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Lawson CUE 2011 in Talent Nation

Posted by Scott Schmidt Apr 14, 2011

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Last week I attended Lawson’s CUE event in Boston. The specter of acquisition that hung over everything gave the event an unusual feel, but the professionals at Lawson managed to showcase their products and future plans very well. There were a number of new product announcements (Lawson App Marketplace, Lawson Mashup Designer, and Lawson Viewpoint) as well as some pricing announcements, but I had two major takeaways from the event.

 

 

  • Lawson HCM software is the top product for the company. One thing that came in loud and clear during the entire event was the Lawson’s HCM product is now the most important software the company sells. Many of the presentations were focused around the innovation in HCM and Lawson Talent Management and the sales growth that they’ve seen over the last year. This is a great credit to the HCM team who have taken their Core HR product and built out an impressive Talent Management suite in a relatively short period of time. The message and importance of HCM to the overall company was communicated consistently throughout the day’s sessions.

 

 

  • Lawson clearly thought through the Enwisen acquisition to a degree not seen in many other HR technology acquisitions lately. Lawson has very smartly continued to market and position Enwisen as a separate offering to appeal to buyers looking for help solving their HR service delivery or knowledgebase needs, but they have also layered Enwisen’s value proposition into the Lawson Talent Management suite. This dual sales approach allows Enwisen to continue to appeal to non-Lawson HCM customers, while also giving a new product to sell into existing customers. In my mind this functionality also provides one of the few true differentiators in a space that too often seems to have competitors all racing to develop the same functionality.

 

 

Overall I thought it was a fun event and the Lawson team did an excellent job highlighting their products and communicating a very cohesive message through the entire week. Like everyone else I’m waiting to see if acquisition changes future plans, but for now it seems like the Lawson Management team has a very clear plan for their software moving forward. For more thoughts on Lawson and Enwisen please check the KI OnDemand Vendor Center (available to premium members only).

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Join leading practitioners for a one-day event on February 22 at the 2011 Knowledge Infusion Winter Executive Forum.

 

Location
The event will be hosted at Knowledge Infusion client Franklin Templeton headquarters in San Mateo, California.

 

Overview
The theme for the event is on Building the Workforce of the Future, including presentations about workforce planning, human capital analytics and measurement, HR service delivery and enterprise collaboration.

 

Keynote speakers include industry experts Al Adamsen and Dr. Jac Fitz-enz, as well as HR leaders from Starbucks and Franklin Templeton.

 

Cost

The Winter Executive Forum is available exclusively to Knowledge Infusion KI OnDemand premium members at no charge. Additional individual attendees cost $495 per person. The fees include full conference access, conference materials, meals and beverages. Hotel and travel costs not included.

 

Register Today!

Don’t miss this exclusive event! Contact ondemand@knowledgeinfusion.com for more information.

 

Why should you attend the 2011 Knowledge Infusion Winter Executive Forum?

Leading organizations had the following to say about Knowledge Infusion Executive Forums.

 

What I liked best:

“Hearing from both industry leaders and fellow practitioners on practical solutions. Great mix of speakers.”
E.W. SCRIPPS

 

“Clients discussing current state, efforts and initiatives, and future states of what they want to achieve.”
RACKSPACE

 

“The diversity of information. I also really liked the small group setting.”
YMCA OF DALLAS

 

“The speakers were absolutely phenomenal.”
DELL

 

“The opportunity to listen to HR executives on their real life results. Keynote speakers were awesome!”
HAGGAR CLOTHING CO

 

“Quality of speakers was outstanding. Well prepared and interesting topics. Having the conference on site and having the opportunity to tour the facility was great. Social events were well planned and the size of the group made it very easy to get to know other attendees in a relaxed situation.”
NORDSTROM

 

“The customer sessions. It was great to hear how other companies are working through some of the same issues.”
THE HERTZ CORPORATION

 

“Each speaker presented relevant and information-rich information. There wasn't a second of the conference that I didn't feel interested and engaged...no daydreaming and no time to check emails throughout the day.”
FLEXI COMPRAS CORP

 

“I liked the business focus, the "real world" presentation. The opportunity to network with others, the size of the group made it easy to have meaningful conversations.”
AUTOTRADER.COM

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Last Friday, Knowledge Infusion CEO, Jason Averbook, tweeted that “…it was great to see a non-HR person leading HR” while listening to Kristin Trecker, SVP of HR for Lawson, speak at an event. The concept of taking the leader of another part of the business and placing them into human resources is something that is frequently discussed as a good thing, but for some reason the tweet struck a nerve with me.

