The Total Economic Impact™ Of A Strategic Partnership With UKG

Improvements To Employee Productivity

Evidence and data. Despite adopting the latest UKG products and services, interviewees explained that organizational specifics often limited the potential for or impact of process improvements across HR, payroll, or workforce management workflows. However, by consistently engaging with the UKG Community, adopting learned best practices, taking advantage of the increasing consistency and responsiveness of UKG support, and leveraging their partnerships with UKG account and customer success management teams, interviewees explained that employees in HR and all users engaging with UKG products were in the best position to maximize the value of these investments. This positioning yielded productivity savings via process improvements and self-service options.

• The interviewee at the financial services organization explained how leveraging the UKG Community allowed their organization to adopt best practices and improve the value of their UKG environment over time, citing an example where they facilitated an improved employee onboarding experience between the UKG environment and their identity and access management solution. These improvements saved IT time and limited end-user disruption during the onboarding process for all future hires. While this personally saved the interviewee about three days of work, they noted that these instances of time savings related to a responsive and helpful UKG Community were extremely frequent.

• Despite a personal “natural bias against AI,” the interviewee at the entertainment organization noted that UKG’s AI agent provided value through unexpected and helpful answers and/or solutions for specific challenges, contributing additional value to the UKG relationship.

• The interviewee at the chemicals organization echoed the sentiments of their peers about using the UKG Community to maximize the value of their UKG investments. The interviewee summarized: “One of the most beautiful things about the UKG Community is that you can connect to anyone across the world, with nearly 274,000 users in the community. And we’re not competing with one another. We are collaborating with one another. It is truly one of the most beautiful things that UKG has grown because we gain so much knowledge and support from one another. Nowadays, I can get helpful responses much faster than it would take to open a ticket or to figure out ourselves.”

• Having managed some of their organization’s UKG implementations, the interviewee at the chemicals organization also explained the strong implementation partnership UKG provides, ensuring maximum internal efficiency while instilling confidence in the teams to meet or exceed target go-live dates.

• As a UKG managed payroll customer, the communications organization’s payroll staff formerly responsible for manual tasks to ensure compliance across 26 different states and worker statuses now work side by side with the UKG team. This partnership reduces the payroll team’s burden and allows them to focus on more strategic initiatives within the HR function. The interviewee also noted that challenges finding and keeping employees staffed in these roles was now a problem of the past with managed payroll support from UKG.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester makes the following assumptions:

• Three HRIS analysts are responsible for the organization’s UKG environment.

• Using self-service, community best practices, and support engagement, each HRIS analyst saves approximately 40% effort on tasks related to the UKG environment.

• The average fully burdened annual salary for an HRIS analyst is $117,000.

• Alongside UKG’s managed payroll services, two payroll analysts support the composite organization’s 1,500 employees globally.

• The average fully burdened annual salary a payroll analyst is $97,500.

• Each payroll analyst saves approximately 20% effort on payroll-related activities.

• Two-thirds of the composite organization’s employee base (1,000 employees) are responsible for submitting time and attendance on a frequent basis.

• Best practices operationalized on the UKG Community and using UKG support enable each user to save approximately 30% on monthly time and attendance, yielding average monthly savings of 36 minutes per user.

• The average fully burdened hourly rate for a general user is $42.

• Forrester assumes a 75% productivity recapture for HRIS analysts and payroll analysts, and a 50% productivity recapture for general users, as it cannot be assumed that all time reclaimed will be repurposed to value-adding activities.

Risks. This benefit will vary among organizations based on:

• The number and scope of responsibilities of an organization’s HRIS analysts, payroll analyst, and general users.

• The sophistication of an organization’s UKG environment relative to the potential for savings by operationalizing best practices from the UKG Community or UKG support.

• Organizational context that may facilitate or inhibit making these process improvements.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $640,000.

Improvements To Workforce Management

Evidence and data. Interviewees spoke about their ability to deliver additional value to their organizations by operationalizing learned best practices from their peers in the UKG Community with support from the UKG team. Across the interviewees’ organizations, examples of these efficiencies varied: Some gained the ability to more efficiently onboard users to the UKG environment, while others learned how their peers leveraged learned insights about their user base to discover patterns that they could use to drive cost savings or anticipate support challenges. Interviewees also cited UKG’s Bryte AI as a value add used the digital assistant to uncover additional insights across their UKG environments.

• The interviewee at the chemicals organization noted that their UKG environment, best practices learned via the UKG Community, and support to operationalize these best practices enabled a more nuanced, single pane of glass view into their employee base. This allowed the team to see where, when, and — most importantly — why overtime hours were being paid out, allowing teams to potentially save on these costs. The interviewee summarized: “We’ve definitely gained some efficiencies [through a better view into the user base]. We can see if there’s an uptick in overtime hours paid and why. Is that due to the fact that we’ve lost some employees in that particular department and so others are working longer hours? Has production been ramped up? We can now see into things like that.”

