In brief

• Staying close to HR and Payroll technology vendors enables LACE Partners to provide informed, forward-looking advice grounded in real product capability and market direction.
• Vendor events help bridge the gap between HR ambition and technical reality, reducing risk and improving transformation outcomes for clients.
• Our 2026 focus is on value realisation, moving beyond implementation to optimise workforce value, data foundations, AI adoption and continuous improvement.

As LACE Partners, we pride ourselves on driving business transformation from the client side while actively building strong relationships across the market with technology vendors and system implementation (SI) partners. A core part of maintaining these relationships is for our team to attend regular technology vendor events to stay closely aligned on product enhancements, partner ecosystem developments, and emerging market trends.

Our Partner ecosystem matters more now than ever, especially with the acceleration of AI, experience design and cross-functional digital transformation. By staying connected we have ensured our advisory remains informed, relevant and forward-looking, which enables us to guide our clients in making better decisions, help them avoid costly mistakes and unlock the full value of their HR and Payroll technology investments.

We have seven areas that our HR and Payroll advisory teams have focused on in 2025 by actively engaging in these events:

Insights into market trends

• Key observations: Vendor events showcase how platforms are differentiating themselves through advancements in AI, data architecture and experience layers.
• Our takeaway: Our advisory teams gain a clearer understanding of market directions, allowing us to advise clients on how best to position themselves for the next three to five years.

Staying ahead of the innovation curve

• Rapid evolution: HR technology ecosystems are evolving at an unprecedented pace, with platform updates, AI capabilities, and roadmap changes.
• Our approach: Attendance at vendor events ensures our advice remains current and credible, enabling us to guide clients using the latest insights.
• Technology exposure: Direct access to product demos and previews of future releases enables us to translate technology capabilities into meaningful HR outcomes.

Connecting HR strategy to real technical possibility

• Common pitfall: HR transformations often stumble due to misalignment between ambition, process design, and technology constraints.
• How we help our client to bridge the gap: Vendor events help our teams reconcile business objectives with technology realities, ensuring clients set achievable goals. This alignment helps our teams work with clients to avoid making decisions in isolation from technical feasibility and enable more informed decision making.

Strengthening strategic partnerships

• Relationship building: Our visibility at events creates trusted relationships across vendors and SI partners.
• Client advocacy: These partnerships then allow us to navigate escalations more swiftly, influence client prioritisation, and clarify roadmap commitments.
• Strategic alignment: Therefore we ensure our teams are closely aligned with understanding the vendors and SI direction and priorities.

Direct access to client success stories and lessons learnt

• Valuable insights: Real-world implementation stories, successes and failures influence our ability to guide clients effectively through their transformation journeys.
• Peer learning: Conversations with peers offer insight into adoption, roadmap readiness, change management challenges, and common pitfalls.
• What do we bring back: We bring back actionable learnings from practical experience, rather than purely theoretical perspectives.

Turning product knowledge into practical client value

• Real-time updates: Immediate awareness of platform changes helps us shape accurate business cases, implementation scopes, and key design decisions.
• Risk mitigation: An important one for us is understanding the product limitations and opportunities which enables us to minimise client risks, reduce future rework, and support clients with smarter investments.
• Driving adoption: We help our clients to translate vendor enhancements into practical use cases, adoption strategies, and operating model improvements.

Building confidence and credibility with clients

• Client expectations: Clients expect their HR and Payroll transformation advisory partners to be experts in both strategy and technology, therefore our active participation in vendor events helps us to demonstrate our depth of expertise.
• Trust and outcomes: Client trust is important to us, demonstrating this through our expertise facilitates quicker decision-making, and leads to higher-quality advisory outcomes.

Our 2026 focus areas with our clients

For LACE 2026 we will focus more on value realisation, because we know when the technology is largely in place; the differentiator is how effectively businesses can then integrate, govern, and utilise their technology landscapes to drive business outcomes.

1. From system optimisation to workforce value optimisation

We can see the focus is shifting from system optimisation to workforce value optimisation by redefining what “value” means, linking HR and Payroll data to business KPIs, and using workforce insights to inform strategic decisions such as market expansion, automation, and operating model design.

2. Moving beyond experimentation with AI

We are seeing that organisations are looking to move from AI curiosity to being AI-enabled across their HR and Payroll processes and technology to really start thinking about how AI is embedded into their manager and employee workflows.

3. Simplification as a strategic lever, not a cost exercise

We will be helping organisations to position simplification as a growth and agility enabler through reducing the number of process steps and handoffs while addressing over-customised HCM platforms, fragmented payroll landscapes, and local workarounds through standardisation that unlocks analytics, AI, and automation.

4. Product thinking and continuous value realisation

Our team are focused on guiding our clients through understanding that HR and Payroll are continuously evolving rather than finished programmes once the technology has been delivered. We like to say its day 1 from go live where there is a focus on continuous improvement, adoption, and experience metrics to build sustainable transformation rather than a one-off change initiative.

5. Data foundations to enable AI and scalable insight

We will be guiding our clients through the prioritisation of their data foundations across HR, Payroll, Finance, and Delivery to ensure they establish trusted, integrated, and well-governed data models that enable AI, advanced analytics, and real-time insight while reducing fragmentation and risk.

For us at LACE Partners, a collaborative four-way partnership between the customer, the SI, the vendor, and an independent advisor is essential not only for successful HRIS implementation but for ongoing optimisation and value realisation. This approach leverages each party’s unique strengths to deliver a comprehensive strategy that spans change management, technical delivery, vendor engagement, and continuous improvement, with an independent advisor like LACE Partners providing expert guidance to maximise sustainable value for the organisation over time.

Read more about this in our previous blog – The power of partnerships

We have previously developed a series of whitepapers that track the whole journey to the Cloud, making the most of the implementation and more, so if you are currently on that journey and would like to know how you can make the process as stress-free as possible, you can download any of the whitepapers below.

Less stress HRIS part one: The road to the Cloud

Less stress HRIS part two: Beyond basecamp

Less stress HRIS – Part three: Beyond launch – Unlocking the full value of your HRIS

Alternatively, talk to us about your challenge you’re looking to solve by filling in the form below.