 

What would you think about someone who said “Hey, it’s great to see a non-financial person being named Chief Financial Officer”? I’m sure some of you just laughed and thought to yourselves: Finance is much too complicated and specialized for someone without a finance background to lead the department/division. But what does the fact that it is accepted, and even encouraged, to look for HR executives from outside of HR say about how HR is truly viewed by business leaders? Isn’t the top HR position of a company also responsible for being the expert on a number of ever-changing laws and regulations? Doesn’t HR have just as much specialized knowledge and unique skill requirements as marketing or finance? So HR clearly has a communication or a perception problem (probably both).

 

Now we work with a number of clients who have great HR executives who began their careers in other areas of the business and then transitioned to take over HR, so I’m not saying that it doesn’t work or shouldn’t be done. But the next time you hear someone say “It’s great to see a non-HR person leading HR” as an HR practitioner that should make you angry. The HR community needs to start challenging the perception that anyone can do HR, and until that becomes more widespread HR practitioners are never going to be treated with the same level of respect as other C-level executives.

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Knowledge Infusion colleagues and friends completed the Big Sur Half Marathon 2010 on November 14 on behalf of LIVESTRONG, the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Elite runners and first-time half marathoners alike completed the race. And the KI kids enjoyed their own special fun run!

 

Congratulations to all runners, and thank you to everyone who supported us with your donations!

 

Want to donate? Our donation page is still live! Click here: https://www.firstgiving.com/kibigsur

 

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This is the second post analyzing some of the data from the 2010 Knowledge Infusion & ERE Future of Recruiting & Sourcing survey. In this post I’ll reflect on some of the survey responses regarding social media in recruiting.

 

Obviously this is a hot topic within companies and I believe there is a sense that companies need to do more in social media, but the numbers tell a more complicated story. When asked about investment in recruiting, 38% of respondents said they planned more investment in social media, which was the highest of any of the options. The interesting part is that when asked what their company uses social networking for, and what social networks are being used at work, those numbers remained nearly unchanged from last year’s survey. The only significant increase was that 35% of respondents said they were going to use twitter for recruiting, up from 25% in 2009.

 

One way to read these numbers is that there is a divide between the companies that use social media for recruiting and those that do not. So if you are already using social media you are planning to increase your investment, but for companies that have not used social media in the past they are not planning to start this year.

 

What do you think about this data? What are your company’s plans around social media this year? I’m interested to see if companies who haven’t adopted social media in the past are coming around, so please leave a comment on the blog.

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The results from the 2010 Knowledge Infusion & ERE Future of Recruiting and Sourcing are now available as part of the premium content on KI OnDemand. For our non-premium members I’m going to have a couple posts with my thoughts on the results here on the Talent Nation blog.

 

Maybe surprising to no one, but interesting to note were the changes in the reporting structure within organizations, and the increased expectations for recruiting organizations this year.

 

In the 2009 survey 31% of people responded that they reported to a higher level recruiting executive (ie Recruiting Manage, Director of Recruiting, VP of Recruiting). In 2010, this number has declined to 22%. In 2009, 62% of survey respondents also said that they reported into a centralized recruiting function. This number dropped to 49% in the 2010 survey. This data shows that recruiting organizations have been trimmed and higher paid recruiting executive positions have been eliminated, leaving the lower level recruiting to report in to other areas of HR.

 

So while there have been changes to how recruiting departments are structured, there are some positive signs for hiring. Recruiting is becoming more important for organizations, though still not a top priority. When asked to rate the importance of recruiting to their organization 43% said it is in the middle third of priorities and only 11% said it was in the bottom third. This is a big different from 2009 when 26% believed recruiting was in the bottom third of priorities and only 32% believed it was in the middle.

 

The higher priority of recruiting to organizations is a positive thing, but companies are still preaching “do more with less.” 52% of respondents said that they believe their hiring will increase next year, but only 21% said they expected their recruiting budgets to increase. This is more telling because in 2009, 57% of respondents had their budgets cut, but now that hiring has increased they are still operating on budgets approved in 2009 when hiring activity was extremely low.

 

I’m sure that’s old news to the recruiters reading, but it is interesting that the data backs them up. In the next post on this topic I’ll share some of the numbers surrounding social media recruiting...

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kibigsur.jpgOn November 14, 2010, Knowledge Infusion colleagues, customers, partners and friends will be taking part in the Big Sur Half Marathon. As part of the Knowledge Infusion philanthropy program launched last year, we will be running 13.1 miles in an effort to raise money for a great organization.

