Every year we\u2019re trying to figure out what\u2019s next. \u00a07 years ago, I started hearing about social HR everywhere, but the market really wasn\u2019t ready. \u00a0Every HR organization thought that social was a bad idea, with personal privacy challenges looming to kill any social enterprise initiatives. \u00a02 years ago, we all took for granted that social was going to be a part of our businesses, and this year it really seemed like social finally became its own and is permeating many of our HR processes and technologies. \u00a0It lonely took 7 years after the vendors and advisor market predicted it for it to become reality. \u00a0(LOL)<\/p>\n
During this year\u2019s HR Technology \u00a0Conference HCM<\/a> roundtable, it was fascinating to hear what everyone was working on (it was the first question posed to the group, and I\u2019m not trying to bash any vendor, but I am representing my opinion of the answers)<\/em>.<\/p>\n I\u2019m hard pressed to say whether machine learning or extensibility is what\u2019s next, but I\u2019d think that all the vendors should be working on both of them. \u00a0UX is table stakes, and you should not be allowed to talk at the table (or panel as it was) if that\u2019s what you\u2019re working on. \u00a0My guess is that SAP will have some chops in the machine learning space, but it just was not what they wanted to focus on. \u00a0It\u2019s also interesting that ADP and Workday were not on the extensibility front as it\u2019s clearly a focus area for the very large customers that SAP has as its client base (but maybe that\u2019s why SAP is so focused).<\/p>\n In a few vendor comments unrelated to the HCM roundtable, the HCM vendor space is going to start reaching parity in the next year. \u00a0Oracle and SAP are picking up steam and finally starting to look competitive. \u00a0First of all, lets agree that I HCM software in vendor demo booths while I was at the conference. \u00a0The following is an aggregation of vendor demos and conversations I had with conference participants. \u00a0Here are a couple of comments around gaps or deficiencies that I\u2019m still watching out for based on those conversations: \u00a0(alpha order)<\/p>\n Having said all of this, I\u2019m actually quite pleased with the vendor space. \u00a0The last couple of years (no matter what Oracle and SAP say) have been relatively uncompetitive. \u00a0There has been one clear winner in the market, and the fact that I don\u2019t have to say who it was is a good indicator that it\u2019s true. I think 2015 will get a bit more competitive, but 2016 will become an all out war. \u00a0This post is definitely \u201cnegative\u201d about what my concerns might be, but what I don\u2019t mention is the huge progress that all of the vendors have made and the very long lists of things they have done well and right. \u00a0I\u2019m going to get in trouble from the vendors over this post anyway, but either way, I think 2015 is going to be interesting. \u00a0More viable vendors is always a good thing.<\/p>\n (Last comment. \u00a0I thought long and hard whether to post this. \u00a0Some vendor somewhere is going to be pissed at me, but at the end of the day, there were only 5 HCM vendors on stage, so any exclusion is not mine. \u00a0Also, each vendor chose to talk about what they talked about. \u00a0Perhaps they didn\u2019t have enough time, but again, if Oracle really wanted to talk analytics but didn\u2019t get to it, that\u2019s not my fault. \u00a0Each vendor decided what they wanted to focus on by themselves. \u00a0The opinions in the latter half of this post are based on talking to other conference participants and seeing each of the vendors demo at their booth. \u00a0Posting this also saves me the effort of writing a year end post.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every year we\u2019re trying to figure out what\u2019s next. \u00a07 years ago, I started hearing about social HR everywhere, but the market really wasn\u2019t ready. \u00a0Every HR organization thought that social was a bad idea, with personal privacy challenges looming…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2167,"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":[399,27,40,394,2,29,22],"tags":[434,427,429,308,449,428,442,447,426,154,349,234],"class_list":["post-2611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud-hr-technology","category-data-metrics","category-enterprise-solutions","category-hr-strategy-technology","category-hr-technology","category-hrms","category-industry-news","tag-adp","tag-employee-central","tag-extensibility","tag-fusion","tag-hrms","tag-machine-learning","tag-oracle","tag-sap","tag-ultimate","tag-user-experience","tag-ux","tag-workday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611","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=2611"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2613,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611\/revisions\/2613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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