As part of the Knowledge Infusion live coverage from the HR Technology Conference, here is a blow by blow from the Performance/Learning Management Shootout. Huge audience in attendance showing interest in the space.

• Authoria - Tod Loofbourrow

• HRSmart - Mark Hamdan

• SuccessFactors - Lars Dalgaard

• Vurv - Derek Mercer

Vendors CEO's will be following scripts prepared by HR Technology Co-Chair - Bill Kutik

3 Segments of Demonstrations

Scenario 1 - need to fill a position, put it out there, modify competencies, send to job board

Vurv

• Starts out with sexy dashboard view

• Good overview of comptencies, storing over 2000 competencies including factors and interview questions

• Great visual view of talent side by side - drill down by goals

• Easy to drill into profile details

• Nice view of interview evaluation form

• Request feedback right from interview review - very easy to send out emails for feedback (good use of workflow)

• Easy to add competencies to job model

• User interface looks very nice

• Automatic email - Mgr goes right from Outlook email to right place in Vurv application for manager to do their job

• Good flow, easy to understand

SuccessFactors

• Leads off with some SEXY org charting

• Great employee profile

• Easy to take action right from org chart

• Great view of information right next to org view

• Easy to use text editing, MS Word like

• Knockout questions - nice formatting for recruiting

• Leverage performance data from past to link to recruiting process - value of integration

HRSmart

• Dashboard start

• Nice gap analysis from succession standpoint

• Ad Hoc approvals - easy to understand

• Interface easy to understand - steps easy to understand

• Not alot of showing of competency libraries, etc

Authoria

• starts with story about how Authoria can help with conversations

• User interface and dashboard incredible - easiest to understand

• Nice org chart view

• Drill down to profile to allow for meaningful conversation

• Take actions right from Org Chart

• Great wizard to add positions

• Designed for managers, not HR department - big difference between Authoria and other vendors in that area

• Slide bar to ratchet up rigor around compentencies and knockout questions

• Wizard makes it looks easy, standardization or processes

Scenario #1 Voting: Authoria 66%, Vurv 25%, SuccessFactors 5%, HRsmart 2%

Segment 2: Finding the best candidate for jobs

SuccessFactors

• Starts out with Google Maps view of where positions and people are

• Great alerts with flags - drill back to Google Maps - see in candidate Chicago, not San Jose and not willing to moveherefore not really a candidate

• Left Axis - Average cost of driving candidate into org (HotJobs, Monster)

• Bottom Axis - Performance - AMAZING way to see where the best candidates have come from integrated into performance management - At this point, best I have seen - not only how they did, where they came from, but how much it cost to recruit

• More use of dashboards - showing ratings by colors, with drill down into details

HRSmart

• Good view of searches

• Look back in past, people I have interviewed

• Not as graphical, but good amount of detail per search and view screens without drilling around

• Easy to navigate tabs

• Nice view using graphs - pie charts, spider graphs

• More sophisticated views - different approach from SuccessFactors - harder to compare (text vs. graphical with successfactors)

• Good compare functionality

Authoria

• Once again, great opening dashboard and similar starting spot - good for deployment

• CNBC looking User Interface - tying in content with metrics / analytics

• Drill down on metrics and analytics to data

• Blinking yellow star - alerts

• Task based actions from task lists

• Drill to resume and find search terms - google desktop type approach

• Nice compare - side by side

• Ad hoc workflow for sending of data off to managers

Vurv

• Concept search

• Easy to understand interface

• Good compare functionality

• Not as detailed from an analytical standpoint

• More user friendly than HRSmart for recruiters

• Consistent UI throughout

Scenario #2 Voting: Authoria 70%, Vurv 14%, SuccessFactors 10%, HRsmart 6%

Major discussion about time left for each candidate - CONTROVERSY (smile)

HRSmart

• Nice dashboard view of hiring history

• Good Integration to training summary in one place

• Career development - nice views

• Good transactional application - consistent look and feel

• Not as sexy as others, but based on guy sitting next to me, we arent looking for sexy

Authoria

• Same dashboard and interface - consistently the best looking (doesnt mean a ton to everyone)

• Very task based allowing for automation of processes

• Development plan - training / mentor

• Built in change management - Just in time coaching (VERY COOL FOR DEPLOYMENT PURPOSES)

• RAPID ASSIST COACHING - Microsoft Dog like

• Metrics and Analytics are easy to understand, drillable, detailed

Vurv

• Great interface - tabs showing goals, development plans

• Attendee sitting next to me likes the interface better than the best - perfect level of sexiness

