Spreadsheets did not fail HR — HR teams outgrew spreadsheets, and the cost of staying in them is now measurable in payroll errors, compliance exposure, and recruiter hours that never return. Structural automation, not incremental fixes, is the only path that scales. HR teams that replace manual data entry with automated workflows stop losing ground and start gaining leverage.

Most HR teams overpay for iPaaS because they evaluate on connector count instead of workflow depth, pricing structure, and total cost of ownership. This framework walks through six evaluation steps — from mapping your HR process inventory to stress-testing conditional logic — so you select a platform that scales without ballooning your budget.