Time and Attendance systems have been in existence for over 50 years and the market for these solutions is mature with a well-recognised Return on Investment (ROI) through automation and elimination of payroll errors.
Whilst there are many organisations yet to benefit from Time and Attendance solutions, there are also many with an existing Time & Attendance systems who would, given the right circumstances, opt to move to the latest technology.

Within HFX, we classify as “Greenfield” opportunities where they have no existing solution and “Brownfield” where they have an existing solution. We believe there is a significant opportunity in both these markets. HFX has a specific strategy to address “Brownfield” opportunities that has informed and directed the development of Imperago, the next generation Cloud solution. This is based on the deep knowledge and feedback from customers over decades.

In formulating the “Brownfield” strategy it was important to recognise that Time & Attendance solutions are regarded as “sticky”, e.g. once purchased it often remains in place for 10 to 20 years. This longevity is often despite the failings and shortcomings of the incumbent solution which can be , hard to use, adapt and maintain, with often poor support from the supplier. The later aspect (poor support) is a cynical consequence of “sticky solutions” where the supplier considers there is minimum risk of customer attrition and therefore does not invest in customer services.

The HFX “Brownfield Strategy’’ addresses not only the issues with existing legacy solutions (and suppliers), but also, and fundamentally, the barriers to switching from the incumbent legacy solution to a more modern Cloud solution. In short, the “brownfield” strategy aims to negate and overcome the “stickiness” of existing time and attendance solutions and therefore remove the barriers to switching suppliers.

The “stickiness” of a time and attendance solution is often the result of the investment made not just in the software, but in terms of implementation and the data collection (clocking) devices. Traditionally organisations could expect to pay roughly the same for the hardware (Data collection devices) and Professional Services as they did for the actual software. Thus a £90k investment would be equally spread across software, configuration and the data collection devices.

Migrating to another supplier would often require a similar investment in replacing not just the software but also the hardware and re-configuration. This represented a significant barrier to change and often left the organisation “making do” with an existing solution that increasingly did not meet their needs.

Often, configuration was time consuming, expensive and hard to maintain. Further, the costs of adapting the solution to changes in an organisation can be prohibitive and this creates “solution divergence” requiring more and more manual workarounds.

The HFX Solution: Remove the Barriers to Change
However, what if you focused Research and Development on simplifying configuration and reducing the time and cost to configure by 80-85%?

This would result in implementation costs reduce from £30,000 (as per the previous example) to £6,000. What if you could integrate any existing device into the solution, removing the need for the organisation replace all their existing devices?
Immediately the cost of replacing their legacy solution reduces from £90,000 to £36,000. With a SaaS cloud solution, there is no upfront licence fee, rather the cost is spread over 3 years, so the initial outlay reduces even further to £16,000.

The HFX RapiD integration engine also simplifies integration reducing costs further where this is required. Because the solution is so easy to configure, it also reduces Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and helps prevent solution divergence.

HFX also invest heavily in support and regularly receive 95% “awesome” support ratings. We do this by ensuring all our support personal are trained to 2nd level. There is no 1st line support desk and most queries are answered on first interaction

The HFX Competitive Advantage
This strategy provides the customer with the latest generation cloud solution that is not just cost effective to configure, but also to maintain with options for the customer to take more ownership of the solution as they do not need rely upon the supplier. By providing superior customer services, the customer is always able to get help when they need it and speak to product experts. The advanced functionality is able to provide the customer with additional value with the TCO significantly below any of our competitors.