On this episode of People Fundamentals, I’m joined by Sarah White, founder of Aspect 43, a research and advisory firm specializing in HR technology and workplace transformation. Known for her pragmatic, no-nonsense insights, she’s dedicated to helping vendors create technology that addresses real business needs and delivers long-term impact — insights that can empower you as a buyer.
In this conversation, we explore the challenges and opportunities of navigating HR tech choices in such a rapidly changing market.
For HR leaders who are now expected not just to support but to drive organizational success, Sarah’s perspective offers a fresh perspective on making tech investments that deliver measurable, lasting results.
Listen in as Sarah demystifies the process of evaluating tech that supports growth and engagement, breaking down practical steps to help you choose tools that fuel real progress. This episode is packed with actionable insights for HR leaders aiming to select technology that’s more than a quick fix — it’s a strategic foundation for sustainable success. Don’t miss this essential conversation on making technology work for your organization’s unique needs.
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Where RFPs fall short
Sarah advocates for moving away from traditional RFP processes, which she sees as often leading to higher costs, weaker relationships, and mismatches between needs and solutions.
The problem: Standard RFPs don’t allow for the flexibility and depth needed to identify the best tech solution. They also tend to incentivize vendors to embellish their capabilities to win the deal, which doesn’t translate into a great partnership afterward. “The people that are being honest on the RFP are typically the ones that lose, and the ones that are lying are the ones that move ahead,” she says.
For companies required to use RFPs, Sarah recommends a modified approach. Rather than sending out a wide-net RFP to the market, she suggests HR leaders first engage with potential vendors in meaningful conversations about their goals. After narrowing down to a few well-matched vendors, they can share the RFP requirements, ensuring these vendors better understand the organization’s specific needs and can respond more honestly and effectively. This approach fosters stronger relationships, better alignment, and more tailored solutions, reducing the risks of a traditional RFP while still meeting formal requirements.
Seek out vendors who value collaboration
When selecting HR tech, the relationship with your vendor is as critical as the technology itself.
Sarah emphasizes the value of forging a partnership rooted in mutual understanding and support, rather than a simple sales transaction. Rather than accepting a checklist-driven sales pitch, HR leaders should look for vendors that prioritize collaboration and education, helping to align tech solutions with your organization’s unique business goals.
She advises seeking out a sales representative who acts as a true partner — someone with a “heart of a teacher.” This type of rep will take the time to understand your challenges and guide you in making informed decisions, not just run through a list of features.
Developing this kind of supportive vendor relationship isn’t just about the initial sale; it’s a long-term strategy. A vendor that educates and empowers you from day one will be more effective in driving results that matter to your organization, ensuring a smoother implementation and ongoing support. By prioritizing a partnership that values clarity, respect, and transparency, you set your tech investment on a solid foundation for sustained success.
Align tech solutions with business outcomes
Effective HR tech investments start with a clear connection to measurable business goals.
For HR leaders, this means translating organizational needs — like reducing turnover or boosting engagement — into specific tech requirements that deliver real value. “Sometimes what we have to do as HR leaders is translate what the business is saying they need into ‘HR tech speak,’” Sarah says, underscoring the dual role of HR as both strategist and translator.
With this approach, tech solutions become powerful tools for addressing core challenges, strengthening the organization’s ability to improve retention, development, and overall performance. By choosing tools that directly impact high-level goals, you lay the groundwork for tech investments that drive meaningful results across the company.
By moving beyond outdated practices, advocating for true partnerships, and tying every purchase to business objectives, HR leaders can elevate both their approach to technology and their organization’s success.
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Sarah White: LinkedIn
Resources
Transcript
Sarah White:
The proving of ROI and building a business case is in the top three reasons why a company doesn’t get to buy new software. Because they don’t know how to clearly explain the value of it back to the business. And there’s a couple of key things that an organization can do. The first one is actually understand what the business goals are, not what HR challenges they’re looking to solve. And so if you have a leader that is talking about they have retention issues or they have a lot of people that are trying to transfer out of the department, we might be needing to look at software that is related to recognition and engagement and manager enablement and learning.
And so sometimes what we have to do as HR leaders is translate what the business is saying they need into kind of HR tech speak about what type of solution we’re looking for.
Ashley Litzenberger:
Hi and welcome to Betterworks’ People Fundamentals podcast. I’m your host, Ashley Litzenberger, senior director of product marketing. Betterworks’ core belief in people fundamentals revolves around helping HR lead through constant change by focusing on core values like fairness, support, balance, and enabling growth opportunities for employees. These tenets empower everyone in the workforce to strive for excellence, to foster creativity, and to acknowledge each other’s contributions.