• Pre delivered coaching ideas - nice feature

• Compare sources to performance - basic compared to Authoria and SuccessFactors, but enough for some

SuccessFactors

• Nice color coding and alerts

• Great point on driving accountability across organization

• Everything done in one view - easy for a leader

• Creating goals (good mentions of DDI, PDI, Lominger - gives much credibility to SuccessFactors

• Make real not just look good - a bit of a rip on someone? hmm

• Dashboards from SuccessFactors tie it all together - amazing graphical views without multiple clicks

Scenario #3 Votign: Authoria 45%, SuccessFactors 31%, Vurv 14%,HRsmart 9%

Overall winner - Authoria

Knowledge Infusion works daily with organizations of all shapes and sizes. One thing that is consistent is that each organization has a bit different expectation of the IT (Information Technology) organization.

Today's world of IT has changed drastically but it is caught in the middle of an identity crisis. IT is called to help with:

• How to do a conference call on your phone

• How to get rid of pop ups

• How to customize your ERP application to look prettier

• How to negotiate better prices and beat up vendors

• How to install a new version of Solitaire

• How to make your computer email work with your phone

• How to connect to a wireless network

• How to print

All of these things are critical functions that need to happen within the walls of an enterprise, but where do IT people come from? The answer, they are coming from different places tomorrow with different skills and different attitudes than those who are in IT today. Lets call them the "New Generation of IT)

Here is a good article from believe it or not, PC World Australia that talks about the future employee in the IT organization.

A few highlights to note:

• "I've known ever since I was 17 that IT is for me," says Lee. "Most
  people assume that IT people are stuck in front of a computer the
  entire time, coding away. They don't understand that that's only one
  small component to our tool set -- our role is so much broader than
  that."

• Certainly, when it comes to considering a career in technology,
  Generation Y is more jaded than generations past. The number of
  freshmen pursuing a computer science track has fallen by 70 percent
  since 2000, according to the Computing Research Association. The
  reasons are myriad.

• Outsourcing

• Work/Life Balance

• Think everyone knows technology, so not worthy of a career

Take a read. HR needs IT and IT needs HR. Together, a HR/Talent Management technology strategy can be born and executed; without the partnership - very hard to get out of the starting blocks. Take some time to learn about each other and how you think; success is not that far away.

Another infusion of knowledge...

Link to article

Knowledge Infusion Center of Excellence has been brining you updates from key sessions at HR Technology 2007 in Chicago, Illinois. A great event this year showcasing leaders, technologies and futures in the HR, HCM and Talent Management space.

The HCM Battle is between Workday, Lawson and Oracle - VERY INTERESTING TITLE

Bill Kutik opens session with lots of vendors, these arent the only three and not necessarily the best. Important to understand that there are many vendors out there.

• Bill Kutik written scenario is #1

• Vendor written scenario is #2

• Best Cool Stuff by each vendor is #3

No SCORING will be done at this event

Segment #1

Lawson

Theme is space - What is your technology space

"You want to do your work where you work" - outlook, facebook, applications

VP of HR - lives in MS Outlook

HR Generalist - lives in Lawson User Experience

• Within Outlook, the MS Outlook Plugin has added My Direct Reports - very cool future technology

• VP using Outlook to Create Job Req - all with real-time integration to Lawson job tables

• Lawson Smart Client - nice dashboard

• User Interface of Smart Client - very text based

• Tabs at top similar to Firefox, nice working model

• Once again, UI not sexy but very workable

• Very cool use of free-form text search

• Spider diagram mapping comptencies to profile - very nice use of new graphical approach

• Great group selection tool - puts people into groups

• Synchronized Outlook and then now in Outlook, the VP can review candidates

• VERY NICE APPROACH TO USING one business tool for the VP and one tool for the HR individual

• VP actual operating within Outlook and automatically sends off request to HR generalist

• VERY COOL to see information in both Outlook and Smart Client depending on role and preference of UI

• Good use of Org Charting - dynamic changes based on what was done in Outlook

• Very good use of SPACE - best place to do certain task based on the person performing the task

Oracle

• Showing Oracle EBS Release 12

• Good use of Portal - email, calendar - mention of RSS feeds

• Conolidated worklist from all enterprise systems - nice to have in one place

• iRecruitment - clean interface, very text based

• Graphical review of embedded decision support

• Nice ability to pull up performance data, resume all from one place, easy to access

