Mark Smith's Analyst Perspectives

The HR Technology Conference and Expo in Las Vegas that begins today will showcase an array of new applications for talent management. The array of applications and advancements to help human resources professionals is evolving dramatically, and this is a place for HR and workforce management professionals to find new methods that help increase productivity and optimize business outcomes. The five business technologyinnovations that will be vitally important in this decade for HR as well as other lines of business: They are cloud computing, social media, mobility, analytics and collaboration. If you want to read what is new in these areas, you can read my business technology guide to the conference. Each of these when integrated with talent management processes can improve the potential of your workforce and help recruit and retain talent.

This year’s HR Technology, the 14th gathering, shows signs of being more bustling than last year’s and on the continuing mission to help my industry colleague, Bill Kutik, in keeping the vendors honest. We anticipate a significant number of new announcements in talent management applications and the specific applications in areas like recruiting, compensation, performance, succession, and others that will advance using these business technology innovations. Now with cloud computing is already the new standard talent management; now it is imperative to progress in integration of them with enterprise systems which unfortunately no one seems to be spending many cycles on in dealing with your business or workforce data in the cloud that our benchmark research found is in significant disarray and needs to be addressed.

Nobody attending will have time to see everything at the conference and exhibits, so I want to highlight some of the announcements in talent management that I think you should not miss at HR Tech and take back to discuss with your colleagues in business, finance, operations and IT. The conference program does not provide what I think is the detailed talent management guide to all the technology announcements so I’ve organized them for you to review and then go and visit the exhibitors to see them for yourself. I have spent the last three weeks doing preliminary review and analysis of most of these announcements.

First in the broader spectrum of talent management application suites a consortium of vendors (BambooHR, emPerform, myStaffingPro and Strategia) has come together in what they call HR in the Cloud to make it easier for their systems to interoperate. In addition look at advances by PageUpPeople and Pilat as options in an integrated offering for talent management. The recent combination of Technomedia and Hodes iQ to form a complete talent managementsuite also will be on display. In what looks to be a significant power move in the market, ADP has unveiled Vantage HCM to provide a unified talent management suite that it can offer back to its significantly very large customer base. Also a newly renamed provider called Lumesse is demonstrating its new suite of applications it has announced. Those in HR who must improve its governance and efficiency of dealing with HR cases should look at Dovetail Software’s offering in talent management, which is available also on mobile devices.

Recruiting and Hiring: To help you reach the broadest pool of candidates in a streamlined method, Talent Technology is demonstrating its Talemetry applications that I assessed; it can help you think about how you acquire talent. Jobvite has announcedits latest in social recruiting with an application within Facebook for social referrals.  Kronos has released Talent Acquisitionversion 9 to help make it simpler to select and hire candidates. Taleo is showing itsmobile and social approaches to recruiting that it launched recently. HireVue announced advancements to its DigitalInterview Platform  to engage with candidates on the Internet and determine their readiness for positions. I already referenced TalentBin under social media but Cornerstone OnDemand has announced a new social recruiting and sourcing application with what they have named theCornerstone Recruiting Cloud.

Learning Management: The year has seen the learning management system (LMS) absorbed into talent management suites; for example, SuccessFactorsacquired Plateau and SumTotal Systems acquired GeoLearning. Not be left out, Kenexa recently announced its alliance with LMS vendorSkillSoft. Sabaannounced the Saba Content Connect Program to expand its customers’ choices on certified content accessible within the LMS.

Performance Management: The need to take performance management seriously should be obvious and ourbenchmark research on the topic has found massive room for improvement to truly be focused on retaining and recognizing talent. Sonar6 is still the coolest looking performance management applications and would engage any manager to worker dialogue on a performance appraisal.Kenexa is demonstrating its new release of its performance management application; while it will need to integrate this with its compensation offering acquired from salary.com, the current version provides the basics. Rypple is showing its social performance management solution that brings collaborative feedback loops and social recognition that I see as a significant advancement.

Total Compensation: An increasingly crucial part of talent retention is compensation management , including incentives and rewards. A pay-for-performance approach is not feasible without compensation management applications. There are a lot of advancements by the technology suppliers and some that are changing dramatically from supplier’s merger and acquisition activity including Plateau who was acquired by SuccessFactors. This should include benchmarking and comparisons like that from Mercer, which I recentlyassessed. Also stop by ADP’s booth to see its acquired Workscape applications, which rated well in our Value Index for Total Compensation Management. Also, not exhibiting at the conference is a vendor that I just assessed called Excentive that can handle the breadth and depth of compensation and incentives independent of any existing talent management suite.

Succession and Career Management: PageUp People announced CareerPath that is a predictive talent modeling application Saba is demonstrating its latest Saba Talent Management including Talent Review, Talent Calibration and its dynamic people profile and competency management capabilities to help in utilizing talent effectively. SAP recently launched its Career OnDemand application to support its cloud computing approach to human capital management that I assessed and is becoming more competitive in the market.

Workforce Management: Processes for tracking hourly and contract workers in regard to time and attendance, absence, activities and goals are changing rapidly. I recently assessed some key players in this market: Dayforce, which just announced now is part of a larger Ceridian team for delivering a broader suite of capabilities; Kronos; and WorkForce Software. As well I will be stopping by to assess Sability at the show.

I hope you have a productive time at the 2011 HR Technology Conference. If you want to follow my real-time analysis, you can find me on Twitter(@marksmithvr), or you can collaborate with me on any of the social media channels we publish to. Ventana Research is continuing our in-depth of research in the talent management field. Recently we released a totalcompensation management benchmark, and at the moment we are analyzing our latest research on recruiting and social media and designing a new research investigation on the next generation of workforce management. Our firm continues to deepen its research foundation as it is diminishing from others; we are committed to producing analysis founded in facts and not just based on opinion. To ensure you get the right advice my firm launched a new set ofeducation and assessment services for talent management to help get the advice and knowledge without the headache of lengthy consulting engagements or having lingering consultants in your organization.

Regards,

Mark Smith – CEO & Chief Research Officer