Betterworks believes that strategic HR leaders can translate these principles into action, shaping their workforce for the better and helping drive meaningful business outcomes. In this episode, recorded live at HR Tech 2024, I’m joined by Sarah White, founder of Aspect 43, a firm that focuses on HR technology. Sarah brings decades of experience in the HR tech space helping practitioners and vendors align technology to solve critical organizational challenges.
And today she shares insights into the changing landscape of HR technology purchasing. We discuss how organizations can navigate the complexities of buying new tech and how to build a strong business case for investment and adoption. We talk about what it means to advocate for your own needs during the sales process. Sarah also sheds light on the latest trends, the importance of choosing the right partnerships and how to get the most out of your investment.
So get ready to hear practical advice from one of the industry’s top experts on how to make smart strategic decisions for building your HR tech stack.
Hi Sarah.
Sarah White:
Hey, how are you?
Ashley Litzenberger:
Thank you so much for joining us today at HR Tech and to be on our podcast this afternoon. It has been such a wild ride today. Can you tell me what today has been one of the most interesting things or the most unexpected things that you’ve learned?
Sarah White:
Yeah, I think one of the things, we meet with a ton of the different technologies and a number of the practitioners as we are here. And what I think has been really interesting is the level of research people are doing. And so we are seeing people attend shows much earlier in the buying cycle than ever before. And so they’re trying to kind of understand versus coming in with a checklist of here’s exactly what we want to buy. They’re coming in more with here’s the challenges I’m trying to solve and talking to the different technologies and solution providers in how can you help me solve them?
And are you the right fit for solving this particular challenge?
Ashley Litzenberger:
That’s really interesting. And in some ways it seems very intuitive because when I buy a vacuum, before I actually go and buy a vacuum, I go to Consumer Reports, I read all these reviews, I ask what my friends are using, the ones who are very extra clean, you know? And I feel like the same thing is true in buying processes when it comes to big purchases. Everyone is being a responsible shopper for their organization.
Sarah White:
It’s also interesting in our State of HR Tech research, one of the things that we found is the number one place where people are starting to get the names of companies that they should shortlist is actually just random referrals. So not even customers, but they’re asking people, on LinkedIn or on X or other platforms, “Who have you seen? Who have you talked to?” They’re not even using the language, “Who have you used before?” And they’re talking about, “I met them at this event and they were really nice. Their team was really thorough when we did a demo with them, we didn’t buy them, but we really liked them.”
And so you’re seeing a really big shift in the language in general as to people looking for more than just the feature functions and really looking for a partner and an overall solution and relationship with that person that is going to come in and join their organization and really support their team through the process.
Ashley Litzenberger:
And it almost sounds like a tired word, but the idea that disruption is an everyday thing, transformation is ongoing, there’s almost just exhaustion from all of the change that’s happening. But what I think that is signaling is that there’s also been a lot of change in the technology and the software space. So your challenges as an HR organization, they’re shifting and they’re changing and evolving, but the software that could possibly be part of the solution has also shifted and changed and evolved dramatically. And so some of it is just we kind of have a sense of the challenge we’re facing, but we don’t even know where to begin to understand what is the scope of possible for the solution, let alone what is right for my organization.
Sarah White:
Most people have not bought new technology in the last four to six years, and we have seen such a shift of what is even available that, exactly, we were talking about the scope of what’s possible. If you’re coming in and you’re buying technology using traditional RFPs or coming in with a really structured demo request approach or how you engage with a technology or service provider, you are never going to get the best solution because what are asking for is probably so outdated versus what is available and there’s new, innovative ways to do things. And so coming in and approaching it exactly where you said, “Here’s our challenge, what can you do? Show us what’s possible. How do you help us solve this? How do you help me connect what I need to do here to solve my overall business goals and challenges, not my HR metrics?” And that’s another big shift that we’re seeing.
Ashley Litzenberger:
And I don’t personally purchase HR software, but I have been in purchasing decisions around other software related to what I do. And I find that sometimes I have great experiences in the sales process and sometimes I have really uncomfortable or frustrating or unhelpful experiences. What has been really helpful, as with all the organizations that you’ve worked with over time, how would you advise someone to navigate a software exploration and then purchasing process to make it as valuable for them and to get them to the right solution?