 

Last year, we were fortunate enough to raise over $10,000 for The Toys for Tots Foundation. We have an ambitious goal this year to raise over $25,000 for the LIVESTRONG/Lance Armstrong Foundation. Earlier this year, many Knowledge Infusion employees had a chance to meet Doug Ulman, CEO of LIVESTRONG, at our Summer Executive Forum and got a chance to learn about the amazing work he and the LIVESTRONG/Lance Armstrong Foundation team do on a daily basis to improve the lives of people affected by cancer.

 

Please help us in our efforts by making a donation. Donations can be easily made on our Knowledge Infusion Fundraising page.  You can donate online with a credit card. All donations are secure and sent directly to LIVESTRONG by Firstgiving, who will email you a printable record of your donation.

 

On behalf of Knowledge Infusion, I thank you in advance for your support.

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Use It or Lose It in Talent Nation

Posted by Scott Schmidt Nov 1, 2010

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I like to watch reruns of the office when I cook dinner at night. This past week they ran the episode where Michael discovers he has extra money in the budget that needs to get spent before the end of the day or his budget for the next year will be cut. The office crew then spends the rest of the episode deciding between new chairs or a new copier.

 

I laughed at the episode, but was also struck that it was funny because this is something that happens in so many organizations.  I’m sure everyone reading can think of an example when the year was ending and the unspent money in the budget needed to go, so an extra recruiting trip is planned, or a few people go to a conference at the last minute.

 

If you’re in this situation how are you going to use any unspent money this year? Take some time in planning out your decision so you are not forced into buying chairs or office equipment to spend money for the sake of spending money. To help you with that evaluation and the process of getting your business case approved we have published some materials on KI OnDemand on writing a successful business case (Premium Membership Required).

 

And if you want something that really will add value to your organization consider a KIOD membership, still being offered at a special rate for the end of year.  Email ondemand@knowledgeinfusion.com for more details.

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Knowledge Infusion today announced the launch of the fourth annual talent management joint survey with Human Resource Executive®. This year’s survey will focus on how organizations are moving forward with integrated talent management and workforce planning initiatives, including:

 

  • How talent management strategy is evolving.
  • Organizations approach to deploying a talent management suite.
  • Successes, challenges, and future plans for workforce planning.
  • Buying trends as we move towards economic recovery.

 

The data collected will be analyzed by Knowledge Infusion experts to bring organizations tangible actions to be successful with talent management technology initiatives. Participants of the ten-minute survey will get a full copy of the results and be able to benchmark themselves against other organizations.

 

HR professionals are invited to take the survey now.

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photo1.jpgThe HR Technology Conference is the one event every year I really look forward to attending.  It is the only event where you can spend time with vendor executives and understand where they are going, catch-up with clients to hear how they are progressing their HR strategy, and listen to companies and discuss what they need to evolve their strategy.

 

In summarizing many of those conversations, a couple of key themes seem to resonate this year...

 

  1. Still lots of talk and little action in enterprise collaboration.  The market still seems conflicted between the the "cool" factor of new technologies and risk concerns of rogue employees.  Instead the discussion should be about the value, benefits and impact of social-based collaboration.  HR is not taking advantage of the opportunity to lead this new era of collaboration within their organization.  Jason Averbook, in the Great Debate session with Jim Holincheck, described "social" as a solution looking for a problem.  Three challenges are creating a stand-still for most organizations today: 1) the HR audience, who tend to be more followers than leaders, 2) the lack of technology that blends talent management process with collaboration, and 3) the use of the word "social" that tends to make most executives think "Facebook" and loss of productivity.  It is nice to see vendors like Rypple and Saba who are creating new innovation, blending talent management needs with real-time collaboration. Today, their are very few case studies and those that tend to have impactful stories are keeping them tight-lipped.  At our KI Fall Executive Forum just prior to the conference, Polly Pearson, formerly of EMC, shared the amazing things EMC is doing to move the needle through the use of collaborative technologies, framed all around "R.A.P" (revenue, admiration and profits).  Other companies like Best Buy and Target are doing some amazing things tying collaboration to the business initiatives.  These stories need to get out for enterprise collaboration to progress from "cool" to "impactful". 
  2. The buzz around workforce planning.  Workforce planning isn't necessarily new but the demand for what it needs to be is growing.  There is not a company I don't talk to today that's NOT talking about workforce planning.  That was also the case at the conference.  Most companies still don't know, though, how to get started.  Workforce planning is complex and requires solid workforce reporting (where you've been) combined with planning and simulation (where you want to be incorporating flexibility for multiple scenarios).  Workforce planning has reached a new level of demand because CEOs now realize and demand a new level of flexibility with their workforce.  The constant pace of organizational redesign and the renewed focus on growth demands companies need to know where their talent resides, where they have gaps, how the can quickly assemble and dis-assemble teams quickly and the real-time value of increases and decreases in workforce decisions.
  3. Talent management going from 1st generation to 2nd generation.  Talent management is quickly going into its next evolution, from transactional systems to interactional decision support tools.  Many companies are discussing how they can shrink their "portfolio" of applications while saving cost and unifying process leveraging a common process and user experience.  As talent management goes into its next generation, the vendor landscape is also changing dramatically and the importance to make sound business decisions, and not just focused on feature/function, is more important than ever.
  4. The emergence of "mobile". Although I was a little underwhelmed that more vendors are not doing anything in mobile, those that are investing in mobile technologies are creating some unique distinction.  Vendors such as SuccessFactors (via their Cubetree acquisition), Workday and even ADP (yes, ADP, although it is not available just yet) have creating some amazing mobile applications that simplify the user experience while creating a new level of engagement.