• Very little menu navigation - meeting todays new standards around taxonomy

• Nice ability to store policy, procedures, forms within application

• Good use of automatic workflow and processes without need for manual intervention

• User interface overall very non-web 2.0 based, but very sound tactical

Workday

• Role based homepage

• Cool search capability to find "how to do a function" - create a team

• Lots of use of Search - VERY VERY good search capability and ability to use search info

• Nice use of windows allowing for good use of desktop - comparing side by side windows

• Tab view again - Firefox like - Easy to navigate and use

• Compare feature of qualified workers - could use graphical view vs. text view to make comparison easier

• Create role on the fly based on eligibility - VERY powerful based on grouping capabilities needed today

• No menus again making deployment easier - Not navigation based but task based - very web 2.0 looking

• Nice organizational chart - creation of team and org view

Scenario #2

Oracle

• Configuration Workbench - powerful tool for creating org structures and applying data

• Interview based wizard

• Powerful tool for guiance in the application

• System recommended best practices - much needed in todays fragmented world

• Import data from spreadsheets - well needed based on people using Micosoft in most cases

• Very easy for end users

• Great use of analytics and metrics in Daily Business Intelligence

• Compensation Workbench

• Very powerful tool to find all data in one place to drive compensation decisions

• Visual indicators and budgeting - MUCH NEEDED today

• Checklists

Workday

• Great organizational charting and visualization

• Ability to take actions right from charting

• Cool sliding Inbox - Adobe FLEX

• Dynamic currency conversion - big feature

• Business Event Configuration - apply own rules based on business rules without hard coding - VERY POWERFUL

• UI very clean even when much text on screen

• Related Tasks - powerful - helpful with training / deployment in cutting costs

• PDF, Excel, RSS feeds - powerful

• Expose reports as web services - quite powerful for corporate directories, etc

• Decent looking HR graphs and charts

Lawson

• Desktop nice interface and broken up in easy to understand ways

• Embedded filterning is powerful without needing to run reports

• Very powerful talent functionality - similar to best of breed vendors

• Smart Client allows for everything to be done within one form - nice selling point around deployment

• Very dynamic form - stretch fields, columns

• Succession SPACE - all in one place

• Create PDF easily like Workday

• One SPACE for transactions, content, metrics/analytics, and delivery

• VERY GOOD DEMO - IMPRESSIVE

Scenario #3

Workday

• Workday demos reorgs alot, clearly learned from PeopleSoft days - very impressive

• Not only reorganized people, but the people that support them

• Business Process framework - everything is an event allowing for tailoring

• NO IT Involved, NO customization involved, configuration

• Extend Workday - adding data elements

• Looks very easy, not IT

• SaaS yet very configurable, IMPRESSIVE

• Very sound SaaS HCM tool with great future

Lawson

• Showing FACEBOOK and using web services to put Lawson Recruiting on a person on Facebook page

• Very Web 2.0* Very important in todays world of Millenials

• Great looking interface from Lawson Recruiting from Facebook

• Integration nice back into Facebook Community

• Lawson gets where the market is needing to go by providing these Web Services

Oracle

• Gretchen Alarcon starts with impressive Web 2.0 dashboard

• Demonstrates ability to integrate RSS feeds, Instant Messaging, Tagging, Blogging

• Oracle Labs doing a good job of staying up on Web 2.0 standards and looking for ways to embed into solutions

• Certainly hope Oracle can take these technologies and embed into products without major upgrades

• The power that Oracle might be able to provide combining enterprise data with Web 2.0 technology is staggering

• Gretchen does a great job summarizing and does the great job showing how they may use Web 2.0 into the future

To vote on who won the Battle if you were in attendance, go to the KI Center of Excellence Community

Another infusion of knowledge...

Another laptop disappearance, more employee data missing!

One of the things that Knowledge Infusion works with its enterprise clients around is helping them understand the maturity of the On Demand and Software as a Service market. Organizations are continually concerned about their data being and that causing major employee issues. These issues get exacerbated when looking at global data because of data privacy issues.

This morning, news of another laptop being stolen from Administaff. Last week, The Gap - this week Administaff.

HR should be thinking about how its computers (locally) are being guarded since most organizations download data into Microsoft products with no security which makes data theft quite easy.

Keep this in mind if your organization downloads data of any kind from systems, whether on premise or off premise. The issue is probably not going to be the software vendor, but probably the people that manage your facilities and how laptops and desktops are secured.

