Building a Business Case (and Internal Buy-In) for Better Onboarding

by Sarah Mulcahy

Need to build business case for onboarding? Learn how to move from HR need to company-wide “yes” – without getting stuck in decision paralysis.

You’ve identified a problem: Your onboarding experience isn’t keeping pace with the rest of your employee journey. Whether you’re seeing new hire attrition creep up, hearing manager complaints about disengaged day-one experiences, or just recognizing how much manual admin is still in play — you know there’s a better way.

So what happens next?

Too often, people go looking for a solution before aligning internally. They discover a platform like Enboarder, only to find themselves backpedaling: trying to scope the project, justify the spend, and loop in key stakeholders after the fact. That’s a tough position to be in. And it’s why building a strong business case for onboarding — and an even stronger coalition — is critical before you buy.

In this blog we share tips for approaching the process of building a business and buy-in based on thousands of conversations we’ve had with customers just like you.

1. Understand Your Organization’s Buying Process

Before you even talk to vendors, get clear on how buying happens at your company. Get answers on:

Who needs to approve the budget?
Is IT involved early, or only when procurement is at the table?
What criteria will you need to meet to get a CFO’s sign-off?

In some companies, HR or People Ops has discretionary budget. In others, you’ll need to involve finance, legal, procurement, IT, or even a transformation team. Start mapping the process as early as possible. Better yet – talk to someone who’s done this before at your company. The better you understand who is involved in the decision-making process, the better you can tailor your business case to the appropriate audience.

2. Define the Problem (Together)

As tempting as it is to gather your own requirements and shop for solutions, onboarding isn’t just your problem — it’s an organizational issue that impacts the bottom line. By bringing in a diverse set of perspectives, you can tackle more strategic issues and you’re less likely to get push-back further down the line.

Here are some ways to build cross-functional buy-in:

Pull in voices from IT, People Ops, TA, and business leadership.
Host a short working session focused on the problem, not the solution.
Start with your “north star” objective, then allow flexibility in the approach.

Think of this as creating the recipe before you choose the ingredients. It helps you avoid decision paralysis later – and makes everyone feel invested early. With any luck, you’ll help expose challenges across the business that could be solved with a single solution.

3. Get Approval to Shop

Before you go too deep with vendors, get the green light to explore – ideally with a shared understanding of what you’re evaluating and why.

The goal isn’t just to “compare a few tools.” It’s to align on the problem you’re solving and confirm that, if a vendor meets the agreed-upon criteria, it’s worth moving forward.

At this point, we find some buyers come across a few common internal objections:

“We already have an HRIS that handles onboarding.” If you have an HRIS that handles paperwork and compliance, your internal stakeholders might think this is “good enough.” This is where it’s helpful to go back to defining the problem and clarifying the difference between transactional onboarding and strategic onboarding that drives retention and productivity. Then skip to #4 and build a rock solid business case.
“We don’t have the budget for this right now.” If onboarding isn’t considered strategic, it won’t get prioritized for budget. Go back to #2 and make sure you’re framing onboarding as a productivity solution, not just an HR program. Every early departure or underperforming new hire is a direct cost. Further, the manual time accumulated across departments comes at a direct cost. With investment, and automation, that time could be better allocated.
“We can just build onboarding ourselves.” If your team thinks spreadsheets, calendar invites, and project tools can get the job done, be sure to highlight the cost of inconsistency and manual workarounds, which are error-prone and difficult to scale. (One of our customers estimated manual onboarding took 40,000 individual clicks and 1,200 hours every year.)

4. Build a Right-Sized Business Case

You don’t need a 40-slide deck – you’ll make faster progress by keeping your business case for onboarding clear and punchy.

Here’s what you’ll want to cover:

The Risk of Inaction: What happens if onboarding doesn’t improve? Consider the cost of disengaged new hires, early attrition, and low productivity in the first 90 days. Also consider the cost of manual administration relative to the proposed investment.
The ROI: Experience is hard to quantify, but outcomes like productivity, retention, and time savings are not. Use this blog to do the math. We’re also happy to walk you through a more detailed ROI calculation specific to your organization. On one recent call, a global consulting firm realized they could save $2.9M by using Enboarder vs. a homegrown onboarding solution.
Cost Comparison: Show what it would cost to hire a new admin vs. using automation to scale the process. Zapier was able to save 206,185 minutes of mindless clicking – the equivalent of 86 work weeks!
Strategic Fit: Tie onboarding to a strategic business objective, such as improved productivity and reduced attrition.

5. Bring in IT Early

One of the biggest blockers we see are technical objections that could have been avoided with a quick, early conversation.

Your IT team will likely want to know:

How does this fit into our existing tech stack?
Where is employee data stored?
Will this integrate with our ATS or HRIS?
Is it flexible or rigid in setup?

Engaging IT early shows you’re thinking ahead, and your sales partner at Enboarder can help prepare for those conversations and answer any questions you don’t yet have answers for.

6. Scope for the Right Stage

You might not be ready to launch a global onboarding solution for every department in your organization all at once – and that’s OK. Some companies choose to start with a subset of employees and expand from there. You’ll move faster if you’re realistic about the scope — and confident in how it can scale later.

Take Lonza as an example: “Our proof of concept journey began by piloting the new onboarding process in four sites – one in the U.S. and three in Switzerland. We carefully planned and executed a strong project launch and spent time with the stakeholder who participated in the proposed onboarding process. They gave us the feedback we needed to take the project forward.” Check out the full case study here.

7. Don’t Go It Alone

Remember that you’re not just investing in onboarding software – you’re driving change and innovation.

Partner with your Enboarder sales team to:

Co-create your business case for onboarding
Anticipate IT and CFO objections
Share relevant success stories from similar companies
Offer a mini demo or quick internal video walkthrough

We can help you define the problem, strengthen your positions, and build credibility with stakeholders across the business. The good news is you already know the new hire experience needs to improve. Now it’s just a matter of bringing your team along for the journey.

Have you scheduled your demo of Enboarder’s new Intelligent Journey Platform? See how you can build best-in-class, hyper-personalized employee journeys in minutes!