Analyze turnover patterns, engagement survey data, and identify retention risk factors
This analytics platform shifts HR teams from reactive spreadsheet tracking to proactively identifying flight-risk employees before they resign. It provides MSPs with a strategic, high-value offering to pitch to mid-sized clients struggling with costly turnover and blind spots in employee engagement.
The problem today
25 hours
wasted per month on manual HR reporting
40%
of voluntary turnover happens without early warning
Danielle Park is the HR Director at a 280-person logistics and distribution company in Columbus, Ohio, managing a two-person HR team with no dedicated analytics support. Her specific frustration: she found out her top warehouse operations manager was interviewing elsewhere from a LinkedIn notification — three weeks before the resignation letter arrived — and realized she had absolutely no system that would have told her sooner.
01The Problem
Four disconnected systems produce reports that describe last month's departures, not next month's risks.
Warning signs in surveys, pay data, and feedback sit unconnected until the resignation letter makes them irrelevant.
Replacement costs across 280 people at 18% turnover never appear as a single number the CEO can act on.
Annual survey results reach leadership months after the flagged employees began interviewing elsewhere.
Manager satisfaction scores, team turnover rates, and exit themes exist in separate files — never combined into an accountable view.
Counter-offers written at the exit interview stage arrive after the decision is final — every dollar spent is unrecoverable.
02The Solution
Solution Brief
Fictional portrayal · illustrative
- Danielle runs 280-person logistics HR with a two-person team, zero analytics
- Four tabs every Monday: HRIS, payroll, Google Form, private spreadsheet
- Found out top ops manager was interviewing via LinkedIn — three weeks late
- 18% annual turnover burns $400K–$800K/yr, invisible as one number
- Every surprise resignation had months of signals no one connected
- Counter-offers at exit stage miss 80% of departing employees
- CEO sees no manager-level accountability for team attrition
- Single dashboard flags high-risk employees before resignation letters arrive
- Continuous pulse survey replaces annual PDF — risk scores update weekly
- Below-market pay bands and low manager scores trigger early conversation
- One protected $80K backfill makes the model's value concrete to leadership
- Data history deepens monthly — model sharpens, MSP relationship compounds
“I used to find out someone was a flight risk the day they handed me their notice. Now I get a flag when they're still three months away from that conversation — and I actually have time to do something about it.”
— Danielle Park is the HR Director at a 280-person logistics and distribution company in Columbus, Ohio, managing a two-person HR team with no dedicated analytics support
03What the AI Actually Does
Flight Risk Scoring Engine
Continuously scores every employee on attrition likelihood by combining tenure, compensation benchmarks, manager feedback scores, engagement survey responses, and performance trends — surfacing a ranked list of at-risk individuals before they start job hunting.
Retention Root Cause Analyzer
Connects turnover patterns to their actual drivers — identifying whether exits cluster around specific managers, departments, pay bands, or tenure windows — so HR can fix the source of the problem, not just react to the symptoms.
Continuous Pulse Survey System
Replaces the once-a-year engagement survey with short, automated check-ins that feed real-time sentiment data into the analytics platform, catching burnout and disengagement signals months earlier than traditional survey cycles allow.
Executive People Dashboard
Delivers a single, always-current view of turnover trends, team health scores, and retention risk levels that HR directors can put in front of a CEO without spending a weekend building slides — connecting people data directly to business outcomes.
04Technology Stack
Lattice Performance + Engagement + Analytics
$11/user/month base + $6/user/month Engagement add-on + $4/user/month Analytics add-on = ~$21/user/month; $4,000/year minimum. For 300 employees: ~$75,600/year
Primary people analytics platform providing engagement pulse surveys, performance review aggregation, goal tracking, and AI-powered attrition risk mod…
Microsoft Power BI Pro
$14/user/month per license via CSP. 5 licenses for HR leadership = $70/month ($840/year). MSP margin: 12-18% through CSP indirect reseller program.
