The Secrets Hiding in Your Tech Stack
We all recognise that your recruitment tech stack can quickly become one of your biggest expenses – besides your staff.
But with all the latest shiny new AI tools being released and deployed on a weekly basis, how distracted do you get?
Before falling head over heels for a sales pitch and signing up for yet another recruitment tool, run a quick check to see if you’re already paying for something similar.
Everything from your CRM and telephony platform to your Microsoft subscriptions may already contain features your team has never switched on – or even noticed. Meanwhile, separate subscriptions keep renewing automatically every year, draining your funds more quickly as you scale and increase the number of seats.
A quick review of your tech stack can uncover all sorts of secrets.
Subscriptions quickly snowball
Say you have an agency of 25 recruiters, each paying £15/month for a scheduling tool. Across the year, that costs a flat £4,500. That’s already a huge outgoing.
But could you be paying for this tool without needing to?
First, take a look at your Microsoft Licence. The Business Standard package features appointment scheduling through its Bookings app. If you already have it, could you be paying twice to do the same job?
Of course, this specialist tool might offer something particularly useful for your agency, like a particular integration or a workflow, so we’re not saying you should immediately cancel your subscription.
Find out how your team is using the booking tool first. If recruiters are only getting candidates to choose an available appointment, that’s a different conversation. You could remove that £4,500 in one hit.
With bigger agencies, the cost of unused seats can also go unnoticed.
Just 8 spare licences at £25/month add up to £2,400 annually. These could belong to former employees, unused trial accounts or people whose roles have changed.
These are the sorts of costs that get uncovered during an audit. So what else is hiding in your tech stack?
What can your tech already do?
If you’re considering a new tool already, chances are you want to improve a certain task. This is the part you need to be looking at.
If recruiters spend too long updating candidate records after calls, establish what your current telephony platform captures, whether it connects to the CRM and whether that connection is configured properly.
An additional transcription tool may well produce useful notes, but if someone still copies them into your CRM, how much work has actually been removed?
Bullhorn’s guidance on integrating AI into recruitment workflows highlights telephony integrations that capture information directly into CRM fields. It also warns that automations built separately can overlap or interfere with one another.
Before adding another tool, follow what happens after the call. Where does the information go, and who’s still having to move it?
If a specialist product improves data capture or removes a huge chunk of admin, you can easily justify its cost.
Review your Microsoft licences
This is a topic that comes up time and time again, but it’s so important. Microsoft’s packages change, your team changes, but is anyone checking whether your licences still fit, or are they just rolling over into another year?
After all, the way you work has never been a problem before, so surely everything is fine to just tick over?
This is an attitude we see too often. It’s all too easy to fall into this habit, but we want to change that.
Every Microsoft licence should be reviewed against what recruiters actually need and what they use. A lot of these packages can contain pricey elements that never see the light of day.
Alongside the usual 365 software, packages can include scheduling, task management and shared document tools. Depending on your subscription, these existing apps may overlap with software you’ve purchased separately – maybe simply because it’s got that recruitment label on it.
AI is a perfect example. Microsoft Copilot Chat is available at no additional cost to eligible Microsoft 365 users. But wider capabilities depend on particular licensing and configurations. Basically, take “Copilot is included” with a pinch of salt. You most likely won’t get every Copilot feature included.
And if you’re paying for three AI tools to rewrite the same emails, it’s probably time to ask a few questions. A specialist recruitment tool might still be worth every penny. But what does it specifically do that the software you already own can’t?
Of course, don’t start cancelling subscriptions just because the numbers look good. Check what goes with them. Losing a security feature or breaking a CRM integration could make that saving rather expensive.
Audit your tech stack before you add to it
At TWC, we look at what you’re paying for, what your team actually uses and where the two don’t match.
Before approving your next subscription, speak to TWC about reviewing the technology you already have. There may be more value available in your current stack than another sales demonstration suggests, no matter how shiny that new AI tool might seem.
