What: Human Resource Executive magazine's HR Technology Conference &
Exposition is a major annual gathering of HR tech professionals, vendors and
analysts. Topics at the show, which is marking its 10th anniversary, include
"the talent management suite," learning and performance management, recruiting
and outsourcing.
HR tech warfare: Among the highlights of this show are the head-to-head
product demonstrations. Conference co-chair Bill Kutik takes pride in the way
the show’s specific, scripted problems force vendors to provide attendees with
apples-to-apples comparisons. Thursday featured a morning "shootout" of vendors
that offer integrated performance management and recruiting applications, as
well as an afternoon "battle" among providers of systems that include core HR
applications.
Authoria bested SuccessFactors, Vurv and HRsmart in the morning shootout.
Audience members using wireless voting devices selected Authoria as tops in each
of three separate tasks, one of which involved a hiring manager preparing for a
new hire’s first midyear review by accessing data captured during the recruiting
process.
The winner of the afternoon contest between Oracle, Lawson and Workday wasn’t as
easy to judge. Conference organizers decided against voting during the event,
citing its format. Just one of the three segments involved all the vendors
solving the same problem—which in this case centered on the creation of a new
"skunkworks" team at a hypothetical software firm. During the second segment of
the battle, vendors could choose their own problem and solve it, and in the
third they were asked to provide a demo of their "coolest stuff." This format
was designed to let attendees see vendor "thought leadership" but precluded fair
comparisons, Kutik and company decided.
Still, audience members formed opinions. Several people interviewed after the
event were impressed by what they saw from Lawson, which demonstrated its newly
announced "strategic human capital management suite." During the third segment,
Lawson showed how its software can allow employees to post jobs from their
firm’s career Web page directly onto their page at the popular social networking
site Facebook. Companies also can arrange to have employees earn a referral
bonus if a job is filled by someone who applied through their Facebook page.
Lawson’s integration with Facebook "was really interesting," said Lawrance
Martin, vice president of finance at the Allegheny East Conference of
Seventh-Day Adventists church.
Oracle also showed off social networking during its demonstration. But rather
than connect to a consumer site like Facebook, Oracle showed how its own
technology could allow employees to establish informal networks devoted to a
particular topic as well as alert colleagues about job openings.
Michelle Newell, senior director for human capital management applications
marketing at Oracle, said Oracle’s promotion of informal collaboration "behind
the firewall"—that is, within a company’s internal computer systems—is in
response to corporate worries that use of consumer sites like MySpace and
Facebook can threaten intellectual property and reputations. "Organizations are
concerned that employees are talking about their company on Facebook," she says.
Too much talent management? Much of the conference was focused on talent
management and integrated talent management suites. But Gretchen Alarcon,
Oracle’s vice president for human capital management strategy, said all the
attention on talent management can overshadow another important issue for
clients. That is, she said, the continuing challenge of providing HR services to
employees effectively and efficiently.
At the show, Oracle touted what it called "workforce service delivery," which
refers to the way its software can be used to help organizations provide a
tiered approach to employee services. In other words, the software is designed
to enable firms to set up everything from online policies to call center help
desks to personnel dedicated to solving the problems of senior executives.
"Workforce service delivery is still a critical area for a lot of our
customers," Alarcon said. "It’s not just about talent management."
—Ed Frauenheim
Day 1—Wednesday, October 10, 2007
HR tech is in: The world of HR technology is hot right now, and the scale
of this show reflects the buzz. There are some 2,200 registered attendees, as
well as more than 220 exhibitors. This is the first year folks from Russia have
attended the event, conference co-chairman and Human Resource Executive
columnist Bill Kutik told participants. Top HR tech analysts are here. And the
list of presenters includes officials from such industry titans as Coca-Cola,
Aramark and IBM.
HR tech is not all that: Despite growing spending on HR applications, a
major theme of this year’s show is that software is no substitute for a company
getting its workforce management processes and strategies in order. Speaking on
a panel of company officials focused on "talent management" efforts, a vice
president from services provider Aramark discussed his firm’s quest to come up
with a standard approach for assessing employees. Liviu Dedes, an organizational
development specialist at the company, saysid it would be a mistake to invest in
software for performance management and other tasks before his company gets its
internal ducks in a row. "The organization is not quite ready for it," he saysid.
Please don’t squeeze the software: During an informative presentation on
talent management software, Bersin & Associates analyst Leighanne Levensaler
used an analogy that probably made vendors squirm. In describing a reason
companies purchase "suites" of talent management software, she noted that bulk
buys lead to discounts: "It's like buying multiple rolls of toilet paper instead
of one roll of toilet paper."
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