 

Of course any conference note wouldn't be worthy without mentioning Sonar6.  The creativity of their booth (a cardboard box) and t-shirts is only matched by the uniqueness of their talent management applications.  I continue to enjoy how they think out of the box.

 

I am already looking forward to next year's conference!

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Recruit....or Die! in Talent Nation

Posted by Scott Schmidt Sep 17, 2010

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The title is dramatic, but it is something that bothered me as an HR practitioner, and this past week I heard someone describe the issue nicely.  I just returned home from TaleoWorld in Chicago, where General Colin Powell was one of the keynote speakers.  It was a great speech, not just because Gen. Powell is surprisingly funny, but because he hit on many important topics about leadership and organizational growth.  One that struck me the most was when he was discussing the end of the Cold War when he released 200,000 servicemen, but asked for an increase in the recruitment budget.  As he described, Congress balked at the request but he said he felt that “the organization that isn’t recruiting is dying” and eventually got his budget increase.

 

Think about that statement: “The organization that isn’t recruiting is dying.”  Now think about what your organization has done over the last few years to bring new blood into the organization.  The young people that you hire today should be your organization’s leaders in 20 years, and new talent brings with it a fresh perspective and new idea.  Without new talent it is easy for an organization to grow stagnant and stop innovating.  If you are not developing new talent who is going to replace the current executive team when they leave or retire?

 

Many organizations have cut back on their recruiting efforts during the recession, but as an HR professional one of your responsibilities is to help plan for long term success.  If you are not recruiting and developing young talent and high performers in your organization then you are handicapping your company’s future.  Any organization that does not develop their own people is counting on their competitors to develop leaders and executives, and their own ability to recruit that talent away.  Do you really want to put that much faith in your competitors, or pay a salary premium to recruit because you did not develop anyone internally?  Everyone understands making long term investments in other areas of business….so why not start applying this basic business principle to people?

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Interested in learning more about integrated talent management, including how to use ‘better bossing’ as a powerful retention tool, the steps to building a talent foundation for the future, and how to position HR as a true partner to the business?

 

Join Knowledge Infusion for a one-day event prior to HR Technology at our Fall Executive Forum! The Fall Executive Forum agenda is packed with HR leaders from CDW, McGraw-Hill, and EMC who will share best practices and strategies that are being built and deployed within their organizations. The host of The Bill Kutik Radio Show® will also be there answering your burning questions with Knowledge Infusion CEO, Jason Averbook.

 

Don’t miss this exclusive event! We have 5 complimentary passes available on a first come, first serve basis! Be the first to receive a complimentary invitation by contacting ondemand@knowledgeinfusion.com for more information.

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One of the many things that I truly LOVE to do in my role as CEO of Knowledge Infusion is to showcase some of the best thinking in the HR and HR technology space and conferences, forums and summits around the world.  The LOVE of this has probably come from a friend, Bill Kutik, and his mastery of the "panel facilitation" domain.  At the HR Technology Conference 2010 in Chicago in a short 3 weeks, I get the opportunity to moderate the 4th annual Talent Management panel which is made up of Knowledge Infusion customers and I am very excited about taking a bit of a different approach.

 

To me, the value of conferences and panels is not to hear the "love fest" stories of vendors; but to hear the reality about what goes into success in a specific area of focus.  This reality is not always positive and not always "music to the ears" of many; but I truly feel it is the only way we continue to move our profession forward.

