Do you need a Client-Side Advisor?

Client-Side Advisor. I doubt we at Impact HRT coined the term (although we like to take credit for it!). However the role does take some explaining (and in some cases convincing) that it is a very valuable role, saving clients a lot of time and money by avoiding common mistakes and making sound decisions. Whilst this article is written in the context of workforce management, payroll and HR technology, the principles can easily be applied across the sourcing, selection and implementation of any business enabling technology.

What is a Client-Side Advisor?

Glad you asked. At its essence, a Client-Side Advisor puts the interests of their clients first – front and center when providing advice and making recommendations - in this instance to support the successful implementation of workforce, payroll and/or human resources technology. They should be vender agnostic and bring extensive experience to the sourcing, selection and implementation of multiple technologies. 

Importantly, Client-Side Advisors must understand the context of the business within which the technology is being implemented, the strategic drivers and the business challenges (both internal and the macro environment). They are able to put themselves in the shoes of the end-users to advise the pros and cons of various options and weigh these up to provide best fit recommendations.

Could my organisation benefit from a Client-Side Advisor?

Not every organisation implementing new technology is going to benefit from a client-side advisor. Some organisations have extensive experience:

• successfully implementing new technologies,
• assessing technology options for organisational best fit,
• managing vendor relationships for performance,
• defining business requirements that minimize risk and increase efficiency,
• engaging the business through the process to ensure user acceptance and adoption, and/or
• monitoring and reporting key metrics to realise business benefits post implementation.

However, where an organisation has one or more gaps in the above list, they will likely benefit from engaging an independent, vendor agnostic Client-Side Advisor.

What to look for in a Client-Side Advisor

A Client-Side Advisor should have extensive implementation experience across a variety of roles and understand how all the various workstream interact to define a critical path of delivery. This broad understanding enables a Client-Side Advisor to proactively identify risks and advise mitigation strategies based on their previous experience to enable projects to remain on time and budget.

Less important is specific technology knowledge – whilst this can be an advantage in some instances, generally your system integrator provides the technical expertise. Given that most technology implementations fail due to lack of user acceptance and adoption (change management) we argue it is more important for a Client-Side Advisor to understand the context of the business in which the technology is being implemented and be able to step into the shoes of end users to support decision making and advise communications and training interventions.

However, the single most important consideration is that a Client-Side Advisor must be vendor agnostic and not stand to benefit either directly or indirectly from any advice provided to their client. At all times, all advice provided must be in the best interests of the client.

Client-Side Advisor Case Studies

To bring the role to life, let’s take a look at some case studies that provide further context to the role of Client-Side Advisor. 

Client A – National Retail Convenience Organisation

Representing the interests of their client, Impact HRT was engaged to provide client-side advice prior to contracts being signed with a preferred vendor. Impact HRT immediately introduced an additional vendor capable of implementing the chosen technology to introduce some competitive tension on pricing which resulted in significant cost savings. 

Preferred resources were named in the contract to ensure continuity of resources for the duration of the program and testing deliverables were defined in detail to facilitate better testing outcomes and reduce the timeframes of user acceptance testing. Supplementary Award training was developed by Impact HRT to complement the technical training. This training focused on operational scenarios to improve decision making, reduce compliance risk and lower total labour cost.

In addition, through the course of the program Impact HRT were able to save this client more than $150,000 by negotiating the working terms of change requests presented by the vendor to the client.

Impact HRT subsequently supported the client through the entire implementation, guiding executive decision making through the key project phases, design, build, test and deploy. Through this process Impact HRT identified a number of significant operational risks effectively mitigating these and also identified more than $1.5 million in labour cost savings by leveraging existing clauses in the client’s Enterprise Agreement.

Client B – NSW Govt Department

This NSW Government Department used spreadsheets and hardcopy timesheets to manage the rostering time and attendance of more than 2000 Award based employees located across NSW. Whilst they knew they needed technology to enable business processes, they weren’t sure where to start. Impact HRT worked across the business to define a consistent end to end process and develop detailed business requirements that formed the basis for a select RFT.

A series of client specific evaluation criteria were developed to assist in the short listing of five potential vendors and an assessment criteria was developed to identify those vendors that would work effectively with the client through an implementation, taking the time to understand their business and provide a team on the ground (prior to COVID!) to work alongside the client resources and build capability. This was a critical project success factor that defined the future project model for all technology implementations.

Impact HRT has worked on and supported more than 100 technology and transformation programs over the past 20 years. If your organization is considering the sourcing, selection or implementation of workforce management, payroll and/or human resources technology, contact us to discuss how we are able to best support you.