How to Evaluate HR Technology Solutions

Originally published by Meghan Sloan on May 16, 2023. Refreshed and updated October 28, 2026.

Quick answer: To evaluate HR technology solutions, define the gap you need to close, then compare options on total cost of ownership, integration with your existing systems, data security, training and support, and measurable results. Choose the HR solution that connects cleanly to your stack and that your team will use consistently, and keep human judgment in the candidate experience.

The right HR technology solution gives your team hours back, improves operational efficiency, gives leadership numbers they can trust, and gives candidates a smoother path to your jobs. The wrong one adds another login, another report, and another round of manual data entry, which adds to the administrative burden on your team.

Many HR professionals and TA teams know the second experience well. The global human resources technology market is projected to grow from $47.3 billion in 2026 to nearly $96 billion by 2034, according to Fortune Business Insights. Yet Workday research found that 62% of leaders say their people, processes, and technology don't work effectively.

The tools themselves are rarely the root cause. Most organizations have accumulated technology rather than built an HR technology strategy tied to business strategy and strategic objectives, and the difference shows up in your results and your competitive advantage.

This HR technology guide walks through a seven-step technology evaluation process. It will help you choose HR technology solutions that fit your stack, avoid the most common implementation pitfalls, and see where purpose-built intermediary platforms can fill the gaps your core systems leave behind.

Why Do HR Technology Solutions Fall Short? Too Many Tools, Not Enough Integration

HR technology solutions, or HR tech solutions, most often fall short because the tools don't work together, not because any single tool is weak. Understanding the HR technology landscape first makes every evaluation sharper.

Most HR operations and TA teams don't run on  a single platform. According to the Sapient Insights Group's 2024 to 2025 HR Systems Survey, reported by SHRM, organizations were operating an average of 26 HR modules in 2024, from performance management to benefits administration, more than double the 10 they averaged in 2020. Those systems frequently don't talk to each other:

• 46% of organizations name a lack of integration within and between systems as their biggest HR technology pain point, according to HR.com's 2025 research

• Only 15% of organizations rely on a single HR platform, while 62% use two to four paid solutions from different providers, according to the same research

This is where intermediary HR technology solutions earn their place. An intermediary HR technology solution is a tool that sits between your core HR platforms, such as your ATS, HRIS, or comprehensive human capital management (HCM) platform, and connects them. Rather than replacing those systems, it standardizes data, unifies reporting, and enables the automation that disconnected systems can't support on their own, from recruiting to wider HR services.

At NAS, the ACTIVATE Platform and ACTIVATE Analytics are built for this role. They connect your existing recruitment infrastructure and give your TA team a single, accurate view of performance across every channel.

The Technology Evaluation Process: 7 Steps

These seven steps double as practical tips to evaluate human resources platforms, and they apply when conducting a technology evaluation for an HRIS, an ATS, or a recruitment marketing tool.

1. Define your needs first, so you buy solutions, not features

Start with an HR technology assessment of what you have today, then define what you actually need to meet your business objectives rather than what is just generating buzz. The payoff is that you pay only for capabilities that meet real business needs.

Audit your HR and TA processes. Where are the friction points? Where does data get lost, duplicated, or delayed? Where does your team spend time on manual work that should be automated? Those answers, not vendor marketing, should drive your evaluation criteria.

Common gaps we see in TA technology stacks:

• Disconnected job distribution: paying for reach without knowing which channels convert

• Siloed analytics: data that lives inside the ATS rather than across all channels

• Unintegrated career sites: career sites that aren't connected to programmatic advertising or CRM

An intermediary recruitment marketing platform can close each of these gaps without a full system replacement. Evaluate new and existing technologies in the context of your stack and the specific gaps you want to close. The best technology isn't always the most feature-rich. It's the one that solves a real problem and gets used consistently, which supports sustainable growth.

2. Calculate total cost of ownership, including hidden costs

Total cost of ownership (TCO) is the full cost of an HR technology solution over its useful life, not just the license fee. The payoff is no surprises after you sign, and a clear view of cost effectiveness and strategic value.