• The director of HR strategic services at the healthcare organization explained that involvement with UKG across the HR function enabled their organization to implement best practices that reduced user friction while delivering business insights. The interviewee summarized: “UKG continually helps us figure out how to optimize our systems so that employees aren’t impacted. We have processes in place that are easy for them to use, and they can get things done even if they’re here at three in the morning and there’s not somebody around to help them. In the same sense, we want to ensure that our leaders are getting access to the reporting that they need to be successful. So through our strong relationships with UKG and the really strong user community, we get all of those things accomplished so we can best strategically support the whole organization.” The interviewee concluded that the biggest value they received as an organization with UKG’s support and the UKG Community was the ability to implement and fine-tune reporting that allowed their staff to operate more effectively. The director shared an example of how they could now match patient electronic health records to provider schedules, ensuring a smooth operation and better patient experience.

• Involvement in the UKG Community insiders program allowed the director of HR strategic services at the healthcare organization to scale the value of this community beyond their own team. As an example, they noted roundtable participation from their talent acquisition team with the goal to improve their internal UKG functionality and influence the direction of future UKG product iterations. The opportunities for feedback provided by UKG were noted as particularly valuable for these reasons.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester makes the following assumptions:

• The composite leverages a granular view into its user base, allowing it to recognize patterns and set schedules to avoid inadvertent overtime hours more consistently.

• There are 12 sub-departments within the organization with an average of 125 employees per department.

• Twenty percent of these departments experience instances of short staffing annually, paying inadvertent overtime hours to employees once per month, on average.

• For each instance of short staffing, 5% of a department’s employees are required to work overtime shifts, resulting in 1,440 avoidable overtime hours annually for the composite.

• Each overtime hour costs the composite $63.

• Thirty percent of these overtime hours are avoidable based on setting schedules using a better view of the employee base through UKG Community-delivered best practices.

Risks. This benefit will vary among organizations based on:

• An organization’s industry and business model relative to overtime hours paid annually.

• The sophistication of an organization’s UKG environment relative to the potential for improving the view into its employee base.

• Organizational context that may facilitate or inhibit making these process improvements.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $61,000.

Reduced Support Ticket Volume And Faster Resolution

Evidence and data. Interviewees described an increasingly proactive support experience and partnership from UKG, alongside adopted best practices and self-service opportunities, which resulted in fewer submitted support tickets related to their UKG HCM environments. Support tickets that were created were frequently resolved faster with clear takeaways to avoid such tickets in the future. This efficiency removed the additional burden from HRIS analysts, IT resources, and users in navigating the support environment, saving time and avoiding business disruptions. Some interviewees also noted the value of UKG’s generative AI virtual agents in increasing the responsiveness and effectiveness of the support environment.

• The proactivity of the UKG support team in anticipating client challenges was noted by interviewees. The senior HRIS and benefits analyst at the entertainment organization explained that UKG support frequently reached out with potential solutions or improvements to challenges that their organization previously faced, along with invitations to focus groups or product betas that could improve these outcomes. Escalations were incredibly rare, as the interviewee noted that they had not escalated any UKG-related issues in more than a year. For tickets that were submitted, the interviewee estimated that most were closed within 24 hours and observed continuous improvement on the part of the UKG support team over the years.

• The interviewee at the healthcare organization explained that on the increasingly uncommon occasion that they needed to submit a support ticket related to the UKG environment, it didn’t require technical knowledge to navigate to a successful outcome. The interviewee explained: “You don’t need to be a coding person or particularly technical to be able to figure out how to get it to do what you’re looking to do in the [UKG] products. If I want to make some changes to the performance module, it walks you through that in a really intuitive way and you can customize things really well. A lot of that is due to the fact that UKG has a really good educational community and great customer community that they’ve connected really well. That said, nine times out of 10, if we need something, we know we can just log in and go to the UKG Community and find what we’re looking for without submitting a ticket.”

• As a current UKG customer, the VP of IT business services at the sports organization described leveraging UKG’s internal support resources to successfully implement UKG Pro WFM on an extremely aggressive timeline before their organization’s busy season. When issues arose, they were resolved rapidly. The interviewee elaborated: “It feels like we have a direct line to support and development, and then we also have our customer success manager. Even when issues arise, they’re getting resolved faster. … With UKG, senior management feels more vested in our success. It feels personal as opposed to other vendors where we feel like just another customer.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester makes the following assumptions:

• Across the composite organization, an average of 150 support tickets are submitted per month, which are related in some way to the UKG HCM environment.

• The average cost to resolve one support ticket is $50.

• Through self-service best practices learned through the UKG Community, support from the UKG team, and proactive problem avoidance, 50% of these support tickets are avoidable.