Sarah White:
I think there’s a couple of things that we suggest. People have to advocate for themselves a little bit, also. And so if you come in and you’ve done a little bit of research, and most people at this point start researching the options months ahead of the actual purchase and sometimes even before they even reach out to do the first demo. They’re starting to get feelers out. They’re starting to look at people’s content and their social media and their website and get an understanding of the different brands and what they stand for and how they approach different parts of the HR process.
When you move into the actual demo and engaging with a salesperson, if you don’t feel there’s a good connection with that individual person, ask for a new one. And so many people are afraid to do that, and so they walk away from a company that probably would’ve been a good fit because the salesperson wasn’t a good fit.
And so we really tell a lot of our practitioners that we work with to give it one more try if the product and everything seems interesting, see if you can get a salesperson that does have more of a heart of a teacher and is going to educate you and to show you what’s possible versus just wanting to show here’s our product and here’s our features. And going through there so that you feel really enabled to be able to go in and explain to your business, your business leaders and your executive leaders, “Here’s what this does, here’s how it impacts the rest of everything else.” And really help you start creating that business case and the ROI back to your own organization.
Ashley Litzenberger:
That is really interesting. And I’m going to dive a little bit more into the nuts and bolts and the weeds, but what does that email look like to the sales rep when you’re saying, “Hey, I’m really interested in your product. Can I work with someone else?” What would you actually say? How do you frame that?
Sarah White:
There’s a little bit, people are afraid to be like a Karen, but the reality is we do have to advocate sometimes for ourselves. I think how I would actually frame that was just say, “Hey, I’m not sure there’s a good fit with us. There seems to be some misalignment. Would it be possible for you to escalate me to either a leader to have a conversation with or to another sales rep?” And if they say no, then you just go through their sales system and you say, “Hey, I want to be assigned to a new person. Is there somebody else I could talk to?” Most of the time they’re not going to say no. They might push back a little bit. You don’t have to answer, just say it’s not a good fit. I’m just not feeling overly comfortable, but get to somebody else.
And if you have the same experience with the second person, then that’s a really good insight into the culture of an organization and you probably aren’t a good fit with them on a much broader because that is going to be your experience with customer success and everything else that goes on to the more important part of the relationship, which is post-sale.
Ashley Litzenberger:
And that’s incredibly true because you are not just choosing a software and not interacting with anyone again. You go through implementation, you go through customer success, you go through adoption questions. It is a long relationship with any software that you adopt and you use. So that is really important. And reflecting back on the fact that you could have a sales rep that just doesn’t have the same communication style as you, or you could have someone who is shifting over and learning and is maybe not as read up on your industry or your organization’s size or structure’s challenges, and there could be someone else that’s a better fit. But if you’re seeing a pattern, then that is giving you a strong signal about how that company operates and what they’re prioritizing, too.
Sarah White:
And we’ve worked with a CHRO who had gone through some personal situations and felt more comfortable with a female sales rep because they were going to have this person come on site, they were going to be going out to a dinner with them, they were going to go through a lot of the process and they simply just said, “I would feel more comfortable in this environment. Is that okay?” And the company that they were working with was like, “Absolutely.” They were very understanding and didn’t push back or pressure or any of those type of things, which for them became a buy signal before they ever even saw the product.
They said, “This is a company that’s going to respect our needs with where we are at now without judging us or making us feel bad about where that is.” And they have now been with that vendor for a while, but it has continued when they’ve had questions about product or they’ve requested new innovation or made suggestions, they’ve always felt heard and valued and they have shared the story going back to that initial request before they had talked to anybody at all. That was the first conversation that got me thinking about we need to be better advocates for ourselves and our own needs as buyers.
Ashley Litzenberger:
And that’s so interesting because we talk about wanting to empower employees to be better advocates of themselves in the workplace, and we want them to be able to talk to their HRBP. They want to be able to talk to someone within the team or their manager to make sure they have the benefits and the accommodations and the support that they need to thrive.
The same is true of ourselves in a sales process. We need to be able to indicate, “Hey, I’m neurodivergent and I need this type of information in this format to be able to ingest it or I need to change this, or I’m looking for these types of pieces of information to move forward.”
And if you can articulate what it is that you need, it’s a lot easier for the sales rep to come back to you and help you. Or if you can’t also, just be very clear, “I don’t know what the right pathway forward is, but here’s what I’m trying to solve.”
Sarah White:
Exactly. That’s a great example.