Another infusion of knowledge...

Link to article

Larry makes a great post on his blog thanking his team at Lawson for all of their hard work. Take a read.

Another infusion of knowledge...

Panel with huge crowd at HR Technology Conference in Chicago. Knowledge Infusion broadcasting live from HR Technology Conference.

Panel results from audience:

1. What are your buying patterns in next year?

25% not sure of plans (creating a plan)

30% buy from existing vendor (ERP,HRMS)

34% buy best of breed and integrate to ERP, HRMS

11% no plans to buy

2. Highest priority of audience in next year to buy or implement

29% Portal and Self Service

29% Recruiting

22% Performance Management

7% Succession Planning

7% Compensation

5% Learning

3. Do you plan to outsource all or part of your HR function (great comment from Bill Kutik...if you know you are about to be oursourced)

2% all of HR

42% some of HR

56% nothing new

4. How many plan to replace their current recruiting system in the next year?

49% Yes

51% No

AMAZING - continues to show dissatisfaction with talent management space

_____

Oracle Fusion, Lawson Ordway, SAP Business by Design, Workday will change the game

Jim Holincheck from Gartner

responds : great possibility that htis is true

a) Service Oriented Architecture

b) Software as a Service also a huge piece of picture (Lawson, SAP, Workday - all adopting Saas) - may be even the more game changing piece of the puzzle

Jason Corsello from Knowledge Infusion

not yet

Fusion - still wondering what this is going to look like

Web 2.0 - emerging technology changes will be huge (Oracle, SAP still have huge opportunity)

Oracle SAP have three things going for them

3 things:

Money, Resources Time

Lisa Rowen from IDC

depends how you change the game

More important to look at systemic part of HR

if these systems can help standardize and transform - yes

if these new systems cant - game isnt changing

Naomi Bloom

5 tests:

1) Did they get object model right? - will cut tie to exising model - means new implementations everybody..

2) Web Services - must use going forward

3) Right Architectural Behaviors - Effective Dates, Self Service

4) Strategic HR have to be there from the ground - too important and hard to add later

5) Must get economics right (TCO) - real cost is cost of service delivery - if products make a sense

Jim adds

More and more clients are spending money on maintenance, support, upgrades - so much money being spent, cant spend on user experience - hearing alot of angst about being on upgrade treadmill - wanting to shift burden to someone else

Jason adds

Enterprises have alot of control; need to take more control on getting vendors to change that 22% maintenance is alot; time

Question : What is single most innovative in the past year

Jim Holincheck

largest vote for Sonar6 - Performance and Succession Planning - radically rethought GUI; second vote would be for McKenna - Motivator product - Sales Incentive Management

Lisa Rowen

nothing really all that new; just realizing that we can dust off some things and put them to use. Had AHA moment - innovation can come in many forms; new tools can still bring innovation without new technologies

Jason Corsello

Outlook PlugIn, not new but need more - Innovation is where we can create engaging interactions within the main users application of choice. Everyone has new UI, what gets lost is why not go to where the users hangout. Go where the users are instead of developing another UI. Focus too much on innovation in technology, needs to happen and process and deployment level; not just the UI level - how do you drive adoption.

____

Naomi - Is a comprehensive, integrated TM suite the only way to become strategic

Technology is not strategic, what organizations need is to think about business strategy and design process/plan to understand business issues. Integration without alot of planning could be nightmare. Software is key, but by no means the whole story

Jason - Is a comprehensive, integrated TM suite the only way to become strategic

Not even close to being there. This is year 3 of a 7 year cycle (or longer).

Lisa - No silver bullet in technology; all about understanding the needs of HR

Tools can help move it along, no one vendor that has it all

Jim - One of concerns, piecemeal adoption is real tough. Need a talent system of record both from personal and job level

Naomi - think about multiple concurrent jobs, many TM platforms dont handle that

________________

Will ERP's catch the suite vendors? Will suite vendors become unnecessary or obsolete?

Jason

Do Oracle and SAP stand a chance, yes - will happen in next year or 3, probably not. They have best opportunity, question is can they grasp that.

Are people buying a suite - answer is definitely yes. People buying 2 up 130% year over year, people buying 3 up 100% year over year

Naomi

One of the reasons for churn in recruiting is churn. 200 talent management suite vendors on the floor. Way too many. Not sustainable. If you are going to be buying multiple modules, capabilities - please take hard look at vendor viability

Lisa