How to Evaluate HR Technology Solutions

Originally published by Meghan Sloan on May 16, 2023. Refreshed and updated on January 22, 2025 and May 8, 2026.

HR technology solutions were supposed to make work simpler. For many HR and TA teams, they've done the opposite.

The global HR technology market is projected to grow from $47.3 billion in 2026 to nearly $96 billion by 2034, a near-doubling driven by AI, analytics, and the relentless push toward digital transformation, according to Fortune Business Insights. Yet more investment hasn't translated to more clarity. Workday research found that 62% of business leaders say their people, processes, and technology don't work effectively together. According to SHRM, HR professionals spend an average of 14 hours per week on administrative tasks, much of it related to manual reporting and data management rather than the strategic work they were hired to do.

The problem isn't that HR technology solutions have failed. It's that most organizations have accumulated technology rather than built a technology strategy, and there's a meaningful difference between the two.

This guide will help you evaluate HR technology solutions more deliberately, avoid the most common implementation pitfalls, and understand where purpose-built intermediary platforms can bridge the gaps your core systems leave behind.

The Real Challenge: Too Many Tools, Not Enough Integration

Before evaluating any new HR technology solution, it helps to understand the environment you're evaluating into. Most HR and TA teams don't operate from 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, more than double the 10 modules they averaged in 2020. And those systems frequently don't talk to each other.

The numbers are striking:

• 56% of organizations still rely on manual data entry or file uploads to move employee data between HR systems

• Nearly half (49%) of HR professionals report duplicating the same employee data across two or more platforms on a regular basis

• Only 43% of HR teams rate their TA technology stack as good or excellent at improving recruitment outcomes, a figure that has barely moved since 2023, according to HR.com

This is where intermediary HR technology solutions become essential. Rather than replacing your ATS, HRIS, or HCM platform, the right intermediary tools sit between your core systems, standardizing data, unifying reporting, and enabling the kind of intelligent automation that disconnected systems simply can't support on their own. At NAS, our ACTIVATE Platform and ACTIVATE Analytics are designed specifically for this role, connecting your existing recruitment infrastructure to give your TA team a single, accurate view of performance across every channel.

1. Define Your HR Technology Needs Before You Evaluate

The first step in evaluating any HR technology solution is to define what you actually need, not what's generating buzz in the market.

Start by auditing your existing HR and TA processes. Where are the friction points? Where is data getting lost, duplicated, or delayed? Where are your teams spending time on manual work that should be automated? The answers to those questions, not vendor marketing, should drive your evaluation criteria.

Common gaps we see in TA technology stacks include:

• Disconnected job distribution: paying for reach without understanding which channels actually 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

Each of these is a place where an intermediary recruitment marketing platform can add meaningful value without requiring a full system replacement. A useful framing: don't evaluate HR technology solutions in isolation. Evaluate them in the context of your existing stack and the specific gaps you're trying 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.

2. Calculate Total Cost of Ownership, Including Hidden Costs

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) refers to the full cost of an HR technology solution over its useful life, not just the license fee. For many organizations, the upfront price is the smallest part of the real cost.

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

Integration is where TCO 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 unused or poorly integrated, costs that accumulate gradually through duplicated data entry, reconciliation time, and the manual workarounds HR teams build to compensate for disconnected systems. When evaluating any new HR technology solution, ask specifically how it integrates with your ATS, HRIS, and analytics platforms, and get specifics, not assurances.

3. Prioritize Integration With Your Existing Systems

Integration is the single most important technical consideration when evaluating HR technology solutions, and the most commonly underestimated one.

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. These aren't abstract operational problems. They translate to:

• Delayed reporting and missed budget conversations

• Inaccurate data that can't be trusted for decision-making

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

Before onboarding any new HR technology solution, map your current tech stack and identify every integration point the new tool will require. Ask vendors directly:

• What integrations exist out of the box?

• What requires custom development?

• What data can flow bidirectionally versus one-way?

• What happens to your data if you leave?