Ashley Litzenberger:
And they should be able to be able to be your ally in the process and to help educate and coach you through to get you to the end goal that you’re looking for, whether it’s working with them or finding the other best fit solution.
Sarah White:
Absolutely. I mean, if we think about it, we don’t want to work with somebody that we would think of like a traditional car salesman where it’s like they’re going to say whatever it is to get a deal. You want to be partnered with an organization that hears you and you can be very honest and direct with about whatever the situation.
Ashley Litzenberger:
And that is something that is really important is keep an eye out for someone who is trying to fit their product to fit any one of your problems, whatever it is, versus the folks who are saying, “Hey, here’s the part of your challenge that we solved really well and this part we could do, but you might also want to work with someone else.” And if you’re looking for that transparency, look for that green flag.
Sarah White:
And I think playing off of that, looking at their partner ecosystem becomes really important in understanding how well they do play with the other parts and solutions that you do have. Because there’s nobody that has a single platform to cover everything in TA and HR, and there’s not a single company out there over 10 employees that is going to have one platform and never use anything else. So making sure everything can work together and play nicely together is also very important in that process.
Ashley Litzenberger:
So are RFPs still a thing? Are they a best way to purchase or are they a thing of the past and are actually becoming a barrier in people’s review and purchasing decisions?
Sarah White:
I might be biased, but I hate RFPs. We are huge advocates of not doing RFPs at all. We know RFPs typically result in a higher cost in your purchase. You don’t get the same level of relationship and engagement. You typically are not understanding what you are buying, and the people that are being honest on the RFP are typically the ones that lose, and the ones that are lying are the ones that move ahead. And so it actually sets most organizations up for a bad partnership further on down the road.
Where if your organization, you’re a larger organization, you’re required to do an RFP, what we actually recommend and talk about doing is starting out working with a salesperson, going through the process, making sure they know that you are interested, you have a good understanding of what that is, you then make sure that your RFP aligns. And you might be working with two or three different companies at this point, but you can tell all three companies or both companies that your company requires an RFP.
Here’s what this is. Here’s the process. We’ve seen this product already, we’re comfortable with this. We would like to move you forward as one of the three companies that our purchasing department RFPs. So can you make sure that you are managing this effectively now that you know our needs so that you can respond to the RFP honestly?
What happens in most situations is an RFP goes out to 10 to 50 different companies. A number of those companies that are the best fit are actually going to opt out because they’ve never even talked with you. And then beyond that, it’s going to go to an RFP team because no sales rep is flagged to watch it, and you’re going to get the very minimal responses that don’t even always respond to what you are doing. And then they’re going to do it pricing in, but the pricing again is not actually based on reality because you don’t really know the proper scope of what you are trying to do.
And so the entire process as it sits traditionally sets somebody up for failure, but a modified RFP version is absolutely the way to go.
Ashley Litzenberger:
I love how you walked us through what are the pitfalls of traditional RFPs, but if you do have to do one or if that is the way that you want to move forward to document your purchasing process, how do you set yourself up for success within that model and how can you create a more modern approach? That’s really important.
Sarah White:
We actually have a report on our website, it’s totally free, about buying HR technology and it walks through more details about the RFP process and this modified RFP approach if you have to do this and some of the other steps of things to do during the demo process of what to ask for, how to kind of partner with a vendor a little bit better. And so that is also available on our site.
Ashley Litzenberger:
And so, all right, let’s back up. We’ve got an organization who, they’ve already figured out the challenge that they’re trying to solve or the goal that they’re trying to get to. They’ve done some shopping. They’ve found one to three or four vendors that they think could be really viable options and now they’ve narrowed it down. When it comes time to building a business case that’s starting to build the connection between what is it that HR is trying to solve for and then how do I get my organization on board, not just with the budget line expenses, but also with the change involved. So how does that work? Because that is the other really big challenge once you’ve found a software, how do you get the buy-in to then go through implementation in a way that successfully drives adoption?
Sarah White:
The proving of ROI and building a business case is in the top three reasons why a company doesn’t get to buy new software, because they don’t know how to clearly explain the value of it back to the business. And there’s a couple of key things that an organization can do.
The first one is actually understand what the business goals are, not what HR challenges they’re looking to solve. And so if you have a leader that is talking about they have retention issues or they have a lot of people that are trying to transfer out of the department, we might be needing to look at software that is related to recognition and engagement and manager enablement and learning. And so sometimes what we have to do as HR leaders is translate what the business is saying they need into kind of “HR tech speak” about what type of solution we’re looking for.