Custom HR analytics dashboards that pull data from Lattice APIs, HRIS exports, and payroll data to create executive-ready turnover visualizations, ret…
Finch Unified HRIS/Payroll API
$65/connection/month (Starter plan). Typically 1-2 connections needed (HRIS + Payroll if separate systems) = $65-$130/month ($780-$1,560/year)
Unified API middleware that connects to 220+ HRIS and payroll systems through a single standardized data model. Eliminates the need to build and maint…
Microsoft 365 Business Premium (or E3/E5 if applicable)
$22/user/month (Business Premium) via CSP. Assumed already in place for most clients. If net-new: 300 users = $6,600/month.
Foundation for Azure Active Directory / Entra ID (SSO and SCIM provisioning for Lattice), Microsoft Teams (survey notification delivery), Outlook (sur…
Azure SQL Database (Serverless, General Purpose)
~$50-$150/month depending on usage (S1 tier for HR data warehouse: ~$30/month + storage). For a 300-person company, HR data is modest — expect $75/month average.
Cloud-hosted SQL database serving as the centralized HR data warehouse. Aggregates data from Finch API (HRIS/payroll), Lattice API (engagement/perform…
Power Automate (included in M365)
$0 additional (included in M365 license). Premium connectors may require Power Automate Premium at $15/user/month if needed.
Workflow automation for retention alert escalation: when Lattice flags an employee as high flight risk or when a Power BI anomaly detection triggers, …
05Alternative Approaches
15Five + Power BI Lightweight Stack
$4/user/month (15Five Engage); ~$6,500/year for 100 employees total software
Replace Lattice with 15Five for engagement surveys and basic performance management. 15Five Engage at $4/user/month provides pulse surveys, action planning, and benchmarking. Pair with Power BI Pro for custom turnover dashboards pulling data directly from HRIS exports (CSV) rather than through Finch API. Skip the Azure SQL data warehouse and Azure Functions; instead use Power BI dataflows for lightweight ETL.
Strengths
- Dramatically lower cost — $4/user/month vs $21/user/month for software
- Eliminates Finch ($65-130/month) and Azure SQL ($75/month) costs
- For 100 employees, annual software drops from ~$27,000 to ~$6,500
- Significantly simpler — no custom code, no Azure Functions, no data warehouse schema to maintain
Tradeoffs
- No AI-powered flight risk detection
- No automated retention risk scoring
- Limited cross-system correlation
- MSP would rely on manual Power BI analysis rather than automated alerts
Best for: Clients with under 150 employees, limited budget (<$10K/year software), or who want to start with basic engagement measurement before committing to predictive analytics. Can serve as Phase 1 before upgrading to the full Lattice stack.
Microsoft Viva Suite (M365-Native Approach)
$12/user/month; ~$43,200/year for 300 employees
For clients deeply embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem, deploy Microsoft Viva Suite which includes Viva Glint (engagement surveys replacing Lattice), Viva Insights (workplace analytics from M365 usage patterns), and Viva Pulse (manager-initiated quick surveys). Combine with Power BI for custom dashboards. All data stays within the Microsoft tenant, simplifying compliance. No third-party survey tool needed.
Strengths
- Cheaper than Lattice at $12/user/month vs $21/user/month
- For 300 employees: ~$43,200/year vs ~$75,600/year for Lattice
- All data stays within Microsoft tenant, simplifying compliance
- Viva Glint has strong survey science inherited from LinkedIn acquisition
- Viva Insights adds unique workplace behavior signals (meeting load, after-hours work, collaboration patterns)
Tradeoffs
- More expensive than 15Five at $4/user/month
- Viva configuration requires strong M365 admin skills
- Viva Insights requires careful privacy configuration
- Less mature analytics than Lattice
- Viva doesn't yet offer AI flight risk detection comparable to Lattice's upcoming feature
Best for: Clients already on M365 E3/E5 who want a single-vendor approach and are uncomfortable with third-party employee data sharing. Strong choice for MSPs that specialize in Microsoft stack.
