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An Update with Sum Total

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I’ll admit.  It caught me completely off guard to find out that the major learning vendors (Saba and Sum Total) have been offering talent management systems for the better part of a year (or longer).  I’ve been advocating this for some time as I’ll explain below, but they have been flying under the radar for a while.

In late 2006, Sum Total acquired a talent vendor named Mind Solve.  I’ve never heard of them either, but this is one of the reasons Sum Total bought them.  Because they were and unknown, they were purchased for a decent bargain.  Also, Mind Solve apparently was decent at developing a product, but didn’t have an effective sales are to market.  Thus, the combination of Mind Solve’s product with Sum Total’s LMS and marketing arm seemed to be the right move to make.  As stated by Sum Total, they acquired good technology under financially advantageous terms.

Before continuing with a conversation around product and sales, we should talk about the value proposition that I’m really excited about.  Let’s face it, performance management should be directly integrated with learning opportunities.  Sum Total has this capability now that the performance app and the LMS are “under one roof.”  Other talent vendors have perhaps spent too much time getting their talent management and talent acquisition systems together, but I’m not sure what the value of having integrated acquisition with management.  Certainly there is some power in having workforce plans integrated with acquisition, integrated with management, and back to workforce plans, but I think it’s more powerful and more realistic to offer an organization a direct link from their performance management to their learning management.

The truth of the matter is that the market is asking for talent acquisition and management to sit together as talent acquisition is of a higher profile than learning management.  To me, the market is not always right.  So while having talent management linked to LMS might make more sense to me, Sum Total may be in the less profitable scenario compared to guys like Taleo who have really done the same thing:  specialize in something else and get into talent management later.

Back to product:  A couple of interesting notes.  I also had not realized that Sum Total was going to a SaaS model.  In fact, this has been implemented and most new sales are in the SaaS model.  It appears that they are going in the right direction even though (from the few screen shots I saw) I was not excited about the look and feel of the product.  It’s possible that all performance apps do the same thing, and we’re just talking about the “wrapping”, but in my opinion, the wrapping can do wonders for manager adoption.  Sum Total assures me that they are definitely focusing on the look and feel, knowing that this is important to the market even if the functionality is just fine.  Another thing that intrigued me (and I’ll need to see this in a demo) is Sum Total’s patented drag and drop performance management module.  This just sounds interesting, and even if I didn’t like the UI, this sounds like it has some potential for a re-visioning of how managers interact with the application.

As far as I’m concerned, learning management vendors getting into the talent management space is the right move.  I think that this is more important than all the talent management and talent acquisition vendors getting together for a single reason.  It just makes sense.  What’s bad for the talent vendors is that LMS is generally not as accessible.  It’s highly complex, and it’s hard to buy someone else (there just are not that many out there).  Sum Total should have a good time selling this integrated package, but they need to get the word out a bit better.  At any rate, I think it’s an exciting value proposition and it will be interesting to see if they get some better market traction.

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9 responses to “An Update with Sum Total”

  1. An Update with Sum Total

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  3. [Technorati] Tag results for technologywrote an interesting post today on Here’s a quick excerpt I’ll admit.  It caught me completely off guard to find out that the major learning vendors (Saba and Sum Total) have been offering talent management systems for the better part of a year

  4. J. Smithy Avatar
    J. Smithy

    SumTotal has not fully integrated its LMS with Performance (formerly MindSolve).

    You make the statement: “Sum Total has this capability now that the performance app and the LMS are ‘under one roof,’” and further in your blog, you mention “Sum Total should have a good time selling this integrated package…”

    The reality is that SumTotal’s LMS and Performance are not on a common platform and not fully integrated. The applications currently leverage separate databases and data models.

    Customers benefit from a truly integrated platform, one that seamlessly integrates UI, application services, and data across the suite.

  5. Syris Avatar
    Syris

    Sounds to me like SumTotal is still riding the wave of “integrated performance and learning” that was in fashion a year ago and Taleo is riding the wave of “integrated performance and recruiting” which is all the rage today. Many others continue down the path of “integrated performance and compensation” which seems to have had the most staying power.

  6. Dan Boccabella Avatar

    I couldn’t agree more regarding the value proposition of Talent Development (learning + performance) vs. Talent Acquisition. Rising replacement and recruitment costs have been driving organizations of all sizes to focus more on internal talent development over the last several years. However, vendor supplied solutions were either loosely coupled or did not provide the required breadth of product functionality. In 2006, we were seeing many customers purchasing best-of-breed, but separate, learning and performance systems and then linking them together through customizations. This was the primary reason SumTotal acquired MindSolve and then released our updated talent development platform that provided this functionality “out of the box”.

    We are excited that we are now seeing organizations across many industries recognizing the value in not just recruiting top performers, but putting in place systems that can both assess and develop their current employees. Only an integrated talent development system can provide the framework to transform the performance assessment into a career plan via an actionable training plan designed to bridge the gap between the employee’s current performance and targeted career path. The real value proposition is not only recognizing and rewarding your “A” players, but turning your “B” and “C” players into the future “A” players.

  7. HRdude Avatar
    HRdude

    Having just going through an extensive search for the best online performance management software I could find, I ended up selecting SumTotal over Success Factors due to it’s super cool drag and drop comparative visual rating scale. While the UI is much better then Success Factors- which is crowded and hard for users to understand (hence hard to inspire to use, from an HR point of view), the implementation process has taken twice as long as expected.
    Please let me know if you want a screencast of when I set it up- I would be glad to share.

  8. Jacob Avatar

    I must agree – SumTotal has passed under my radar for a long time, but now it’s starting to look very interesting indeed.

    It is my opinion that SumTotal is more focused on delivering a complete Talent Management Suite, than many other suppliers in the market.

    It can be very difficult to find reliable information about the different suppliers – especially when their marketing departments are so competent in creating a good “smoke screen”. I have found that your Blog is one of the most reliable sources for facts, so I follow it with great interest, and do plan to make more frequent contributions.

    I have published a list of my own classification of about 50 HR systems here: http://www.moerk-partnere.dk/teknologi-index_en.asp, however, the list is only as good as the info I get from like minded, network contacts and especially SystematicHR. It’s my intention to start giving each system a rating, since I have spend too many years of my life avoiding suppliers while looking for the right supplier 🙂

    Best regards,
    Jacob

  9. systematicHR Avatar

    As noted, I didn’t know there was much going on at Sum Total in this area. I’m completely floored by the positive reaction posted in comments here. Good to know!!!

    -Dubs