Most companies pick HR software by scrolling through a feature comparison chart: does it have recruiting? Does it have payroll? Does it have engagement surveys? The chart rarely answers the question that actually matters — will this feature fix a process you struggle with today, or will it sit unused six months after the contract is signed?
Cantevia, a Spanish HR platform, is built as six separate modules — People, Time, Leave, Climate, Talent and Analytics — for exactly this reason: no two companies need the same things on day one. Choosing well isn't about finding the vendor with the longest checklist. It's about naming the process that hurts right now and the one you'll need to fix next.
Start with what's broken, not with the vendor's brochure
Before booking a single demo, write down the three HR processes you handle worst today. Is time tracking a spreadsheet nobody reviews? Do leave requests go through Slack messages you forget to log? Does a new hire wait two weeks to get access to everything they need? That list — not the vendor's feature list — is your real buying criteria.
With that list in hand, the question changes from "what does this software do?" to "does this specific module solve my specific problem?" People, Time and Leave tend to be the core that almost every company activates from day one, because they cover baseline obligations like time tracking and absence management. Climate, Talent and Analytics are usually switched on later, once the basics are handled and the company wants the next layer.
Permissions tell you more than the feature list does
One criterion almost nobody checks during evaluation, and should: how the system handles permissions. A generic admin/editor/viewer scheme is not the same as granular permissions per module, with a level (read, write, admin) and a scope (own, team, company-wide) configurable by role.
The difference shows up daily: in a well-designed system, a manager can view the org chart and approve their team's leave requests without ever seeing personal data or emergency contacts — those stay visible only to the employee themselves or to HR. If the tool you're evaluating can't tell these levels apart, every permission you grant ends up being all-or-nothing.
Buy for the next module, not just for today
The advantage of a modular platform is that you can start with the bare minimum and switch on more as you grow, without migrating systems or keeping employee data duplicated in two places. Ask vendors directly whether they support that kind of module-by-module growth, or whether you're locked into the full package from day one even if you'll only use part of it.
Choosing HR software isn't a one-afternoon pricing comparison. It's deciding which processes you're ready to stop running by hand, in what order, and with what level of control over who sees what. Everything else — interface polish, the length of the integrations page — is secondary if it doesn't answer those three questions. Get that right, and the rest of the decision takes care of itself.