Which is the most dangerous attribute if you’re buying software or services: fear of the unknown, or blind faith in third party advisers?

I ask because I’ve recently witnessed both among organisations in the HR and payroll purchasing cycle, and I can’t help wondering exactly what percentage of software is bought by people who missed the foundation class on dealing with vendors.

Last week I was talking to a contact who was helping a colleague with an HR procurement project. Her company had already hired a well-known consultancy to manage the selection process, which it appeared to kick off via the time-honoured technique of typing a few keywords into Google or flipping through the back of magazines. This is not an unreasonable approach for a prospective purchaser – you have to start somewhere – but you do rather assume that a consulting company would come armed with some prior knowledge of the HR IT market. This is the only explanation I can come up with for why it completely overlooked one of the market-leading (and eminently qualified) vendors – and why, up against a tight deadline, the HR department had to make do with a flawed shortlist.

The tale reminded me of the time when I sat in front of a very knowledgeable French HR manager who was looking for help replacing his existing system. In the course of our discussions he revealed exactly what quality of service he was getting from his incumbent supplier; I can’t recall exactly where he ranked it on a scale of one to 10, but it equated to somewhere between mind-numbingly pitiful and bloody awful. As far as I can recall, among the supplier’s many failings was a blunt refusal to liaise with the client’s IT department over an integration problem, and a bizarre reluctance to help it migrate to its newest software platform – each of those reasons, you’d think, grounds for ripping up the contract. Naturally enough, we proposed to help him go through a business-needs assessment and start looking at his options.

Several weeks later, however, he came back to say his supplier had now agreed to oversee a migration to its new software. Despite having huge reservations about the quality of service he was getting, his view was that it’s better the devil you know, and so he signed for the upgrade. The fact that this particular devil would leave him burning in the fires of customer service hell with a metaphorical pitchfork in his figurative nether regions clearly wasn’t enough for him to pluck up the courage and see whether anyone else could do a better job.

Now I’m not for a moment underestimating how challenging it can be to select software and services. Organisations invest in new platforms so infrequently that many HR and payroll managers find themselves running selection projects without any prior experience, or with hazy memories of being involved in a project five years earlier. Vendors don’t tend to be forthcoming about weaknesses in their systems (a subject to which I’ll return to in the future). Many try to sell technology rather than the business fix you need, and it’s easy to get swamped by jargon. Worse, you don’t always know what you don’t know, so it’s hard to ask the right penetrating questions.

But there are ways of avoiding some of the problems. Even if you don’t have a strong and supportive procurement or IT department, it’s worth finding out if anyone else inside your organisation can help plug some of the gaps in your own knowledge and experience. If you need to bring in outside help, make sure they have the right expertise – there are good advisers out there, but there are quite a few that are not so good. Make sure you assess all the viable vendor options rather than opting for the easiest short-term choice, because spending a few extra days upfront could save years of grief down the line. And above all, don’t be scared to push back against the people trying to sell to you – or, just as important, against the people you’re paying to help you buy.