Interesting piece from InformationWeek. In almost every organization we are working with at Knowledge Infusion, we are being asked to help create roles and job descriptions for HR, Talent Management and IT professionals. This IW article is a must read for anyone thinking about talent and the IT function.

Another infusion of knowledge...

Link to article

Myself and others from Knowledge Infusion had the opportunity to attend the OHUG Talent Management Panel at the Oracle HCM Users Group in Las Vegas, NV

Moderated by Bill Kutik - HR Executive Magazine and The Bill Kutik Radio Show

Zach Thomas - Forrester

Lisa Rowen - IDC

Jason Corsello - Knowledge Infusion

Leighanne Levensaler - Bersin

Lisa Rowen - "What are benefits of integrated Talent Management platform either from ERP or Suite vendor?"

• Definition of talent management - acquisition, development, rewards, retain (processes around talent mgmt)

• Soapbox - integration from technology perspective, only as good as processes integrated (something we discuss continually with Knowledge Infusion clients)

• Vendors bringing together different technology functions, still up to the processes

• Beneftis of integration - provides better way to assess data against other data (ie. quality of hire, where did they work before, etc.

Zach Thomas - Talked about how organizations organize themselves to be prepared to support integrated talent management

• Performance Management - great data in PM, few leverage to make great hires

• Recruiting / Succession Planning - why not open up to internal and external successors

• Should have a touch with the financial data within the organizations; ERP are better positioned to do this

• Until we can integrate TM processes with financial data, just miss the financial impacts

Leighanne Levensaler - "What do you think about Oracle and PeopleSoft and how they compare?"

• Research shows that Enterprise 9.0 and Oracle EBS 12.0 have reached parity with suites

• Most havent had the opportunity to upgrade to take advantage of functionality

• Vendors offer talent mangement suites are strong in their core products, heritage is where they are strong, (ie. strong in recruiting, weaker in other areas)

• More revisions will allow the TM suites to continue to

• Within EBS 12 - compensation capability is second to none; analytics is very strong built on Fusion middleware

• Enterprise 9.0 - wonderful performance management capability, profile management helps identify job/employee what does success profile look like, etc

• EBS still ties together with competency management, with Fusion - profile management will be a part of solution

• Thrilled that Oracle is investing in Succession

• One of gaps is thinking about processes and white space, Oracle continues to have to improve but Leighanne makes this about all versions

Jason Corsello - "How does an HR organization need to be organized to take advantage of integrated talent management?" and "Is separation from HR administration from strategic talent functions a good idea?"

• HR departments - many HR departments still don't have business accumen; dont know how to read P&L, balance sheets

• Build level of business accumen

• Publically traded company; tap into earnings calls, understand strategies of CEO and leadership

• As looking at TM solutions and building strategy, reach out to the business units themselves

• Most organizations dont care about the technology, CAN THEY DO THEIR JOB BETTER

• GET OUT into the field

• Build governance structures, governance models - executive sponsorship, business models

• What do roles look like? How are decisions made? What are responsibilities? How do you articulate value?

• GET buy in from the business

• Starting to see HR titles change; client in Las Vegas called Talent Center not HR Center - VP Talent

• Director of Talent Mobility

Lisa - just published IDC survey

• 27% of respondents said they had a talent function up from 18% a year ago (more focus)

Zach

• New definition of HR business partner - seeing HR business analysts - business partner with business accumen and technology (tough person to find)

• Couple steps down from leader of HR, but becoming a bigger part of overall HR organization

• Business might own more of the talent processes, not HR

Leighanne

• Case study with American Express - roughly 250k employees, really just manage talent for the top 3000. Built a center of excellence for talent planning, assessment

• Yes, rebranding HR and becoming more business saavy

Zach - "How can we talk about major companies using tricky stuff in Web 2.0"

• Job boards - failed

• Company recruiting sites - failed

• Methodology to look at usability of B to B and Workforce websites

• Usage of Web 2.0 - get fundamentals down first

• usable experience - foundation solidly in place

Question from audience - "City of Chicago"

• never heard the term state/local government used

• are state/local governments using these tools?

• George Carlin - talent management vs. HR department - is that a negative on what the HR department is doing

• Jason Corsello refers to a mail carrier

• huge talent crisis; pain

• realized over 60% retirement eligible over next 5 years

• obviously pain in government (demographics); seeing lots of initiatives around talent acquisition

• Succession Planning - as baby boomers enter into retirement

• Lisa Rowen - naming of HR vs talent

• talent management not a replacement name for HR

• looking at parts of business you have to do drive business outcomes

• nothing to do with HR, payroll, record keeping

• talent management is different and is not HR by another name

Software as a Service (SaaS) - Leighanne - alternative delivery model

• Only viable for small/mid organizations and what are barriers

• SaaS - having solution provider host instance

• Pure SaaS - one line of code, shared resources - lower costs

• Some problems, but fading fast - data privacy, configuration, providers have worked hard to dispel rumors - SAS 70 certification - there environments are probably more secure then an enterprise client

• Not just for small/midsize businesses anymore

• SaaS has been used for years - ATS, Performance Management

• Option to now think about it for all functions

• If operate in highly regulated industry - validated environment is needed and in some cases, cannot take advantage of SaaS model

• Bill Kutik - if you get Saas - HRIS (you don't get to screw with it like you have in the on-premise model)

• Question - European privacy laws - SaaS providers are offering enormous amount of configuration to have specific rules/legs per regions

• SaaS vendors have done a good job of opening up to global needs

• Not just languages, global configurations

• PeopleSoft solution, that is what it is made for

Jason Corsello - thoughts on SaaS?

