Since the HR Technology Conference approximately three weeks ago in Chicago, IL; Knowledge Infusion has continually been asked questions about the Shootouts and Battle at the event. Here are some of the questions that have come in through the COE and other avenues:

• I never knew Lawson had a HCM product

• Authoria's product looked so much easier than the one that I have installed at my site

• Why does SuccessFactors interface look so different than Vurv's?

• The Workday product looks amazing, why are more customers not using it

• Lawson said in a press release that they won the Battle; is this true?

• Why does Authoria always win yet they didnt make our short list?

• I thought Taleo had a performance/succession product; I guess it wasnt good enough to make it to the finals

I find all of these questions interesting, amusing, frustrating and intriguing all together. Let me explain how Knowledge Infusion would recommend that you use data and opinions from these types of events:

1. These types of events are a great way to see vendors user interfaces and functionality at a 50,000 ft level. The demonstrations are very scripted and often tied to the vendors strengths, not their weaknesses, and should be looked at through that lens. One SHOULD NEVER make a vendor decision based on what is seen at these events.

2. The vendors presentations are a result of an amazing amount of work, scripting and at times; customization of their software. You SHOULD NEVER think what you see on the screen at these events is what you get as a customer of these vendors. In some cases it is, in many it is not. What is true, is that with customization and configuration, the software can do what you saw.

3. Some of the vendors were showing products that are not generally available today. This would explain why the look and feel might appear drastically different than the version that you are using. Check with your vendor to see when the version they showed at the event will be available to you.

4. Don't read too much into a vendors press release saying that they WON an event. I thought that there was a lot of chest puffing after this event that continues to add confusion to the enterprise client space. Authoria was the only VOTED winner at HR Technology by the people in the room and remember even that was a group of approximately 700 that voted in a room after looking at 20 minutes of software. Of course some analysts liked one vendor better than the other and even proclaimed a winner; but that is in the eyes of one analyst and definitely not the public. Once again, should be seen as a opinion.

5. The best software in the world can be deployed wrong and be thought of as a terrible solution and the worst looking software can be deployed with excellence and seen asa great solution. There is much more to think about such as integrations, supportability, true value creation and deployment to the workforce than what people saw on those screens.

6. The Shootout and Battle formats can tell you alot about the executives from an organization by their personae on the stage, but Knowledge Infusion recommends you truly understand the vendor and their executives personal goals and cultures before entering into a true partnership.

The Shootouts and Battles are great events. They allow enterprise clients to see software that they would never get a chance to see without entering into a sales process. THEY ARE NOT A VENDOR SELECTION, A SOFTWARE REVIEW, A FIT GAP, A TRUE BUSINESS PROCESS SCENARIO EVALUATION.

Knowledge Infusion thinks that enterprise clients should attend and see as many of these types of events as possible and learn from what you see, but that is where it stops. Don't overvalue the press releases and the hype; get to know the vendors, understand how they fit into your organizations culture and make a true process based decision.

Finally, there are many other vendors in the Talent Management and HCM space than who demonstrated at HR Technology 2007. Stay tuned for more on this topic as Knowledge Infusion works to help you continue to understand this everchanging space.

Another infusion of knowledge...

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...

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