systematicHR

The intersection between HR strategy and HR technology

, ,

An Interview with Workstream

systematicHR Avatar

Workstream has always been one of my favorite vendors. They have great depth and breadth in their TMS suite, but their financials have plagued them. In the last year, their competitors have made strong market moves and gained momentum.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Kevin Dobbs (Senior Vice President, Marketing and Business Development) about their performance last year, and their direction for the future. I’m please to report that most of my assumptions were correct, but on top of that, Workstream really seems to be on track for a great year.

  • 2005 was an infrastructure year at Workstrea. Focusing on integration, data center, and acquisitions. In terms of the applications, flexibility, open source and portal delivery seemed to be the keys. Their data center is in good shape, unlike some of their competitors.
  • In 2005 they had a very active aquisition year. Increasing functionality and working on the integration of acquired assets took away from marketing and added cost to their already red bottom line.
  • 2005 was also a year for beefing up staffing. Michael Gioja, the new CIO, has been around the industry giants (SAP, PeopleSoft, Workscape, Fidelity) and can really enforce Workstream’s technology delivery strategy. Last year also saw major additions to salesforce.
  • 80% of Workstream’s customer base of over 450 companies only own one “module.” If all Workstream does is sell compensation on top of performance, they’ll do just fine. Given their position as one of the lead TMS players, they’ll undoubtedly grow their market position as well. ((An interview with Kevin Dobbs, Sr. Vice President, Workstream Inc, on January 20, 2006.))

Granted I was talking to the VP of maketing, but I genuinely liked what I heard. Sounds like if anything, Workstream put much emphasis on infrastructure last year and perhaps had a few more failures on the sales side than they’d like to admit to. Either way, they seem pretty well positioned for the next couple years.

Competition like SuccessFactors and Authoria will also benefit from a similar “hot” TMS sector. As I’ve mentioned before, all the TMS vendors will benefit from the logical expansion of their EPS (performance) purchase with more modules. I still like the momentum SF and Authoria have gained, but perhaps Workstream can take some back. It’s an exciting sector to watch (for nerds like me) and competition is healthy.

Tagged in :

systematicHR Avatar