Replacing a benefits platform: which selection criteria turned out to matter?

The thing we overweighted was the employee-facing design. The winning platform looked beautiful. Employees log in about twice a year, so how it looks matters far less than the admin side, which my team lives in every day. The admin side turned out to be poor.

I would cut your 60 lines to about eight and make three of them pass or fail. Ours were: a tested payroll file for every country in scope, named implementation staff rather than a team to be confirmed, and the right to extract all our data in a usable format at exit without a fee.

Then score the rest, with the heaviest weight on reference calls you arrange yourself with similar-sized clients who went live recently, not the ones the supplier offers. We asked each how long payroll reconciliation takes now. Answers ranged from two hours to eleven days, which told us more than the grid.

On multi-country: check whether the Netherlands and Ireland are genuinely configured in the product or delivered through a partner. Ours claimed 40 countries and it turned out to mean a translated front end over a local broker's spreadsheet. Ask to see a live client site in each country you care about.

This is exactly what I needed. The grid is down to nine lines with three gates, and we are sending the real-data payroll test to all five before demos rather than after. One has already withdrawn, which probably tells its own story.