Part 1: The Research Behind the HigherEd Platform’s ROI

How a third-party research organization measured and verified the HigherEd Platform’s return on investment

Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of talent management technology is a complex endeavor, requiring a monetary value to be assigned to each task that’s minimized or eliminated when dozens of manual processes are completely or partially automated.

But how do you know how much an institution can save by switching to electronic I-9 forms, eliminating searches for file folders, shrinking time commitments for search committee members, and more?
You go to the experts.

Third-party research organization Hobson & Company recently calculated the ROI of the HigherEd Platform and made astonishing claims—including that the talent management solution for higher education delivers a full ROI in just one month.

That conclusion was drawn from conversations with customers and complex calculations of the savings made possible through process improvements, using a proven research process developed over 15 years, said Erika Blacutt, Partner at Hobson & Company.
“The study breaks down into three main phases,” she said. “The internal research phase, the external research phase, and the build phase.”

Each phase allowed Hobson & Company to better understand and verify the HigherEd Platform’s benefits and value.

The assessment began when Erika spoke with PeopleAdmin employees to “get an understanding of what they think the value proposition is.” Using this information, Erika and her team created a customer interview guide. “That’s what we used for the second phase of the research,” she explained.

The external research phase included interviews with more than 20 PeopleAdmin customers.
“Each of those conversations was an hour long, and we went into detail on the different benefits to really get a good understanding of what their experience has been,” Erika said. “The external research is actually what matters most because it’s the basis of our final phase.”

In the build phase, Hobson & Company used the information they gathered to create a tool prospective PeopleAdmin customers can use to see an accurate estimate of their specific institution’s potential ROI. They also wrote a whitepaper review detailing the return an average institution can expect.
“For each benefit that lives on in the analysis, we include customer-validated research data points, as well as testimonials that help support why that benefit was included,” Erika said. “The most important part is that we gauge everything against that external research.”

To confirm their findings, Erika and her team invited PeopleAdmin customers to conduct a final review of the findings.
“I got customers to agree to another conversation, and we walked through the analysis together,” Erika said. “I asked them: ‘How does this analysis feel to you?’ ‘Is there anything that doesn’t feel reasonable?’”
That validation from PeopleAdmin customers, she said, is why Hobson & Company is confident in their analysis of the HigherEd Platform’s ROI.

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