Adapted from an article originally published in Recruitment & Co.
Agency Owners.
I know you’re commercially savvy. But tech can be your blind spot.
I hear these words far too often: ‘Our tech stack costs us this much’.
No, it doesn’t.
Because you haven’t looked beneath.
Read this iceberg image three times.
Then ask yourself…
‘What does our tech stack cost us?'
There’s two ‘danger zones’ when it comes to recruitment tech stacks.
Overcomplicating your tech stack: too many systems linked by flimsy integrations...so it becomes a ‘Frankenstack’.
Losing sight of the ‘Total Cost of Ownership’ (or TCO) of your tech.
I’ve spent a lot of time chatting with rec firm owners, and they usually face the same challenges.
‘We have too many systems with too much data. It’s hell dealing with compliance.’
‘I wanted to change vendors for our CRM, but they got us with a timesheets integration. The contracts end six months apart. We can’t get out.’
‘There’s zero analytics in our current platform. We want to grow our business but there’s no way our current system can support us in that.’
These cases seem separate, but they reveal one core problem.
It’s the TCO.
Think of the Titanic approaching an iceberg: it doesn’t matter whether the ship gets hit left, right, or center. It’s going down.
Your tech stack is like that iceberg. From the surface, it might seem fine. You like the customisation options, you’re happy to work with multiple vendors, your admin team’s got the data handled. Heck, who cares if you’re paying over the odds - the market’s good, you can afford it.
But get too close and you’ll realize what massive problems are hiding there. Any one of them could sink your business.
Customisation means expensive, long-running projects. You end up customising yourself out of the vendors’ roadmap so miss out on product upgrades. Add that to your TCO.
Many vendors mean many contracts, training processes, and release cycles. You’re scrambling to keep up, and then overspending when you’re caught on the wrong foot. Put it in the TCO column.
Data silos aren’t just bad for reporting, but also compliance: an area where you don’t want to put a toe out of line. Over time, you’re paying admin people to keep up with compliance and pull Excel reports. File it under ‘Total Cost of Ownership’.
Sometimes the issue with Total Cost of Ownership isn’t what’s there, but what’s missing. Like with analytics: if you don’t have accurate dashboards, you’re missing out on real-time data that should be informing your business decisions. Those lurking, unseen, missed opportunities are what will really cost you in the long run.
What you don’t know can hurt your business.
But there is a way out. Take an honest look at your tech stack.
Price is one thing, Total Cost of Ownership is another. What are disparate systems really costing you? In time, effort, and lost opportunity?
I’ve had this conversation enough times and my advice is always the same: build a tech stack for the long term.
Invest in the system that’s going to get you through the tough times and set you up for growth in the good, and you won’t be taken down by any nasty surprises.
And your crew will thank you.
