As business needs evolve, decision makers often seek to improve operations and reduce costs by reassessing resource allocation—including technology-related expenses.
Workforce management technology represents a significant investment in your organization's success. Finding the right cost-benefit balance for your evolving business is crucial, including the possibility of switching vendors or solutions to reduce upfront costs.
Though finding a seemingly more cost-effective workforce management solution may be tempting, have you considered the true cost of change? Let's explore the key factors to consider when changing your workforce management technology and how they affect your operational costs.
Implementation and integration costs
A smooth implementation and integration process is essential for minimizing service disruptions and revenue loss. Without it, work processes become slow, fragmented, and inefficient.
When evaluating new workforce management vendors, it's critical to carefully examine implementation and integration costs. Changing WFM vendors requires new integrations with existing systems, including CRM, HRIS, and payroll platforms. This process can require custom development and complex data mapping to ensure accuracy and meet an organization's unique needs. The costs can be substantial, depending on the scale of integrations needed and the volume of historical data that must be migrated and mapped.
Implementation projects can be lengthy and costly, particularly for enterprise-scale organizations, where extensive customization is needed for business rules, overtime policies, and forecasting models.
Prolonged integration and implementation projects can result in system downtime, leading to lost productivity and revenue—ultimately cutting into potential cost savings from switching vendors.
Training and change management costs
Switching to new WFM technology requires significant investment in employee retraining and change management. Ensuring your frontline managers and employees properly adopt and utilize new technology can cost time, money, and create frustration if new tools aren't intuitive, differ greatly from past systems, or lack functionality.
Change management costs can be substantial in high-turnover industries like contact centers that require continuously onboarding new employees. The cost of replacing frontline agents in contact centers is significant, with industry research estimating that replacing a single contact center agent can cost between $10,000 to $15,000, factoring in:
- Recruiting and hiring costs
- Training and onboarding expenses
- Lost productivity during the training period
- Decreased team efficiency while new hires gain proficiency
The importance of adoption and development
These replacement costs underscore why effective change management and employee adoption are crucial when implementing new WFM systems—poor adoption leads to workload bottlenecks, degraded service quality, and higher operational costs. Supporting employee adoption during change can be challenging, as businesses must balance promoting adoption rates with maintaining optimal resource levels when taking time away from employees' workdays.
The time needed to focus on adoption and reach a solid level of competency can impact other aspects of operations. However, this development process is necessary to promote adoption and drive the ROI associated with switching vendors. If an organization can't effectively manage adoption and change, projected ROI for switching workforce platforms will diminish.
The costs of replacing workforce planners
The cost of replacing churning agents during change can deeply cut into ROI. Costs associated with recruiting workforce planners is even greater. Planning roles require specialized skills, and recruiting professionals with this expertise to work with a new WFM solution leads to significantly higher costs. Organizations must weigh whether hiring new employees at higher salaries to work with new software will be more cost-effective than retaining existing staff.
Replacing a WFM professional can cost:
- WFM Analysts: $45,000 - $65,000/year
- WFM Supervisors: $60,000 - $85,000/year
- WFM Managers: $80,000 - $120,000/year
Additional time investments
Beyond implementation, integration, and training expenses, organizations must consider several other time investments when switching vendors.
Switching vendors requires significant time investment in:
- Comprehensive planning and vendor evaluation.
- Pilot runs and testing for quality assurance.
- Admin time spent managing system during transitions.
- Ongoing and comprehensive internal communication plans.
These time investments can significantly delay potential cost savings from switching vendors, as administrators spend more time managing transitions rather than their primary responsibilities.
Licensing and pricing model shifts
Current WFM solutions on the market cost between $48.75 and $75 per agent, per month. However, many vendors charge extra for additional licenses and features, substantially increasing the total cost of ownership.
When considering a switch between WFM vendors, evaluate these potential pricing shifts:
- WFM Super User admin access
- Connector licensing
- Customized payroll export capability
- BI system reporting access
It's important to note that while vendors may list an estimated cost on an invoice, this rarely reflects the true total cost of a solution. Lower pricing models may be an appealing reason to switch vendors, but the price you're paying for your WFM software covers more than just the technology—it includes support services, access to industry experts, and tailored solutions for your business.
Want to learn more about the benefits of a unified WFM platform? Explore why a comprehensive, unified platform with simplified licensing structure will save your organization time and frustration.
Hidden costs and risks of switching vendors
The cost of switching vendors isn't always straightforward. Hidden fees can quickly add up and substantially impact predicted cost savings.
During transitional phases, errors in work processes like forecasting and scheduling may temporarily increase—affecting business efficiency. This can lead to diminished business performance, resulting in fewer service interactions and reduced revenue.
Organizations routinely account for the time agents need to reach competency during regular operations. Yet they often overlook this consideration when switching workforce systems. Productivity naturally declines as agents, supervisors, planners, and managers throughout the organization pause their normal work to learn the new system.
So, we must ask: Do the perceived costs of change and ROI calculations fully account for these productivity dips?
When factoring in all these elements, the cost of change is significant, potentially leading to service disruptions and lost efficiency with inadequate workforce systems that offer only basic functionalities. As your organization conducts a thorough cost-benefit analysis, consider not only the functionality offered by your WFM solutions but also the true cost of changing platforms.