• The remaining support tickets are resolved 60% faster than before on average, saving on support costs while reducing business disruption for users.

Risks. This benefit will vary among organizations based on:

• The baseline number of support tickets submitted in an organization’s UKG environment.

• The sophistication of an organization’s UKG environment relative to the potential for improvements via self-service or best practice adoption via UKG support and the UKG Community.

• An organization’s industry, business model, and business context relative to the nature of a support ticket and the average cost to resolve each ticket.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $161,000.

Avoided Additional Support And Consulting Costs

Evidence and data. Some interviewees explained that the increasing level of support from the UKG team, the helpfulness of the UKG Community, and the overall proactive partnership with UKG allowed their organizations to avoid previously necessary spending with external support partners for their HCM environments.

The interviewee at the financial services organization noted how operationalizing best practices from the UKG Community directly translated into avoiding external consulting costs, explaining: “We don’t have any problems copying and pasting the solutions to our questions that other UKG clients have done and applying them to our environment. In some cases, these other clients have been using these solutions for years and they’re working for them. We can make them work for us and then we don’t need to spend nearly $5,000 per challenge on [external] consulting fees. It’s 100% of the money back to our organization.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester makes the following assumptions:

• The composite organization pays external support costs totaling an average of $60,000 annually for HCM-related support.

• It avoids 60% to 80% of these support costs annually based on the increasing level of support and value received from the UKG team and the UKG Community.

Risks. This benefit will vary among organizations based on:

• The complexity of an organization’s UKG HCM environment relative to external spend.

• The cadence and degree to which these costs can be avoided (e.g., complexity of environment, contractual stipulations).

• The skill and capacity of internal staff to provide the level of support required by their organization alongside UKG support.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $88,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Comprehensive support from the UKG team. Every interviewee highlighted the helpfulness, proactivity, and value that the UKG customer success managers, account managers, support staff, and implementation staff provided.

  • The interviewee at the entertainment organization explained how their account manager consistently helped them evaluate usage trends across specific modules to ensure maximum value from the UKG environment, sometimes swapping out modules to ensure ongoing value and ensuring that pricing made sense. The same interviewee noted that their customer success manager frequently engaged to ensure and facilitate a smooth experience.
  • Before beginning to work with UKG’s managed payroll services, the interviewee at the communications organization described a very deliberate effort by UKG to understand the most they could about the organization. The interviewee summarized: “Right before we started diving deep into the implementation process, UKG brought in a partner to interview us to gain a better understanding of our workflows, our processes, and how they are documented. As we got closer to implementation, at seemingly every meeting with them, they gave us more and more insight on how to utilize the services and our products to maximize the value we were getting.”

• Reduction in HCM-related errors. By delivering consistent support, proactively preventing issues that would result in support tickets, and providing access to best practices and a knowledge base via the UKG Community, interviewees said UKG put them in the best position to avoid errors related to their HCM environment, saving additional costs or avoiding the associated risks. The interviewee at the chemicals organization noted that best practices implemented across the UKG environment resulted in less manual work, fewer errors, better compliance, and less risk overall.

• Proactivity and transparency from UKG. Beyond the value of proactivity in support as described above, interviewees also highlighted the value of UKG’s proactivity and transparency in keeping them informed on all new developments related to their UKG environment. The interviewee at the chemicals organization noted that the UKG Trust Center and related status pages were most helpful in keeping them aware of service developments with respect to their environment, in addition to the proactive communication from UKG.

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement UKG Community and UKG support and self-service tools and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Downstream benefits of the UKG Community. Several interviewees expressed optimism about the future value of the community fostered by UKG, which would allow their organizations to be aware of the latest best practices and pathways to value for their UKG environments via their peers.

• Continuous product innovations. Several interviewees cited the consistent evolution of UKG’s products as a significant value driver. The interviewee at the healthcare organization noted that the updates they receive in the UKG environment might be updates they would have paid for with past vendors. The interviewee summarized: “UKG never gets stagnant. They’re consistently looking to innovate and evolve to meet customer needs. They’re a valuable partner since they’re always trying to stay ahead of the game.”

• Additional value from UKG’s AI tools. Some interviewees expressed optimism regarding the additional potential value of UKG’s AI agents, notably UKG Bryte AI. The interviewee at the financial services firm said they believed that continued development and integration between UKG Bryte AI and other AI tools would multiply the value across their organization. The interviewee at the chemicals organization summarized: “AI seems to be something that is going to continue to become more present and available in the UKG experience, [such as in] the evolution of the AI chat assistant that already exists. The AI assistant is also providing suggestions when we’re searching on different topics, which gets us the data faster by assuming what it thinks our needs are, which is helpful. In some cases, it is helping by getting us to consider some things that might be adjacent to what we’re asking.”

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).