Executive Dashboard Verbatim CTO Calls for New Tools, Old Rules Data Lake Touted as Prime Info Real Estate China Martens: Vendors Dish Up Vertical Cloud Apps Predictive Analytics ROI Not So Predictable AUGUST 2014, VOLUME 2, NUMBER 4 Business Information INSIGHT ON MANAGING AND USING DATA HIDDEN TALENT Once mired in forms, human resources departments are using talent management software to build a stronger business foundation by spotting the best and the brightest—and holding on to them. PLUS: Tossing Old Systems, Companies Flock to Cloud HR
Transcript
Executive Dashboard
Verbatim CTO Calls for New Tools, Old Rules
Data Lake Touted as Prime Info Real Estate
China Martens: Vendors Dish Up Vertical Cloud Apps
Predictive Analytics ROI Not So Predictable
AUGUST 2014, VOLUME 2, NUMBER 4
Business InformationINSIGHT ON MANAGING AND USING DATA
HIDDEN TALENT Once mired in forms, human resourc es departments are using talent management software to build a stronger business foundation by spotting the best and the brightest—and holding on to them.
PLUS: Tossing Old Systems, Companies Flock to Cloud HR
HOME
EDITOR’S NOTE
EXECUTIVE DASHBOARD
VERBATIM
CTO CALLS FOR NEW TOOLS, OLD RULES
DATA LAKE TOUTED AS PRIME INFO REAL ESTATE
HR SHINES IN TALENT AGENCY ROLE
ORACLE HCM CLOUD 8 MIXES HR, TALENT TOOLS
TOSSING OLD SYSTEMS, COMPANIES FLOCK TO CLOUD HR
CHINA MARTENS: VENDORS DISH UP VERTICAL CLOUD APPS
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS ROI NOT SO PREDICTABLE
2 BUSINESS INFORMATION • AUGUST 2014
THE AMOUNT OF money companies spend on employee compensation varies widely, depending on the industry. But let’s just agree it’s a lot—and the biggest expense any company has.
But how much a company spends is only part of the picture. There’s also management of performance from human “assets.” There’s the cost of benefits as part of total compensation, an area that’s growing bigger every year. There are also metrics like revenue or profit per employee, turnover rate, employee replacement costs, time to fill jobs and the cost to fill those jobs. It seems as though the business of a business is not making widgets but managing all of its employees.
That’s where human resources and talent manage- ment technology come into play. Advances in IT systems and services have indeed helped out companies by en-abling them to manage less paper, but have they really helped them become better run, more competitive and more responsive to their customers? The jury is still out on that.
In this issue of Business Information, we look at the latest technology in HR and talent management and successful deployments by users. There are a lot of pos-itive developments—for example, OHL, a Brentwood,
Tennessee, logistics company, saved the world a lot of trees with new performance review tools. “Think of 5,000 employees who don’t have a computer with a 13-page performance review—that’s a lot of paper,” said Tia Smith, OHL’s senior manager of global talent.
Staffing company Yoh was able to get a better mea-sure of the costs for each job it placed. “We can see very quickly into our cost per click, cost per offer, cost per hire,” said Cynthia Lombardo, director of candidate mar-keting. “You have this beautiful picture in front of you of what is truly working for your business.”
Still, these kinds of stories seem to be scratching the surface of what can be gained from workforce manage-ment. Bersin by Deloitte analyst Katherine Jones has a good tip: “Use [HR] automation as a springboard for change. If your company is moving to talent management software from paper-based regimens, take the opportu-nity to re-evaluate your talent strategy and processes.”
People are a company’s biggest asset. Anything that can improve the return on that investment will be a ben-efit it would be happy to receive. n
Has your company’s use of talent management software improved the way it does business? Write to me at [email protected].
CHINA MARTENS: VENDORS DISH UP VERTICAL CLOUD APPS
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS ROI NOT SO PREDICTABLE
3 BUSINESS INFORMATION • AUGUST 2014
TREND SPOTTER | EXECUTIVE DASHBOARD
Toward a Foreseeable FuturePredictive analytics uses advanced modeling techniques and statistical algorithms in an effort to give organizations advance knowledge of likely customer behavior and future business developments. But nearly half of organizations are still in the research phase (see “Predictive Analytics ROI Not So Predictable,” page 22).