When calculating TCO, account for:

• Initial purchase cost: licensing, software, and any hardware required

• Implementation costs: data migration, system configuration, and employee training

• Ongoing operating costs: support, maintenance, ongoing training, and staff time to manage the system

• Integration costs: custom connectors, API development, or middleware required to connect the new tool to existing systems

• Replacement or renewal costs: what happens when the platform becomes obsolete or your contract terms change

TCO also guides resource allocation, and integration is where it surprises most organizations. According to the Torii 2025 SaaS Benchmark Report, reported by SHRM, organizations waste over $1 million annually on SaaS tools that are purchased but go largely unused, including HR tools. Disconnected systems add to that cost through duplicated data entry, reconciliation time, and the manual workarounds HR teams create to compensate for disconnected systems.

3. Prioritize integration with your existing systems

Integration is the most important technical consideration when evaluating HR technology solutions, and the one teams most often underestimate. The payoff is data and reporting that leadership can trust.

According to HR.com's 2025 research, only 39% of organizations say their HR systems are usefully integrated with one another. Among those with poor integration, 81% say it actively prevents them from achieving important HR goals. In practice, that means:

• Delayed reporting and missed budget conversations

• Poor HR data quality that can't be trusted for data driven decision making

• TA teams that can't demonstrate ROI because the data they need is spread across platforms

Before onboarding any new HR technology solution, map your current tech stack, including other business systems, and identify every integration point the new tool will require.

For recruitment marketing, your career site, ATS, job distribution channels, programmatic advertising platform, and analytics should all feed a unified data layer rather than operate as silos reporting separate metrics. That is the problem the ACTIVATE Platform is built to solve: a connected recruitment marketing infrastructure that integrates with your existing ATS and surfaces consistent, validated data across every channel. For a closer look at how this works, read our guide to recruitment marketing and ATS integration.

4. Build data security into your evaluation from the start

HR software security belongs in the evaluation from day one, because HR systems hold some of the most sensitive data an organization has. The payoff is fewer late-stage surprises when IT and legal review the shortlist.

According to Paychex's 2025 Priorities for Business Leaders survey, which surveyed companies with 5 to 499 employees, data security and employee data privacy is the top technology concern for 56% of small and midsize business leaders. The concern is well founded: HR systems contain compensation, performance history, health information, and identity documents.

When evaluating HR technology solutions:

• Involve your IT and legal teams early, before a vendor shortlist is finalized

• Confirm robust encryption and role-based access controls are in place

• Verify regular security audits and clearly defined data retention and deletion policies

• Check privacy regulation compliance across GDPR, CCPA, and the growing patchwork of state-level data privacy laws that have continued to expand through 2025 and 2026

For recruitment marketing platforms, also ask how candidate data is handled, how long it's retained, and what visibility you have into data flows between your platform and third-party job distribution partners.

5. Invest in user training, and choose partners who do too

An HR technology solution is only as effective as the people using it, which makes training the step where implementations most often go wrong. The payoff is adoption, which is where the value actually shows up.

According to HR.com's 2025 research, a lack of in-house technical expertise and a shortage of the features organizations need each affect 28% of organizations as an HR technology pain point. Poor implementation affects another 27%, and ongoing administration costs create challenges for a further 25%.

Training isn't just onboarding. It's ongoing support as the platform evolves, as your team turns over, and as your hiring needs change. A platform with excellent functionality and poor support is a TCO liability. The most valuable HR technology partners aren't just software vendors. They're teams with real-world expertise in the outcomes you're trying to achieve. At NAS, our recruitment marketing specialists work alongside the technology, not just behind it.

6. Monitor and measure performance continuously

Successful technology assessments don't end at launch. Agree in advance on the expected benefits and what success looks like, then measure it. The payoff is being able to show key stakeholders exactly what the investment delivered. Pair the numbers with user feedback.

Define your key performance indicators before you launch any new HR technology, so each one ties back to your HR strategy. For TA teams, this typically includes:

• Time-to-fill and time-to-hire across roles and channels

• Cost-per-apply and cost-per-hire by source

• Source-of-hire, to understand which channels are actually converting

• Quality of hire, measured by performance ratings and retention at 90 days and one year

• Hiring manager satisfaction with the candidates and process they receive

Among organizations whose HR technology lacks features they need, people analytics, also called workforce analytics, is the second most requested addition (65%), just behind succession management (68%), according to HR.com's 2025 research. Yet most organizations still measure efficiency and cost rather than the outcome metrics, such as quality of hire, retention, and hiring manager satisfaction, that show whether technology is working.