 

The topic around talent management this year deals with how organizations have failed (not met expectations) of their initial deployment of talent management processes and solutions and what they are doing to "turnaround" a failure to a success.  The panel pre-discussions have been truly fascinating to me and wanted to share some of the highlights.  Hopefully you will be able to make it to the session on Thursday September 30th from 1:45p - 3:00p, but if not; I am sure the Twitter stream will be flowing.

 

A few nuggets of interest:

 

  • None of the companies on the panel COMPLETELY blame their failure on a technology vendor but more on a lack of an integrated plan and approach to actually reach the outcomes they were looking to achieve
  • Many of the panelists note that during an implementation, their vendor looks to get them live quickly without truly understanding the big picture of what the organization wants to do with data in the long-term
  • Consolidation into single "talent management suites" or back to the "ERP" talent management function is the only way to truly achieve the success an organization is looking for without tremendous spend in other technologies
  • Change Management has been completely underestimated and overlooked in the talent management space and has killed deployments and caused vendors to lose customers
  • The world of Software as a Service (SaaS) makes switching costs lower than previous technologies; therefore more movement from vendor to vendor in the market
  • The talent management leaders in an organization DO NOT see the integration points between talent management processes and therefore blame the vendor when the solution does not meet their needs
  • The only way to be successful in a talent management deployment is to "break" old school processes and redesign processes to meet desired outcomes

 

We have panelists who have left SaaS vendors, we have panelists who have left ERP vendors only to come back, we have panelists who have tried to use their talent management suite as a Core HR solution and we have panelists who have replaced one SaaS vendor for another.

 

Fascinating, fascinating, fascinating...

 

This is what I love about the space.  People willing to share their stories and giving a community the opportunity to learn from mistakes and not make them within their domain.

 

Visit http://www.hrtechnologyconference.com to learn more about the conference (it truly is the best in the world for the HR/talent management space and it is NOT all about IT and technology).  I believe you can still use Knowledge Infusion discount code KNOW10 to save registration dollars.

 

I hope those that attend find the panel of value and for those that cannot, follow hashtag #ki or #hrtechconf on Twitter where I am sure there will be coverage.

 

Another infusion of knowledge...

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Last week I spent a day at a Technology Summit hosted by Workday.  The purpose of the day was to walk a number of industry analysts through Workday’s functionality and new technology.  The summit was a lot of fun and I think was a great success (Read my full comments here), but the one thing that bothered me as we were reviewing some very innovative technology is how ill-prepared many of the HR organizations I know are to actually use any of it.

 

Here at Knowledge Infusion we are pushing individuals and companies to plan for 2011 early and make it the year to raise the bar for HR.  In some cases this involves technology, but even the best technology suite will fail if the HR business processes, and the organization as a whole, do not support it.

 

HR technology is continually evolving and many companies in the market have strong products with very useful functionality.  But in too many organizations, the technology has left the users behind.  There is no need for performance management if you are not willing to change a business process where managers fill out a yearly review in a word document and then stick it in a file.  You don’t need a learning management system if your current training curriculum is limited to classes that will decrease legal liability instead of also training to improving the skill of your workforce.  Those are just two easy, and common, examples but I’m sure everyone reading could provide more.

 

So while you are planning for your 2011 look at the work that you’re doing and ask if it has evolved over the past few years.  What are you doing to grow the value of HR within your company?  There are plenty of technologies that can help you succeed, but first you need to make a commitment to improving your processes.  It is only with these transformed business processes that you will be able to truly leverage the amazing technology out there.

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Lately we at Knowledge Infusion have been spending a ton of time working with HR and IT organizations trying to help them understand the best structure for their ownership and support of various HR technology initiatives.  The term HRIS has been out there for decades and when you look at the definition of IS it looks something like this:

 

Information systems are implemented within an organization for the purpose of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of that organization. Capabilities of the information system and characteristics of the organization, its work systems, its people, and its development and implementation methodologies together determine the extent to which that purpose is achieved

 

When HR defines a role as HRIS and/or depends on HRIS to develop its overall process approach to human resources, the outcomes of the HR function within an organization and the overall HR strategy, it takes a very myopic look at what HR truly needs to be successful in driving global processes, defining change and metrics to measure that change as well as structuring people in the HR function to meet a long-term HR strategy.

 

Leading edge HR organizations today are looking at focusing on what processes and people are needed to execute it's long term strategies and determining what level of IT support may be needed to ensure that technologies are an enabler of a HR strategy, not what is driving it.

 

The term HRIS still may live on within IT as the group that maintains and supports a HR technology implementation, but it is not the right placement, treatment or priority for a group responsible for implementing process transformation and change throughout a global enterprise.

 

Do you still use the term HRIS?  What does it mean in your organization?

 

Another infusion of knowledge...