But when we go back into talking about the business, the conversation is we need to solve this retention issue, which is what the leadership, the management cares about. And in order to do that, here’s some of the solutions I found that we are lacking and how they impact the retention or the employee engagement. And here’s how retention and absenteeism and employee engagement actually impact our customer satisfaction scores. Here’s how they impact absenteeism. Here’s how they impact the cost to hire new people and turnover.
And so you bring it back into, for finance, you want to have, here’s all the cost savings that people care about. For the management and for hiring managers and line managers, you’re probably going to want to talk about what that means directly for their team. And so it comes back to a lot of how do I explain, not like here’s an ROI calculator with a number, but how do I tell a story about what this can do to impact those people individually? Their roles, how is it going to make their life easier? How is it going to simplify things for the team? How is it going to impact retention? How are we going to save money? And looking at it very holistically for what the business actually cares about.
Ashley Litzenberger:
That makes a lot of sense and it almost sounds like building a business case is really becoming an expert in translation.
Sarah White:
Yes.
Ashley Litzenberger:
So doing initial research and understanding here’s what sales is struggling with. Here’s what customer success is struggling with. Here’s what finance or other internal operations teams are struggling with. What does that mean in the HR tech world and in the HR strategy and process world? What are the things we want to put in place, but then remembering to translate it back out from that back into those pain points that your stakeholders have.
Sarah White:
And I think the other thing that people forget to do is to talk to the technologies that you’re talking to. Talk to your existing technologies, talk to the ones that you are looking to buy. Ask them what else has been going on in other companies you work with. Talk to your salesperson, ask them to talk to the customer success reps and the team. Ask for case studies like how is this impacting other organizations? They have seen probably your challenge, I know everybody’s a special snowflake, but your challenge has been very similar, at least at similar type of companies. And they see a lot and they talk to a number of different organizations on a regular basis, and it is such a underappreciated area of advice and research.
Some of the smartest people I know in the HR tech industry — and I’ve been in this industry for 24 years — some of the smartest people I know are in the sales area, and it’s because they talk to so many different companies and have taken the time to learn the needs and the challenges. You can have those people be amazing advocates for you and even in a lot of cases help you build out a business case that has worked for other people. Because they want to sell you the stuff. They’re going to help you do this.
Ashley Litzenberger:
They don’t just want to sell it to you, they want you to be successful on it because they want you to stay and they want you to be a story that then they get to tell as well.
Sarah White:
A hundred percent, yes.
Ashley Litzenberger:
But it is one of those things of finding who is it who can give me good advice and then doing a little bit of your own due diligence and homework as well. So don’t just listen to the stories. Do some back-channeling. When you’re looking at vetting a vendor, you’re getting into those final stages, what are the most valuable ways or the most valuable locations to go and get references or understand is what I’m experiencing on the sales side of partnership going to translate over to the implementation and the adoption and the long-term relationship that we’re going to have?
Sarah White:
We actually have found that the references are not overly useful because they’re typically going to always pick out the very best people and the people that are going to complain about stuff online are often the worst case scenarios.
Ashley Litzenberger:
So you’re saying Reddit’s not going to work, neither are the case studies on the website?
Sarah White:
I mean, the case studies are good for giving you examples of how the technology can be used, what is the impact other people have had with it. But when we’re getting into what that relationship and that experience is going to look like for you, the best thing I think you can do is actually ask, “Can we talk to who does your implementations? Can we see who we are going to be assigned? How is your customer success program set up? What are the steps from the day I sign until the day I go live? Can you give me a walkthrough of what that looks like from the day we go live through the first 12 months? What does that look like? How does our training look? How does this relationship look moving forward? What if I have questions? What if I need to make changes?
Ashley Litzenberger:
What is my volume of time investment? How many people on my team need to be involved?
Sarah White:
A hundred percent.
Ashley Litzenberger:
How long does this process normally take at other organizations in my size or industry given whatever requirements or security requirements might be in place? Yeah.
Sarah White:
I think what people oftentimes will default to is they’ll say, well I am an automotive company and so if they’re an automotive company, whatever they did is going to be exactly the same for us.” But if you are a Ford and a Tesla, you are probably set up very different as automotive companies. And so the same technology doesn’t always make sense. Your leadership structure, the way you engage and hire your employees, the culture you have, can all impact what technology. The maturity of your processes, I mean that I think is one of the biggest factors that gets misunderstood and talked about.
