{"id":2118,"date":"2012-10-12T10:00:33","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T18:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=2118"},"modified":"2012-12-01T21:51:26","modified_gmt":"2012-12-02T05:51:26","slug":"hr-technology-conference-reactions-naomis-master-panel-saas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=2118","title":{"rendered":"HR Technology Conference Reactions: Naomi\u2019s Master Panel – SaaS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Talk about a stacked panel.\u00a0 This one was moderated by a thought leader, and staffed by thought leaders.\u00a0 \u00a0They included:\u00a0 MODERATOR: Naomi Lee Bloom (Managing Partner, Bloom & Wallace), Steven Miranda (SVP, Applications Development, Oracle), Mike Capone (VP for Product Development and CIO, ADP), Sanjay Poonen (President Global Solutions, SAP), John Wookey (EVP, Social Applications, Salesforce.com), Stan Swete (CTO, Workday), Adam Rogers (CTO, Ultimate Software)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll admit that towards the middle, it got a bit salesy as the vendors started spewing stats about how great they were and what amazing market reach they have, but I\u2019m ok with that for the 45 minutes of gold nuggets I got first.\u00a0 Even the panelists eventually admitted that they could have argued with each other more, but I\u2019m ok without that as well.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what I heard.<\/p>\n

Theme #1:\u00a0 Data aggregation across clients.<\/strong> I should say I told you so (I think I just did), but I was talking about this years ago.\u00a0 What is really cool about this is that so many of the SaaS vendors now have the ability to mine data across their client base.\u00a0 The data in a perfect SaaS world should be totally standardized since everyone is on the same software, so some instant benchmarking should be in order.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think there\u2019s much risk to be able to aggregate and share the data, but some opt-in by clients is a reasonable tradeoff, and I\u2019d expect that most clients would opt in with the understanding that none of the client specific stuff would be shared outside of an aggregated format.\u00a0 Imagine a world where all of the analytics the vendor is providing can also show a benchmark with a push of a button.\u00a0 Your CHRO pulls up a turnover trend for the last 12 months, and with a click of a button sees the trend lines for all other clients and clients in the same industry.\u00a0 All of a sudden, your CHRO is hunting you down trying to understand why your turnover rates are suddenly trending higher than competitors.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t reality yet, but we could be close.<\/p>\n

An example that was quite interesting was the ADP payroll examples.\u00a0 We all know that the ADP payroll numbers come out ahead of the government jobs reports.\u00a0 The government surveys a number of people every month, but ADP has an exact number of paychecks they cut.\u00a0 Which one do you think is more accurate and which one do you thing most people trust?<\/p>\n

Aggregation also benefits the vendors. \u00a0The vendors have a view into what every client is using and not using.\u00a0 Thomas Otter came up with a wonderful new term this week: SaaS = Shelfware as a Service.\u00a0 The truth is that vendor can now see what is in demand, what products need enhancement, and what products where the investment opportunities are.<\/p>\n

Theme #2:\u00a0 Realign focus.<\/strong> We\u2019ve spent over a decade being worried about enhancements, the next patch or upgrade, and how we manage internal hardware and networks.\u00a0 Let\u2019s get one thing straight \u2013 all of that is gone.\u00a0 If you no longer have 5-10-15 headcount worried about the management of the application, you have that many extra heads to worry about optimizing business processes or how to engage more users.\u00a0 Instead of worrying about the request that came in from APAC and how you are going to address a small piece of code for them, you can worry about what the bigger picture is and trying to collaborate with your vendor to have it deployed.<\/p>\n

Theme #3:\u00a0 Shelfware.<\/strong> We talked a little bit about shelfware in theme 1, but I think it goes beyond knowing what gets used and unused.\u00a0 Organizations used to have trouble with buying applications that were never deployed.\u00a0 Or buying applications as part of a package that were never deployed.\u00a0 The problem is a bit different now.\u00a0 With 2-3-4 releases a year, clients just can\u2019t keep up.\u00a0 One of the great quotes of the conference, \u201cGod could create the world in 7 days because he didn\u2019t have install base.\u201d\u00a0 Since everyone is on one system, you don\u2019t have to worry about coding for multiple upgrade paths, multiple back end databases, etc. \u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s also a great thing that everything comes turned off, but after a year, there is so much \u201cstuff\u201d not getting used that the planning process of how and what to deploy can get pretty complex.\u00a0\u00a0 Vendors have to be really thoughtful about what functionality to deploy, and one of the ways many are dealing with this is by creating social communities where customers can vote on what functionality gets released next.\u00a0 By doing this, vendors minimize the impact of releasing functionality that nobody wants.<\/p>\n

Theme #4: Social.<\/strong> Social was the theme no matter where I went at this conference.\u00a0 That\u2019s not a bad thing, it just shows where everyone\u2019s brains were.\u00a0 Partly because of the SaaS strategy and not having multiple environments to grapple with, mobile applications can be created quickly and with little fear of platforms.\u00a0 Similarly, social may be threaded into processes and functionality more seamlessly, although with so many customers going with third party social tools, this might be getting hard to embed in SaaS HCM business processes.\u00a0 At the end of the day though, the idea is simple.\u00a0 Engage your employees where they are comfortable engaging and where they do their work.\u00a0 This might mean extending functionality to mobile, or creating tools to facilitate conversations in social tools.\u00a0 Unfortunately, in today\u2019s worls this might also mean embedding ways to perform actions in email since that is where people are comfortable today.<\/p>\n

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Talk about a stacked panel.\u00a0 This one was moderated by a thought leader, and staffed by thought leaders.\u00a0 \u00a0They included:\u00a0 MODERATOR: Naomi Lee Bloom (Managing Partner, Bloom & Wallace), Steven Miranda (SVP, Applications Development, Oracle), Mike Capone (VP for Product…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27,40],"tags":[352,365,174,107],"class_list":["post-2118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-metrics","category-enterprise-solutions","tag-hr-technology-conference","tag-naomi-bloom","tag-saas","tag-shelfware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2118"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2272,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118\/revisions\/2272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}