Ahh, please do not pity the poor HR Technology sales representative these days. In fact, you may want to consider cutting back on your church’s charity collections for this cadre as they are about to experience sales nirvana. Unfortunately, this windfall will come at the expense of American employers as they struggle to comply with the looming reporting requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Just like some observatory alerting folks to a rare celestial event, I think we are going to experience something the HR world hasn’t seen since the advent of workplace tax credits: a true and troubling Order-Taker market!

I know this phrase doesn’t strike fear in the same way shouting “asteroid impact!” would, but for employers out there with limited purchasing budget, I want to warn you prices may be going up considerably for help with ACA reporting.

For those of you who’ve never experienced an “Order Takers” market, it’s basically a condition where Demand outstrips Supply. All of a sudden sales reps don’t have to compete as hard to win business, companies increase their prices and buyers are forced to choose from poorer quality options.

That quality statement above might catch you by surprise – especially as there are still many good firms with capacity to help. But thoughtful vendors know they can’t oversell. One of my favorite ADP executives caught me at SHRM’s national conference and put it perfectly. “As a public company, we owe it to our stakeholders to only take on the business we can confidently install with quality.” As conscientious vendors fill up their dance card, employers are forced to turn to runners-up for attention.

We call that “controlled growth” and it’s a hallmark of vendor wisdom. Many vendors – public and private, established and upstart – have notified us of “stop sells”, increasing prices, restrictions to size of employer they’ll sell to or stopped participating in RFPs. All of these are signs of an approaching Order-Taker market.

At a recent speech in New York City, I had to answer a question about who was my favorite ACA reporting vendor. I answered the question, but included a caveat “right now.” I said if the audience waited long enough by December I’d likely be answering with my most flea-bitten, bottom-rung vendor as my favorite because they’ll be the only one left taking on new business!

If you, as an employer, think you need help in aggregating data from multiple source systems (payroll, leave administration, benefits) or don’t have internal IT resources to prepare the 1095/1094 form population, printing and distribution, you may want to look into securing your assistance as soon as possible.

We will survive this regulatory craziness! Someday this will become commonplace and be as exciting as COBRA administration (I promise!). But until those days, when we’ll all have something else new to worry about (tax reform?) your friendly HR Tech team just wants to make sure you’re prepared for what may come! Please post a comment to tell how your firm is navigating these waters. Any creative ideas or upstart vendors out there that want to tell a story?