For recruitment marketing specifically, your career site, ATS, job distribution channels, programmatic advertising platform, and analytics solution should all feed into a unified data layer, not operate as separate silos reporting separate metrics. This is precisely the problem NAS's 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.

4. Build Data Security Into Your Evaluation From the Start

Data security is a non-negotiable element of HR technology evaluation, and one that's growing more complex as platforms collect more sensitive employee and candidate data.

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. That concern is well-founded: HR systems contain some of the most sensitive data an organization holds, including 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 specifically, 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

Any HR technology solution is only as effective as the people using it. This sounds obvious, but it's consistently where implementations go wrong. According to HR.com's 2025 research, insufficient change management and inadequate in-house technical expertise each affect 28% of organizations struggling with HR technology adoption. Poor implementation affects another 27% of organizations, and ongoing administration costs create challenges for a further 25%.

The training question isn't just about onboarding. It's about ongoing support as the platform evolves, as your team turns over, and as your hiring needs change. When evaluating HR technology vendors, ask specifically:

• What does the implementation and onboarding process look like?

• What ongoing training resources are available, and are they self-service only or supported by real humans?

• Is there a dedicated customer success or account management team?

• What does support response time look like when something breaks?

The answers matter as much as the product features. 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

Implementing an HR technology solution isn't a finish line. It's a starting point. The only way to know whether a tool is delivering value is to measure it, and measuring it requires agreeing in advance on what success looks like.

Define your key performance indicators before you launch any new HR technology. 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 as measured by performance ratings and retention at 90 days and one year

• Hiring manager satisfaction with the candidates and process they receive

People analytics has become the second most sought-after HR technology feature, cited by 65% of HR professionals just behind succession management at 68%, according to HR.com's 2025 research. Yet most organizations are still measuring efficiency and cost rather than the outcome metrics, such as quality of hire, retention, and hiring manager satisfaction, that actually reflect whether technology is working.

ACTIVATE Analytics was built specifically for this challenge, consolidating performance data from across your recruitment marketing channels into a single, standardized view so your team can monitor what's working, identify what isn't, and make adjustments in real time rather than after the fact.

7. Balance Automation With Human Connection

The most important thing to remember when evaluating HR technology solutions in 2026: HR is the business of people. The goal of automation is to free your team to do more of what humans do best, build relationships, exercise judgment, and create candidate and employee experiences that drive retention.

AI and automation in HR are accelerating rapidly. In 2026, agentic AI systems are beginning to handle multi-step recruiting workflows autonomously, sourcing candidates, screening applications, and scheduling interviews. The organizations seeing the highest ROI aren't the ones automating the most. They're the ones automating the right things, while preserving human judgment where it matters most.

Research consistently shows this balance matters to candidates. According to a Q1 2025 Gartner survey of 2,918 job candidates, 25% of candidates say they trust companies less when AI is involved in hiring decisions, and only 26% trust AI to evaluate them fairly. Your HR technology strategy should automate high-volume, low-judgment tasks such as job distribution, application routing, and performance reporting, while keeping humans central to relationship-building, offer conversations, and hiring decisions.

Key Takeaways

Evaluating HR technology solutions thoughtfully is more important now than it's ever been, because the cost of getting it wrong is higher than it's ever been. Here's the short version of what to prioritize:

• Define specific needs first. Evaluate technology against real gaps, not market hype.

• Calculate full TCO. Include integration, training, support, and operational overhead, not just licensing.

• Make integration the first filter. If a tool can't connect cleanly to your existing stack, its feature list doesn't matter.

• Involve IT and legal early. Data security and privacy compliance aren't implementation afterthoughts.

• Choose partners, not just platforms. The quality of support and expertise behind the technology is as important as the technology itself.

• Measure outcomes, not just activity. Build dashboards that track quality of hire and retention alongside cost and time metrics.

• Preserve human connection. Let technology handle the volume; let your team handle the relationships.

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. Our 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 is always working from a single source of truth.

For HR and TA teams navigating a complex technology landscape, we serve as the connective layer, bridging your existing systems, surfacing the data you need to make decisions, and backing the technology with a team of recruitment marketing specialists who understand 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.