ACTIVATE Analytics was built for this challenge. It consolidates performance data from across your recruitment marketing channels into a single, standardized view, so your team can see what's working, spot what isn't, and adjust in real time rather than after the fact.

7. Balance automation with human connection

The best use of automation is freeing your team from administrative tasks to do what people do best: build relationships, exercise judgment, and create candidate and employee experiences that drive retention. The payoff is more time for the work only your team can do.

AI and automation in HR are accelerating rapidly. Autonomous AI agents are moving into recruiting. According to Korn Ferry's 2026 Talent Acquisition Trends report, 52% of talent leaders plan to add them to their teams in 2026, and vendors now pitch them for steps such as sourcing, screening, and scheduling interviews. The goal isn't to automate the most. It's to automate the right things while preserving human judgment where it matters.

Candidates notice the difference. According to Gartner's 2025 candidate research, only 26% of job candidates trust AI to evaluate them fairly, and 25% say they trust employers less when those employers use AI to evaluate their information. Automate HR processes that are high-volume and low-judgment, such as job distribution, application routing, performance reporting, and other routine HR tasks. Keep people central to relationship-building, offer conversations, and hiring decisions. When a solution includes AI features, ask where human review happens in the workflow and whether candidates can reach a person.

How to Evaluate HR Tech Vendors: Questions to Ask Before You Shortlist

To evaluate HR tech vendors, ask about integration, data handling, implementation, support, and fit, and ask for specifics rather than assurances. These are the key criteria to evaluate HR technology vendors before shortlisting, and what to consider when choosing an HR technology company. Check claims against independent industry reports and industry standards, and ask how the vendor is responding to emerging trends.

• Integration capabilities: What integrations exist out of the box? What requires custom development? What data flows both ways, and what moves one way only?

• Data: What happens to your data if you leave? How is candidate and employee data retained and deleted?

• Implementation and training: What does onboarding look like? Are ongoing training resources self-service only, or supported by real people?

• Support: Is there a dedicated customer success or account management team? What is the response time when something breaks?

• Fit: Which specific gap in our stack does this close, and how will we measure success in the first 90 days?

The answers matter as much as the product features. A vendor that answers these questions clearly is usually a vendor that will support you after the contract is signed.

What Are the Most Important Evaluation Criteria for HR Technology?

The key components of an HR technology evaluation, and its most important evaluation criteria, are fit with a defined need, integration, total cost of ownership, data security, training and support, measurable outcomes, and human oversight. Use this scorecard as a workforce technology evaluation resource: an effective technology evaluation applies consistent criteria to every vendor, weights the relevant criteria to match your priorities, and scores each option the same way.

Planning an HRIS Implementation: What Changes the Outcome

An HRIS implementation succeeds when data migration, integration, and training are planned before go-live rather than after. A human resources information system (HRIS) is the system of record for employee data, and a well-run implementation gives every connected tool, including employee self service portals, clean, trustworthy data to work from. The same sequence applies to an ATS or CRM implementation.

1. Clean and map your data first. Decide which fields move, which are retired, and who owns each one before migration begins.

2. Confirm integrations before you sign. List every system the HRIS must connect to, including your ATS, payroll, and analytics, and get each connection confirmed in writing.

3. Train by role. Recruiters, HR generalists, and managers use the system differently, so give each group training built around their own tasks, and set employee expectations early.

4. Set success measures before go-live. Baseline today's numbers so you can show what improved, as described in step 6.

How NAS Fits Into Your HR Technology Stack

NAS Recruitment Innovation isn't an ATS or an HRIS. We're a recruitment marketing agency with a technology platform designed to work alongside your core systems. The ACTIVATE Platform connects your career site, job distribution, programmatic advertising, and analytics into a unified recruitment marketing infrastructure. ACTIVATE Analytics standardizes performance data across every channel, so your team works from a single source of truth.

For HR and TA teams navigating a complex technology landscape, we serve as the connective layer. We bridge your existing systems, surface the data you need to make decisions, and back the technology with recruitment marketing specialists who know how to use it to drive results.

Ready to talk through your HR tech stack? Contact NAS today and we'll share how our platform and expertise can help you get more from the technology you already have, and fill the gaps where it falls short.