by Jennifer Sorenson, Vice President of Global Sales
Why should your organization stop paying your software vendor for your post-go-live managed support services and start using a consulting firm for those services?
One word: Concierge.
HRchitect provides a concierge level of managed support services post-go-live for its clients. This gives our clients several benefits they just won’t ever get through the mass “support” infrastructure of an HCM vendor’s support team. 5 key principles define HRchitect’s concierge level service that I will focus on for this blog post.
- Let’s Go Steady
- Put out the Fire
- Teach a Man to Fish
- Hit the Easy Button
- The Circle of Life
Let’s Go Steady
One of the top questions I get asked by potential clients is, “tell me about your ticketing process and how we get assigned consultants.” I love this question because I know that I am going to make their day with the answer. At HRchitect, rather than submitting a ticket and getting assigned a random consultant for a given task, you are assigned 1 primary consultant contact. That consultant is your go-to person for all aspects of your support needs. No more explaining your business needs and use cases over and over again each time you put in a ticket.
There may be times when your primary consultant pulls in a colleague who is a SME (subject matter expert) in a particular area that you may need assistance with, but your point of contact won’t change. This creates consistency and allows a working relationship to be cultivated so that as time goes on, your go-to consultant can act as a natural extension of your team, rather than a 3rd party resource.
Put out the Fire
By having one of HRchitect’s certified consultants working on your managed support requests, you aren’t waiting weeks (or sometime months) to address the more urgent issues that may arise. I can’t tell you how many calls I get from prospective clients stating that they are looking at a 3-week or 6-week lead time for the software vendor to have something fixed or changed within the system, and they just don’t have that much time to wait.
By working with your dedicated HRchitect consultant, we can help you put out those urgent fires on YOUR timeline.
Teach a Man to Fish
We have all heard the adage, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” HRchitect will do both. With the ebb and flow of clients’ needs and resources, given the changing landscape of corporate HR, IT, Payroll, and other offices around the globe, how you need support may look different from month to month. We will meet you and your team where you are. HRchitect can perform the work if you need it to be done immediately, but we can also teach you how to perform the work yourself.
Here’s an example. You may need a BI report set up immediately pulling data from your HCM system. We can set that report up for you immediately and schedule a subsequent BI Workshop to teach your staff how to manage BI reports moving forward. Do you see now? We will give you a fish and teach you to fish.
Hit the Easy Button
We all have had situations in our professional life where we felt overwhelmed. As it pertains to your HCM software and the business cases applied to it, using a consulting firm for your managed support services in essence, can be like hitting your very own “easy button.” Some client requests we’ve had recently that we see as helping our clients hit that easy button are:
- Filling in for a short-term or long-term role on your HR team when you need staff augmentation unexpectedly, because you had an unexpected turnover, or need coverage so you can unplug on your upcoming vacation
- Payroll isn’t processing correctly, and it needs to be corrected immediately, but you’re not quite sure what’s causing the error
- A merger or acquisition is anticipated with new FEINs to be added, or complex Union rules or State or Province employment laws that you need to update configuration and compliance for.
Our team of HR technology, payroll, talent acquisition, talent management and workforce management gurus loves helping make your work-life easier.
The Circle of Life
When we say that we are an end-to-end HCM consulting firm, what we really mean is we want to be your end-to-never-end HCM consulting partner. Like all things in business, HCM solutions have a lifecycle. What meets your organization’s needs now might be totally different in 3-7 years. We support our clients through every stage of their business journey. With our vendor-agnostic strategic services division, we can help our clients examine their future state need priorities and help them determine the HCM and WFM technology that best meets those needs. Progressing into implementation, we are certified to implement several of the major HCM and WFM software platforms in the industry. That means we can take a concierge-level white-glove approach to implement your system on time, ensuring that configurations are established in a way that makes sense for your business. Utilizing best practice methodologies, we help our clients ensure that they are advancing toward the future state needs of their organization rather than spending a considerable amount of money on a “lift and shift.” We also have the capability to provide client-side support for those implementations. That means that if you don’t have the time to do some of the work the client team is assigned during an implementation, which most organizations don’t have, we can do the work for you.
Client-side representation should never be an afterthought. This service is critical to providing your staff the support they need during implementation so that their normal job requirements can be met and the implementation project milestones are also met on time. It can also be the thing that an organization can do to prevent burnout and staff turnover during a major project like an implementation.
Speaking of avoiding important afterthoughts, another very important phase of your HCM technology lifecycle is the post-go-live phase. There are several ways that HRchitect can continue to support your organization post-go-live. Some examples include providing extended training or new staff training to staff augmentation, report configuration changes, updating modules, audits (health check of your HCM system), optimization, or BI Workshops. Our goal is to create long-lasting, sustainable partnerships with our clients so that we become an extension of your team and we can be there for you throughout the entire lifecycle of your HCM technology. Let HRchitect be your HCM concierge.
If you’re ready to learn more about how we can help you, please request a consultation with me here: https://hrchitect.com/contact/
Jennifer Sorenson, Vice President of Global Sales, is a tenured sales executive with over 20 years of experience in sales and sales management. Jennifer joined HRchitect in 2021 and leads the organization’s sales efforts globally. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications with a minor in Leadership. Jennifer values people and relationships and believes that translates to invaluable, long-term working relationships that stand the test of time.
When Jennifer isn’t working, she, her husband, 3 children, and their dogs enjoy traveling and cheering on the Arkansas Razorbacks college football, basketball and baseball teams. She also enjoys hunting, fishing, baking, and cooking in her free time.
Learn more about Jennifer on LinkedIn