Authored by Bridgette Hall, Senior Editor, Criticaleye

As the HR function evolves, technology investment decisions have become a marker of ambition and maturity, not just efficiency. But talk to CPOs at the sharp end of these decisions and a more complicated picture emerges around understanding what’s really going to drive performance. 

 

Silvia Schwark, CHRO at international manufacturing group, Senior Plc, comments that a strong consideration point for discussions about AI must be the quality of data: "The danger that I see right now – and we need to prepare for – is that we put an agent over a systems environment that is disjointed. As a result, the agent doesn't know what it answers and provides wrong data to people.  

 

"Having an organised HRIS [Human Resources Information System] still is something that I find important as precursor to implementing self-service, and AI agents... data definitions need to be transparent." 

 

There is also a question of timing when investing in new systems and technology. Shaun Laubscher joined as CPO of Essentra, a manufacturing business, earlier in the year. He says that soon after starting the role he made the decision not to invest in tech for the next 12 months at least. “We have HR data and it works… Our share price has moved this year, and in my view, the main reason it's moved... is that we've given a commitment to the market of margin improvement by 2028," he explains. 

 

Shaun notes that Essentra has rolled out Microsoft Copilot licenses, combined with structured AI training. It is also experimenting with the UK AI company, Synthesia, to build AI-generated learning content in place of some live delivery. It’s a start but in terms of anything on a larger scale, Shaun comments: "I don't have the experience or the capability, at this point, to come up with a HR, AI type of strategy that I and the organisation’s leadership will be confident on."  

 

John Stewart, Director of HR at energy company SSE Plc, says that the case to the Board must be commercial. “At the end of the day, there are three things: it’s either driving productivity; it’s making things more efficient; or it’s significantly improving the customer experience,” he explains.   

 

Softer benefits rarely win funding: “Just saying it looks nicer; it feels nicer; people will be happier – it probably isn’t commercial enough, if I’m honest.” 

 

 

Return on Investment  

 

At Senior Plc, Silvia invested in a talent acquisition platform last year and she is now focusing on an employee engagement platform. "In the old words, we would call it 'intranet',” she says. “The reason was because we didn't have a means to reach people in all parts of the organisation. So, this is our collaboration and communication platform... and the next step is to develop an HRIS environment as precursor to employee and line manager self-service through agents." 

 

Asked which platforms she had gone with, she says: "We went with SmartRecruiters, and currently we're working with Interact on the engagement platform and we’re talking to HiBob... I chose smaller challenger brands because they have a continuous improvement angle to them on modern tech platforms. We all know tech is developing very rapidly all the time." 

 

John has invested in data capability at SSE. “Over the last few years, we put in quite a bit of investment into a data function. The way we brought in data scientists to really understand what the data is telling us about what’s going on in the organisation, things like predictive trends, it’s allowing us to spot issues.”  

 

Oracle remains the backbone of his HR technology, but not out of habit. “It wasn’t like I want the same car again. We genuinely went with a view of: ‘Let’s look at what’s in the market,’” he says. The distribution business [SSEN Distribution], he explains, also wants to “really go quite hard around workforce scheduling and workforce planning… [and] the best-looking tools out there for our specific needs are currently Oracle tools”.  

 

 

‘Art of the Possible’ 

 

The investment in technology at Senior Plc has delivered, says Silvia. "I have people whose time to hire reduced by months, which is fantastic, and I have businesses where we don't use agencies anymore and can [go] ‘in-house’."  

 

Jane Pateman, RemCo Chair and Non-executive Director at professional services firm Knights, recalls that back in her executive career, when she was CPO of waste management company, Biffa, her team explored using Workday before going for Dayforce, alongside Cornerstone, for performance, learning and talent. "We did introduce a training management system... that had huge benefits. We did make savings actually in HR because we didn't need all the admin people that we'd had before."  

 

The fact is many organisations are on a transformation journey when it comes to technology. John comments: “We’re right in the middle of a bit of a technology upgrade, which is halfway in flight… We’ve gone really big on trying to… drive a performance culture in the organisation. I need a module that lets me see end-to-end the quality of performance discussions.”  

 

Shaun does have an eye on where improvements could be made in the future through investment in new platforms. "If resources were unlimited, I probably would look at something like Workday because I think it's something that could also be used as a cultural lever and driver of things like manager self-service,” he says.  

 

“Where I would really focus on and spend money on is on talent management – attraction, identification, development, [and] mobility. To really just bring in and wake up the organisation... get a little bit more vitality and kind of movement and challenge into the system." 

 

Jane reflects of her time as a senior leader in HR: "We had lots of different systems that didn't really talk to each other, so I suppose the nirvana is that they would all talk to each other, and it'd be simple to implement, and you could do it in a few weeks. 

 

“Maybe it needs some real HR people to get into bed with some tech kids and see what the art of the possible is with the technology that's available today... because it can't be that difficult."  

 

Technology is ultimately an enabler of ambition. Where tech investment goes wrong is when it’s chased for its own sake. The trick for CPOs is to know when to build the case for investments that will ultimately make an organisation go faster.  


The themes examined in this article will be central to discussions at the Criticaleye CPO Retreat 2027. If you'd like to be part of the conversation, get in touch to explore opportunities to attend or become a partner.