What’s your problem?

As anyone with children knows, you’ll never get the right answer unless you ask the exactly right question. Maybe not even then. So too with software. You’ll never get to a good solutions unless you really understand your problem first.

Here’s a case in point. One of our clients is a large manufacturing and distribution company that’s grown rapidly. They have thousands of employees across the country and across the world. While they have an automated HR/Payroll system, they still handle annual salary increases through spreadsheets. Spreadsheets e-mailed to hundreds of supervisors, then returned to dozens of directors, then sliced and diced in all kinds of different ways depending on the department. You can imagine how much work it is to collate and analyze all that information. So, they’re looking for software that can help automate the process.

‘ve asked them to wait a little before moving forward. We need to understand the problem they’re trying to solve. There are two possible problems here:

• Eliminating the annual review spreadsheet headache.
• Improving the entire compensation management process – including, for example, goals, performance appraisals, career plans, etc.

If they really just want to solve the spreadsheet headache, they’ll be better served investing in some custom programming to make the spreadsheets easier to handle. The spreadsheets are easy for the people in the field. A central database with some custom reports will make all the difference.

If instead they really want to address their talent management issue, they should look at various software packages. These packages will certainly solve the spreadsheet headache but they’ll also address many other talent management issues.

Some think that it’s ok to buy a package that does more than you need right now because you’ll solve your problem now and grow into the functionality later. I’d argue that’s not a good idea. In large organizations, installing any software is going to take a lot of time. The time won’t be spent on the technology itself but rather on the training, the process redesign and the general work required to get everyone on the same page. If you’re not trying to solve a major problem, it’s not worth the investment.

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