What drives a change when the current tool can get you by?
We all know this rule, and most of the time it’s good advice. Replacing a software tool is a project. It takes budget, time and energy, and nobody has much of those to spare. If the tool you have runs well enough to generate valid results and wraps up your process on time, why open that door?
If it delivers without having to compromise, you shouldn’t. There’s no reason to change.
The catch is that “not broken” and “working well” are two different standards. A tool can complete your process and still cost you. The cost just doesn’t show up as a failure. It shows up as a request you stopped making, a plan you trimmed, people pulled in from other departments every year, or a support ticket you didn’t bother to open.
Clients we’ve worked with who moved from other tools or HCM modules did it for different reasons. They mainly fall into four groups.
1. Every change waited on someone else
Some were heavily dependent on IT resources. You probably know the loop. You tell IT what you need. They configure it. You test it. Something’s off, so you explain it again and wait again. The comp committee’s date doesn’t move while you wait.
This dependency has an obvious cost: extended timelines, and a team of people to coordinate with for every simple configuration change. The less obvious cost is the system changes you stop asking for. After a few rounds you learn which requests are worth the queue, and you quietly live with what you have. Over time, your process yields to the dependency you resigned yourself to. It’s no longer the process you want, but it’s the one you have.
What those clients wanted was control of the tool and its configuration. The comp team sets up the planning cycles, the salary actions, merit matrix, salary ranges, etc., and can change them on the fly when needed to support the business, even mid-cycle. All without having to open a single ticket or sit through another requirements meeting.
2. The comp design bent to fit the tool
Others needed capabilities or flexibility their old tool didn’t offer.
This one should be front and center when you weigh the fit of your current tool. You design the program you want, then cut it back to what the system can actually do. Next, and we mostly see this with HCM modules, your project manager or someone in IT comes to you with scope cuts needed to meet the deadline, so you peel back a little more. In the end, you don’t get what you were promised. Your business process gave way to tool realities.
The cuts catch up with you at the end of the process. The system didn’t handle everything, so you go back into a spreadsheet for the adjustments, and you’re running a system plus spreadsheets when the whole point was to get out of spreadsheets.
When the tool decides what your comp program can be, or you’re forced to adopt the vendor’s “best practices,” someone outside your company is making your comp decisions. Those decisions should belong to your comp team. You know, the people focused on what’s best for your business.
3. It took a team to run it
For some clients the problem was resource drain. Count the people it takes to get through one cycle: HRIS staff, IT, the vendor, HR business partners chasing data, and the comp team in the middle of all of it. None of that time shows up on the software invoice. All of it is real, and it’s a cost you pay every year.
The implementation should have been your first clue. If it took more than six weeks and a couple of people, you really have to wonder why. If your comp team was busy and a longer timeline suited you, and that was the driver, no problem. But if you wanted it ready in a few weeks and the project manager told you it would take months, take note. That resourcing need and coordination of schedules will keep impacting you going forward.
The second clue: you needed a project manager to implement it in the first place. You never needed a PM to build your spreadsheets, did you?
CompAccelerator can be configured, prepped and administered by a single comp analyst. One person can set up the plan, get the data ready and run the cycle.
Think about what all the other people get back. Every hour HRIS staff, project managers and IT resources spend keeping the comp process running is time they don’t spend on other important work. That’s more than an opportunity cost. FTEs cost money.
4. Support
And for others it simply came down to support.
When support is lacking, it doesn’t matter how good the tool is or how well it’s integrated. Think about the last time something went wrong in the middle of a comp cycle. How long did it take to resolve? Did you have to explain things from the beginning or give a comp education class?
There is no greater stress than having a problem when your process is live. It could be your data, a configuration issue or even an outright tool error. You don’t care whose fault it is. Getting it fixed fast so your managers can keep moving is what matters.
If you’ve stopped opening tickets because working around the problem yourself is faster, that’s getting by. Wanting better than that is reasonable, and on its own it’s a good enough reason to look at alternatives.
“But switching costs too”
It does, and the reluctance is normal. The cost that worries people isn’t the software license. That’s table stakes. It’s the migration: another implementation, maybe outside consultants, a team that’s already stretched pulled into extra work and disruption, then a learning curve on top of it. That thought alone keeps teams on a tool that only gets them by.
It’s also a pain point we’ve addressed.
The implementation is quick. Configured, loaded and running in a week is typical, and live in weeks, not months, is normal. What usually sets the pace is your own internal efforts that are part of every comp cycle regardless of the tool. Things like drafting manager communications and internal salary and bonus budget approvals.
With CompAccelerator, the resourcing stays inside comp. No outside consultants, no IT project. The one exception is single sign-on (SSO), a quick 30-minute meeting and it’s done. No drawn-out project plan required.
So the migration you were dreading comes down to a few hours a day, for a few weeks, from your comp team. Not months of a cross-departmental team, major disruption and staff dedicated to a project while daily work suffers.
Then there’s the learning curve. It’s short. The biggest challenge is believing how easy it is. One client’s new manager set up a meeting with us “because it’s going too smoothly.” He was looking for the other shoe to drop. But no, it was just that quick and easy. (Here’s that full story.)
Where do you land? Five questions to ask
- Is there a change you wanted last cycle but didn’t request because of the wait?
- Did your comp design get trimmed to fit system capabilities or the timeline?
- Do parts of the cycle still run in spreadsheets alongside the system?
- How many people outside of comp does it take to set up and run one cycle?
- When something breaks mid-cycle, do you get resolution quickly?
If your answers all come out the right way, keep what you have. It isn’t broken, and it isn’t costing you.
If one of them made you wince, “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it” may not fit your situation. The tool still works. You’re just paying for it in ways you’ve come to tolerate.
Look past the edge of the map
You can’t really tell whether you’re getting by or getting what you need until you’ve seen the alternative. That’s the comparison worth making: the cycle you actually want, run by comp, without having to depend on resources outside comp.
You may have been told that IT dependency, long implementations and forced “best practices” are just the norm. Maybe they are. But if the norm is subpar, why not look at what’s possible? It takes one demo to find out.
And about conventional wisdom: the world isn’t flat, even though conventional wisdom once said it was. But no one knew until they explored.
