It's tempting to ask an HR group or LinkedIn what software “companies like mine” use, and just copy whatever comes up most. The problem is that “similar” rarely means what you think it does: two companies in the same industry and of the same size can have completely different collective agreements, opposite work cultures, and compliance needs that don't overlap at all.

A third-party recommendation is a fine way to build a shortlist. It's not a substitute for checking whether that system actually fits your own structure.

Size changes what you need, not just what you pay

A 15-person company mostly needs clock-in and time-off handled without friction. A 200-person one starts needing structured recruiting, performance reviews with calibration across managers, and an executive dashboard that pulls data from several departments together. Copying the setup of a company much bigger — or much smaller — than yours usually means paying for complexity you won't use, or falling short on what you actually need.

Local labor rules and internal culture aren't a minor detail

Leave categories, overtime approval rules or remote-work caps depend on each company's own agreements and internal policy — in Spain, largely shaped by each sector's collective bargaining agreement (convenio colectivo). A system with configurable leave types, each with its own approval rule, adapts to your rules; a rigid one with four fixed categories forces your company to adapt to the software instead.

A concrete example: two 50-person companies, two different needs

A 50-person consultancy with high turnover may need structured recruiting and onboarding tracked from month one. A 50-person factory with a stable workforce for years may mostly need occupational health and reliable time tracking sorted out, with recruiting barely touched. Both are the same size and could show up in the same “similar companies” recommendation, yet they'd turn on almost opposite modules. Size is just one variable among several — and arguably the one that says the least about what you'll actually use.

Asking what another company pays doesn't help much either: two contracts with different modules and different headcounts aren't comparable, even with the same vendor. A demo built around your own sample data says more in half an hour than ten secondhand recommendations.

What to ask instead of “what do you use?”

  • Which modules do you actually use day to day, and which ones do you pay for but never touch?
  • Can the system configure leave types and approval rules to match your own agreements, or do you have to fit fixed categories?
  • What size was your company when you switched, and what size is it now?

The useful question isn't what another company uses — it's which of that company's processes genuinely resemble yours. Most of the time, the answer is “fewer than you'd think.” Building your own short list of criteria, based on your own agreements and your own size, is worth more than any generic vendor ranking someone else compiled.