Knowledge Infuser

Maintenance Fees and HR Technology - Core HRMS

jason.averbook — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:34:05 GMT

Vinnie Merchandani has an excellent post today detailing some of his and others thoughts on the recent discussion around SAP maintenance fees and increases being imposed on the customer base. "If this was an election, SAP would be losing 94% - 6%, SCARY numbers!!"

After watching the presidential debate last night and various polls coming in all night from different sources, we all know that depending on who you talk to, polls can be swayed. But 94-6? SAP might want to consider listening to its customers very quickly as Vinnie suggests. Now, if they don't, what might happen?

Nothing - people are too entrenched with SAP to even make a change if they want to in this economy
Re-negotiate - hmmm - My friends, not sure if this will work - we don't know the unexpected
Switch to a new core HRMS - doubtful, but possible in today's economy

So, while people disagree, once again the core HRMS market is at a standstill. There are vendors such as Ultimate Software, Lawson and Workday working on some unique approaches, but still a VERY hard sell in today's economy as Knowledge Infusion is working with at least 10-15 organizations re-evaluating their core HR foundational strategy based on today's market.

Know what you are getting into, don't underestimate maintenance fees, and finally - DON'T OVERBUY!! There are some very unique strategies we are working on in our "strategy factory" as to what organizations can do to still realize the power of a global data source without a FULL BLOWN ERP strategy.

Take a read of Vinnie's post and reply with questions/comments. Thanks for keeping them honest Vinnie.

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Software Licensing Costs Set To Fall

jason.averbook — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 03:28:32 GMT

In a recent research note linked to below, Gartner made an interesting prediction that has caught the eye of the folks at Knowledge Infusion. At KI, we are involved in many software evaluations and selections where price is an issue, not the only issue, but still an issue. The latest research note from Gartner states that seven major things will drive costs down. A few of the biggies include Software as a Service (SaaS) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Some things to note about this and how it will effect the HR and talent management software space

More and more HR organizations are looking to Software as a Service solutions to drive their workforce facing solutions. The problem with this is that few HR organizations or vendors in the space are executing the deployment to acceptable customer service levels. This has to change during 2008 for SaaS solutions to continue to gain traction.
The ERP vendors such as Oracle and SAP are racing to change their software deployment models and architectures; the question remains, will they be able to do it in time.
Vendors such as Workday and Lawson have already invested heavily in the SOA model giving them a huge head start on the future of the core HR and foundation layers.

This topic will continue to gain attention over the next 12 to 18 months as the face of HR software changes forever (again). Stay tuned as the acronyms SaaS and SOA continue to replace the term ERP; and no, this doesn't mean Oracle and SAP are dead; just reinventing themselves.

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Link to article

HCM Battle at HR Technology Conference - Recap

jason.averbook — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 12:54:30 GMT

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

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Great Post by Larry Dunivan from Lawson

jason.averbook — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:33:46 GMT

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

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