Strategy:
Looking Beyond Implementation:
A Prescriptive Plan for ATS Adoption and Long-Term Success
 hen it comes to implementing an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), careful planning and cooperation is essential. That’s why smart HR Leaders and project teams devote significant amounts of time and effort to ensure successful implementation. Unfortunately, a successful implementation is only a means to an end.
Whether it’s reducing cycle time, increasing quality of hire or any of a host of business needs, the value of an ATS system is directly related to its ability to deliver on key objectives. This value is realized over the months and years following implementation, and even the most sophisticated, carefully deployed technology will not deliver that value automatically.
So where can you go wrong? How do you look beyond implementation to identify the pitfalls and understand the needs that will be critical to the value of your ATS system over time? A good place to start is to look at how plans go awry, understand the needs that drive success, and then identify the steps you can take to avoid the hazards and address those needs.
Where Can an ATS Implementation Fall Short?
Typically, ATS challenges are born in the planning stage. While companies often devote significant effort to implementation, they fall short when it comes to planning for sustaining an application. The lack of long-term planning may manifest itself in several different ways, including:
- Inability to maintain operations and reporting—Often the team that manages the implementation is disbanded soon after the launch. Without an effective transfer of knowledge to the staff charged with maintenance and reporting, the ability to effectively manage the system is compromised. Too often, the individuals responsible for providing system support are also asked to produce reports and function in a role for which they are not adequately trained.
- Inadequate candidate and hiring manager support—While much of the planning for an ATS implementation may be done with the recruiter in mind, hiring managers and candidates are key end-users, each with a unique set of needs. Frequently, companies find that they do not have the processes, support skills or level of support resources in place to address candidate and hiring manager needs. These users may then turn to recruiters for answers, thus distracting the recruiters from their primary focus—or these users not get the support they need at all. Overall, support issues contribute greatly to the next general shortfall: user dissatisfaction.
- User dissatisfaction—Whether it's recruiters, hiring managers, candidates or anyone else involved in the talent acquisition process, users may get frustrated by the inability to obtain timely and effective support on the new system. This undermines their effectiveness and productivity, and may drive them away from using the system.
- Management concerns—When a system is not performing due to inadequate support, management will most likely grow frustrated by two issues: the lack of system adoption and a large amount of effort required to produce ad-hoc operational and management reports.
- Reduced adoption—A lack of appropriate system support and reporting difficulties will eventually hamper user adoption. Users may create alternate “shadow systems” for facilitating key processes as well as alternate methods of tracking data. This eventually results in a system that is underutilized and incapable of providing meaningful ROI.
Understanding Needs During Implementation
The good news is that the potential hazards that arise following ATS implementation can be mitigated by addressing several needs early in the process. These concerns are generally related to identifying the types of skills required for system upkeep over time. They include:
- Thorough planning—Early on in the process, the implementation team must begin to formulate a plan for all aspects of operation, including system support and training, system administration, reporting, and the progressive use of features and functions. Covering all the bases is essential, because the overlooked details will usually find a way to cause headaches down the road.
- The right support skills—A critical element of planning is to identify the skills and knowledge needed to support the aforementioned plan. Are those skills available? If not, how will you bridge the anticipated gap? Do you have the amount of resources available to deliver the level of support needed? As mentioned earlier, adequate support of all users, including hiring managers and candidates as well as recruiters and HR leaders, is essential. Often, companies actually do have an HR call center in place, but the resources in that call center may not be suited to supporting the candidate or hiring manager. This underscores the importance of a detailed assessment of support needs as it relates to all users of the system.
- Consideration of outsourcing options—Concerns about the support skills and resource levels often leads companies to consider outsourcing system support. Outsourcing support may not make sense for every company, but it can prove very effective for those who want to "lease" the skills required for success.
- The right reporting tool skills—Despite an industry-wide attempt to simplify report writing and the tools incorporated into most best-in-class ATS systems, a requisite level of knowledge is required with a tool such as Business Objects, Cognos, Web Focus or similar report writing utility. It can’t be assumed that the same person who handles system administration should also be called upon to handle reporting.
- Education and communication—The steady-state plan should be fully defined and communicated to end-users during system training and continuously throughout the launch period. Education and communication are crucial for continued user acceptance.
Driving Long-term Acceptance and Adoption
Once the ATS system is up and running, there are several things you can do to address ongoing needs, ensure acceptance of the system and derive maximum business benefit from the ATS. Vital needs and related activities include:
- Re-training—Conduct frequent user surveys to validate the need for continued training. It is not uncommon to re-train certain features to ensure proper use. “Lunch and Learn” sessions are particularly effective when re-training for a single feature or function such as advanced candidate searching.
- New additional training—In addition to re-training, new areas of training need will arise over time. At the end of each quarter, analyze the support requests that were received to determine areas for future training and maintain a dynamic list of FAQs based on the results of your analysis.
- Optimization—Conduct quarterly reviews with your staffing and business leaders to determine opportunities for optimizing use of the application. For example, hiring managers with high-volume recruitment needs may want to work with their recruiters to leverage use of prescreening functionality.
- Validate reporting and decision support—In addition to quarterly reviews on operational issues, it is also wise to engage decision-makers in a review of reporting functionality. The goal of this effort is to ensure they have access to recruitment information that is important to them and their ability to make informed decisions. For example, an organization may decide to develop a custom report that analyzes source effectiveness by job type and level. Access to this information will influence how budget dollars are allocated, ensuring the greatest ROI.
- Stay ahead of issues and upgrades—Finally, the ATS vendor plays a key role in continued system success. Conduct quarterly calls with the ATS vendor to ensure maximized value from the system. This will help you gain a better understanding of system best practices, identify known issues that generate internal support calls, and stay on top of new features and functions coming up in future releases.
The Rewards of a Well-Maintained ATS: Steady Value Over Time
The implementation of a new ATS requires discipline, effort and coordination as does the execution of your steady-state plan. As you explore the details of maintaining the system over time, the need to outsource system administration and reporting functions may become apparent.
The outsourced option is often a question of priority. Does your organization have the resources to meet the needs of the system? Do you have the ability to add skills to adapt to new functions or recognize and adapt the system to changing needs and objectives? The answer varies with each organization. In the case of GM (see our feature), outsourcing was a sensible choice that has yielded significant value over the past two years.
If you do decide to pursue the outsourced option, your vendor selection should be as careful as your steady-state planning. A vendor that has the resources or the capabilities to meet a particular need may be valuable today, but it is extremely important that the vendor has the vision to identify changing needs and the ability to address them in the future.
Whether or not you choose the outsourcing route, careful planning is critical to the overall value and success of your ATS investment. With careful steady-state planning and focused execution of that plan, you will maximize your ROI, enjoy a healthy vendor relationship and have metrics and information readily available to proactively and aggressively manage the recruitment function.
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