Visier People Analytics (Enterprise-Grade)
Starting at $5/employee/month; $30,000-$60,000/year for 500 employees plus $10,000-$100,000+ implementation
For larger clients (500+ employees) or staffing agencies managing large workforces, deploy Visier — the market-leading purpose-built people analytics platform. Visier offers 2,000+ pre-built HR metrics, validated predictive attrition models, and deep benchmarking against industry peers. It replaces both the analytics platform AND the custom Power BI dashboard build, as Visier's native visualization is enterprise-grade.
Strengths
- Strongest predictive models in the market
- Best benchmarking data and most comprehensive out-of-the-box metrics
- Eliminates the need for custom Python risk scoring, custom Power BI dashboards, and Azure SQL warehouse
- 2,000+ pre-built HR metrics
Tradeoffs
- Significantly higher cost — starting at $5/employee/month plus $10,000-$100,000+ implementation
- For 500 employees: $30,000-$60,000/year software plus implementation
- Implementation is 12-16 weeks and typically requires Visier's own professional services team
- Not recommended for SMBs under 250 employees due to cost and implementation complexity
Best for: Clients with 500+ employees, dedicated HR analytics teams, and budget for enterprise tooling. Staffing agencies managing 1,000+ temporary and permanent workers benefit significantly from Visier's workforce planning and predictive capabilities.
Custom Open-Source ML Pipeline (Advanced/Academic)
Lowest software cost (OSS); $15,000-$40,000 initial build labor; $2,150-$4,000 on-prem hardware or ~$300/month Azure VM
Build a fully custom solution using open-source tools: Python scikit-learn for ML models (Random Forest, XGBoost, Logistic Regression), PostgreSQL for data warehouse, Apache Superset or Metabase for dashboards, and a custom Flask/FastAPI web application for the risk scoring interface. Deploy on an on-premises Dell PowerEdge R360 server or Azure VMs. No SaaS vendor dependency; full control over algorithms and data.
Strengths
- Lowest software licensing cost (all open-source)
- Full IP ownership
- Potentially the most powerful approach once ML model is trained
- Can detect non-obvious patterns that weighted scoring misses
Tradeoffs
- Highest labor cost — requires 120-200 hours of data engineering and data science work ($15,000-$40,000 at MSP rates)
- Requires data science expertise that most MSPs do not have on staff
- Model training requires minimum 50+ voluntary terminations with clean data
- Highest risk of failure if data quality is poor or data scientist leaves the project
- Hardware cost: $2,150-$4,000 for on-prem server or ~$300/month for Azure VM
- Ongoing maintenance burden
Best for: Clients with internal data science teams who want full ownership, or academic/research institutions. Could be offered as a Phase 3 upgrade after 12-18 months of weighted scoring has accumulated sufficient training data. Not recommended for typical MSP engagements.
BambooHR + Culture Amp Combination (Mid-Market All-in-One)
BambooHR Pro ~$17/employee/month + Culture Amp ~$200/employee/year; ~$121,200/year for 300 employees
For clients using BambooHR as their HRIS, combine it with Culture Amp for engagement analytics and predictive turnover modeling. BambooHR provides native turnover reporting and demographic dashboards (included in Pro/Elite tiers), while Culture Amp adds best-in-class engagement surveys, Text Analytics, and predictive flight risk models. The two integrate natively, eliminating the need for Finch API middleware.
Strengths
- Native BambooHR and Culture Amp integration eliminates need for Finch API middleware
- Culture Amp has the strongest engagement benchmarking database in the market (data from 6,000+ organizations)
- Robust predictive turnover models from Culture Amp
- Both platforms are user-friendly; Culture Amp implementation is 4-6 weeks
- MSP benefits from BambooHR referral partner program revenue and co-marketing support
Tradeoffs
- Higher cost than primary approach — BambooHR Pro at $17/employee/month ($61,200/year for 300 employees) plus Culture Amp at ~$200/employee/year ($60,000/year for 300 employees) totals ~$121,200/year
- Only cost-competitive if client does not yet have an HRIS
Best for: Clients without an existing HRIS who need to deploy both core HR and analytics simultaneously. Particularly strong for organizations that prioritize engagement science rigor and industry benchmarking. MSP benefits from BambooHR partner program revenue.
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