• SaaS is not hosted

• SaaS is everything maintained by solution provider

• Hosted - still have to work with hosting provider and solution provider

• SaaS is not easy to do - SAP has been trying to do with Business By Design and have not been that successful

Statement about SaaS

I have had indepth conversations with 20+ CIO's in the last few weeks. Most CIO's are saying "I cant believe I am saying this, last year wouldnt have said this." "SaaS has tremendous value and interest to CIO's and continuing to shift on an ongoing basis."

• It is real

• HRIT must shift to do things differently

Do you know anything more about Fusion today? - Jason Corsello

• Strategy for Fusion has been brilliant for Oracle

• Not that good for the industry

• Many folks not doing much, waiting for Fusion

• Lots of hope and anticipation, until we see something - hope it is significant

Leighanne

• Greater integration

• More enterprise integrations

• Cant be more excited about middleware

• Will carryover 9.1 and 12.1 - middleware and architecture will make difference

• Will make talent management relevant to a business user

• Fusion middleware means openness, not strapped to application

Early audience feedback from people sitting around me

• Were they paid by Oracle not to say anything

• Very insightful about talent management

• Not very good, not at all what expected, leaving without any more knowledge

• Doesn't help us go back and sell organization on why stay with Oracle like we want to

• If we need to do something today because our CEO says so, what do we say, wait for Fusion?

• Great endorsement for Fusion that we are looking for more information on

• Could Oracle offer its talent management products in a SaaS model?

Interesting feedback. Your thoughts if you were at event. Great job by Oracle and OHUG providing insight into industry. A huge positive of this event is to offer this to the community. Oracle continues to lead the pack when it comes to providing industry value about HCM and talent management.

Another infusion of knowledge...

As discussed yesterday, Enterprise 2.0 continues to surge and InfoWorld has more examples of success with Oracle, Best Buy and Serena. From a Knowledge Infusion standpoint, even more reason and validation behind the Digital HR StrategyMap that our customers are continuing to adopt.

Take a read of the article and let me know examples of what is happening in your company.

Another infusion of knowledge...[Link to InfoWorld Article|http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/06/18/Web-2-scores-successes-in-the-enterpri se_1.html]

I wanted to take a second to tip my hat to the leadership of the OHUG, Oracle HCM Users Group organization. Beginning Sunday, the OHUG 2008 conference is in Las Vegas at The Mirage. This organization has done a brilliant job of bringing together content and leaders from around the world to discuss how they are leveraging the Oracle/PeopleSoft platforms to truly change HR.

Knowledge Infusion will be presenting two sessions at the event. One on Digital HR and the future direction of HR technologies and another session with a customer of ours, Franklin Templeton who will discuss how they are using HR HelpDesk and future direction for HR Service Delivery.

Take a second to let us know if you will be attending the event by clicking on reply to this entry. Also, let us know what you are expecting from the event and WHY you go to an event such as this.

Look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas!!

Another infusion of knowledge...

Link to OHUG website

Knowledge Infusion is asked on a DAILY BASIS if not HOURLY BASIS about the future of enterprise software. I wanted to quickly make you aware of two pieces of content that will help you tremendously in understanding the future.

1) Gretchen Alarcon, VP of Product Strategy at Oracle, was on The Bill Kutik Show this morning and shed light on her views of Enterprise Software and the direction that Oracle is moving.

Click here to listen to the interview!!

2) SAP's Bill McDermott has a fascinating interview as part of Knowledge@Wharton where he does a great job of explaining the future of Enterprise Software in his view and how "usage of data amassed over the past decade will drive the future of this space."

Click here to listen and read the interview!!

Enterprise Core HR, Payroll and Benefits software integrated to Talent Management tools along with portals and business intelligence continue to power HR's ability to drive business results in the world today. Going forward, look for the next generation of Enterprise Software to truly help HR show its value, not just capture data.

Another infusion of knowledge...

Wow...I have been in 4 airports and 5 states over the last 24 hours and there is NO ONE not talking about the price of Oil and gasoline and possible impacts. Do you think the oil/gas prices will have an impact AT ALL on the HR technology space?

Please post your thoughts..Always good to have a group of peers share their thoughts as I am not sure completely how to answer the question

I will share my thoughts in 48 hours or so...

Another infusion of knowledge...

Michael Specht does a great job at his blog discussing the market today and where HCM vendors and the market have a chasm surrounding what Web 2.0 can do to the function. This is important for anyone looking at HR, HRMS, Talent Management and Business Intelligence tools today in the world of HR and HRIS.

Michael also quotes Jason Corsello, from Knowledge Infusion:

What’s missing in the HCM markets definition of “web 2.o”, is the impact and value of social software (blogs, wikis, social networks, search, RSS, etc). Frankly, I think social software is destined to be a huge component of HCM software in the future, yet few vendors know what it is or how to take advantage of its value

Not going to comment further, would love your thoughts

Link to blog post

Another infusion of knowledge...