As HR professionals we don't often view ourselves as strategic players in our organisations. Well, I'm here to tell you that you should. There are times when you need to know how to negotiate and be strategic in order to get what you need. One example is when it comes to securing budget to buy HR technology. So often we don't know how to ask for what we want, we simply end up without the technology we desperately need.

Here are four strategies from HR Tech Fest speaker Tim Sackett on negotiating internally to get approval for your HR technology buy.

Find somebody in your organisation that has high influence in the executive level that's having some really bad pain points. I love to point out IT because in most organisations, they struggle to find great tech talent. So, you can usually find a CIO who's willing to jump on-board if you want to get any cool kind talent acquisition products: recruitment automation, recruitment marketing, even a new application tracking system.

Understand that most HR tech vendors, when they give you a number, are expecting that you'll come back and negotiate. There's a lot of people who take $5000 a month as the real cost and that's great for vendors, but it might not be the lowest cost possible. Social media is a really powerful tool here- tap into your networks and ask “Who else uses ABC company for their ATS?â€' I find if I can get them on the phone, 99% of the time they'll tell me exactly what they're paying and what their pain was. And it's never the cost that the tech company gave me originally.

As part of your negotiations with finance and your executives on what HR technology you want to buy, make sure you include a head count cost in there. For example “We're going to spend $100,000 this year on HR technology, but this is going to save us one head, which is $70,000 give or take. So ultimately our real cost is about $30,000.â€'
But you must be willing to back that up. Be willing to come back a year later and show your executives the money you saved “Not only were we able to cut one head, we actually cut one and a half. And then here's everything we did.â€' Rarely do executives get people coming back to them showing them how their money was spent.

This one only works if you are completely sold on the fact that the only thing that will work for you and your organisation is to buy the top of the range HR technology (ie the Cadillac of HR systems). You have to be 100% committed that that's the only thing that's going to work. The cool thing about that is sometimes you actually get the really good Cadillac, but what you'll usually end up with is somebody coming back saying “What can we live with?â€' And then you better have a Chevy in your back pocket and say “Well, it's not going to be the best solution, but potentially we have this.â€' This is classic Sales 101, and if you're an HR, guess what? You're going to have to sell if you want really great HR technology.

Tim Sackett is a HR pro with over 20 years' experience. With a career perfectly split between recruiting and HR generalist roles – (also split between the HR vendor community and the corporate world) – he's seen the HR world from all angles of the boardroom table. You can check out all his other brilliant ideas over at www.timsackett.com.

Tim was a popular presenter at HR Tech Fest 2015 in Melbourne. He has written an eBook based on his presentation “The Ultimate HR Tech Buyers Guideâ€'. Download it here.