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Business Advisory

HR and Payroll Renewal Delivered Securely, Decisively, and Efficiently
What to do when an application reaches end-of-life?What should you do when a critical application reaches end-of-life and internal resources are limited? Temporarily extend your team with a Netrics Advisor. The Compensation Office of the Canton of Solothurn (AKSO) has shown how it's done.
Benefits
  • netrics-icon-zentraler zugriff

    Immediate relief

  • netrics-icon-team

    Independent external perspective

  • netrics-icon-reputation

    Well-founded decision-making basis

  • netrics-icon-zufriedenheit

    Experienced project leadership

  • The Compensation Office of the Canton of Solothurn (AKSO) faced the replacement of its existing end-of-life HR and payroll solution. The only successor solution offered by the vendor was cloud-based and therefore not compliant with cantonal regulations. At the same time, internal resources were insufficient to execute this time-critical project.

  • With Netrics Advisory as an external and neutral partner, the customer gained immediate support and a solid foundation for decision-making. Our Netrics Business Advisor led the structured solution evaluation, guided the vendor selection process, and subsequently assumed customer-side project leadership—from decision-making through to successful project completion.

Challenge
Solution

An End-of-Life Application in Daily Operations

Continuing to operate the existing HR and payroll application was no longer viable because vendor support had been discontinued. The vendor's proposed successor solution relied entirely on cloud technology and was therefore incompatible with the applicable cantonal IT and data protection requirements.

At the same time, there was insufficient internal capacity to quickly conduct a structured market analysis, evaluate alternatives, and implement a replacement solution. Any further delay would have introduced significant operational risks to critical HR and payroll processes.

Against this backdrop, AKSO deliberately chose external, neutral support to remain operational while ensuring quality, compliance, and confidence in decision-making.

A Pragmatic Approach to Evaluation and Implementation

The Netrics Business Advisor immediately took over the mandate and structured it into two clearly defined phases:

The project began with an evaluation phase that included a pragmatic assessment of existing HR and payroll processes as well as potential future enhancements. Since no highly specialized business processes were identified, detailed specification work was unnecessary, allowing the team to avoid a lengthy analysis phase. Based on these requirements, a comprehensive market assessment of suitable solutions and providers was conducted, along with the creation of a neutral evaluation and decision framework. This was followed by structured guidance through the vendor selection process, including support through the final decision and contract signing.

Having gained an in-depth understanding of the requirements, the Netrics Business Advisor was also engaged for the implementation phase as the customer-side project manager. Working alongside a small project team and the selected implementation partner, the requirements were validated and refined during the design phase to establish clear and shared project objectives. Throughout the subsequent phases, the Netrics project manager coordinated and guided all internal and external stakeholders while ensuring quality, timelines, and budget adherence.

“Thanks to the support of Netrics Advisory, we were able to deliver a time-critical HR and payroll project professionally, in a structured manner, and with a high level of quality—without placing additional strain on our internal teams. The neutral perspective and broad project experience were particularly valuable.”

Tobias Soltermann, CIO, Compensation Office of the Canton of Solothurn

  • Why This Matters for Your Organization

  • The project was able to start quickly despite limited internal resources, significantly reducing the workload on both IT and business departments.

    The neutral external perspective, combined with the extensive experience of the Netrics Business Advisor, enabled a high degree of autonomy that fully met AKSO's expectations.

    I want that too!

Fazit

End-of-life application? Defuse it now.