A lot of the issues with technology comes to bad implementations, and sometimes that is because, as HR leaders, we don’t modernize our process and we try to take an outdated process and put it into a technical solution.
Ashley Litzenberger:
That is really powerful. Now a lot of the insights that you’re sharing with us today are coming from a survey that you run pretty frequently and the next one is coming up in November. I’m curious, do you have any specific themes in what going to be looking for and asking for this year?
Sarah White:
So we really focus, so we do The State of HR Tech, thank you for bringing it up. We run this annually. I have been doing this for over 15 years now. It used to be called Insights at Work. And what we’re really looking to do is give practitioners a voice, and we want HR and business leaders and employees to be able to share what they are frustrated by in the sales process, and being a user of this type of technology and what they get from marketing, how the technology is built, and be able to bring that back into all of the technology vendors at scale.
So instead of asking one or two people’s opinions, we can get, “Here’s what HR is just frustrated by, here’s what they wish you knew and what they wish you can change.” And so it really is all about building a voice.
And so our themes really are around understanding what the top concerns and area of focus are for the business, as well as diving into what is happening around when you’re coming to a conference or when you’re trying to find the right type of research and you’re trying to learn about something, what do you want to know? What are you looking for? What type of content are you looking for? What would be helpful from that salesperson? And then we look at a number of different technology categories about what do you actually need to learn about? What areas should we focus more content and research on? And then we ask as an employee, kind of some feedback.
It sounds like a lot of stuff. There’s about 14 different paths depending on somebody’s role and it takes less than 10 minutes. And so it’s a really easy way and it impacts so much of the technology that our employees and as HR leaders we are using on a day-to-day basis.
Ashley Litzenberger:
I’m curious, you have been running this for over a decade, 15 years, I think you said. How have you impacted the market? How have you been able to change the way that HR vendors are supporting HR leaders as someone who’s advocating for your HR leaders and practitioners?
Sarah White:
So I actually started as a practitioner and my first company that I started was all around product selection, evaluation, and implementation. And it was in that area that I realized we had a lot of issues and a lot of companies had a really hard time understanding what that was going to be. And kind of over the years, many years, we’ve kind of honed in on trying to get more of this feedback and the impact has been very widespread. We have partnered now with more than 400 different technologies, a huge percent of the technologies here at the HR Tech conference on the floor. On their product roadmap strategy, on how they are evolving their marketing and content strategies and engaging out. We’ve trained hundreds or thousands of salespeople at this point to better understand what HR needs, expects and wants from them and helping them understand what HR and talent does on a day-to-day basis.
And we have researched and gotten feedback from almost 50,000 HR practitioners over that period of time and then spoken also, I think at this point it’s about 2 to 3000 conferences over that period of time about how we really need to continue to be advocates and I thank you guys for bringing me on here, I think every technology and every vendor and every marketing team and every sales team needs to take a stance of being an advocate for the practitioner and really thinking about them and their role and how we are marketing and selling and building technology for them and for every single employee that is out there. And that’s the only true way we can actually change work.
Ashley Litzenberger:
Wow, Sarah, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and the latest insights that you’ve had from your report.
Sarah White:
Thank you so much for having me.
Ashley Litzenberger:
And especially the guidance for practitioners on how to think about where to go to begin selecting HR software, how to vet different organizations, and then how to build the business case to get the buy-in to go in and adopt it once you’ve chosen what the right path looks like.
Sarah White:
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Ashley Litzenberger:
As we wrap up today’s conversation with Sarah, consider how you can take some of her great advice and put it to work in your own organization. First, rethink how you’re approaching tech purchases. Sarah shared how it’s not always wise to stick with the old RFP process. Instead, come at it with an open mind focused on solving your company’s unique challenges. Explore what is possible and look for partners who can grow with you.
Second, don’t be afraid to advocate for yourself. If the salesperson isn’t a good fit or you’re not getting the clarity you need, speak up. Sarah reminded us how important it is to find a vendor that truly supports your team, not just through the sale, but during implementation and beyond.
Finally, connect your tech decisions to real business outcomes. Sarah emphasized that it’s key for HR leaders to translate what the business needs into tech solutions, then clearly communicate how those solutions will address things like retention, engagement, and other big picture challenges. These strategies aren’t just about picking the right tools. They’re about setting up your organization for long-term success.
Be sure to stay tuned for our next episode of the People Fundamentals podcast. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube music, and if you like what you hear, share us with your friends and colleagues. We’ll see you again soon.