SOURCE: PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS BENCHMARK SURVEY, CONDUCTED BY WAYNE ECKERSON FOR TECHTARGET; BASED ON RESPONSES FROM 1,930 IT AND BUSINESS PROFESSIONALS
More than half of organizations cite better efficiency, and nearly half single out lower costs as top benefits. Consultant Wayne Eckerson told TechTarget’s Hannah Pullen-Blasnik that isn’t surprising—despite the focus on what lies ahead, improving business processes is a common use of predictive analytics.
SOURCE: PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS BENCHMARK SURVEY, CONDUCTED BY WAYNE ECKERSON FOR TECHTARGET; BASED ON RESPONSES FROM 1,930 IT AND BUSINESS PROFESSIONALS. RESPONDENTS WERE ASKED TO SELECT ALL ITEMS THAT APPLIED.
Improve efficiency
Work more proactively
Increase revenues
Reduce costs
Improve customer service
Reduce customer attrition
Increase share of wallet
56% 54%49% 48% 44%
25%15%
17+49+16+13+5+s
17% No plans
5% Fully implemented
13% Partially implemented
49% Exploring
16% Under
development
HOME
EDITOR’S NOTE
EXECUTIVE DASHBOARD
VERBATIM
CTO CALLS FOR NEW TOOLS, OLD RULES
DATA LAKE TOUTED AS PRIME INFO REAL ESTATE
HR SHINES IN TALENT AGENCY ROLE
ORACLE HCM CLOUD 8 MIXES HR, TALENT TOOLS
TOSSING OLD SYSTEMS, COMPANIES FLOCK TO CLOUD HR
CHINA MARTENS: VENDORS DISH UP VERTICAL CLOUD APPS
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS ROI NOT SO PREDICTABLE
4 BUSINESS INFORMATION • AUGUST 2014
The Future of ERPBusiness Information asked SAP users, some who attended the company’s annual Sapphire conference this year, their thoughts on where enterprise resource planning software will be in the next five years.
TREND SPOTTER | VERBATIM
“ More data integrated, faster analytics and definitely massive user interfacing. It’s starting, but it definitely needs vendor support. They need to support their SDK to put their traditional modules into a Web browser, and make it so I can just click a button and go.”CONNER HELTON, controller at Avery Brewing Co.
“ We’re going to the cloud. I don’t know where the industry is going. I just know that we’ve made a strategic decision to try to leverage the cloud as much as we can.”BRIAN WILCOX, director of IT at Johnson & Johnson
“ The future of ERP will be driven by those individuals that have grown up with technology on the go that is easy to use.”MARK MUSSER, business systems analyst with the county of Sacramento, California, adding that com-panies will deliver ERP through the cloud and enlist in-memory computing and HTML5 user interfaces
“ I’ve seen that HANA’s not fake. … In five years, it’s hard to say. And who knows what Oracle’s going to do on their side in response, because this isn’t happening in a vacuum.”DAN EXLEY, executive director of data strategy and reporting, MemorialCare Health System, on the impact he sees SAP’s in-memory analytics appliance having on ERP
“ I haven’t even thought that far. I’ve been in implementation mode for a long time.”C.R. CATON, director of ERP strategy at Verizon Services Corp.
HOME
EDITOR’S NOTE
EXECUTIVE DASHBOARD
VERBATIM
CTO CALLS FOR NEW TOOLS, OLD RULES
DATA LAKE TOUTED AS PRIME INFO REAL ESTATE
HR SHINES IN TALENT AGENCY ROLE
ORACLE HCM CLOUD 8 MIXES HR, TALENT TOOLS
TOSSING OLD SYSTEMS, COMPANIES FLOCK TO CLOUD HR
CHINA MARTENS: VENDORS DISH UP VERTICAL CLOUD APPS
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS ROI NOT SO PREDICTABLE
BEST PRACTICES DON’T go out the window when new tech-nologies come in, advises a longtime technology leader working to implement data-intensive cloud applications.
That goes for new database types just as it does for other technologies being adopted, according to Marc Firenze, chief technology officer at Eagle Investment Systems LLC, a Wellesley, Massachusetts, subsidiary of financial services firm BNY Mellon.
He said the class of “NewSQL” databases that try to combine the best of relational and nonrelational styles have promise, particularly for cloud applications, but they need to be carefully integrated into existing devel-opment processes.
“NewSQL [database] technology—it’s like any new technology. You have to realize that you are introducing something new,” Firenze said. “Whatever practices you use to do that—keep them in place.”
For Firenze, the latest twist on data management ar-chitecture coincides with adoption of cloud architecture. He and his Eagle colleagues are implementing VoltDB, an in-memory NewSQL database that supports key re-lational ACID traits—atomicity, consistency, isolation and durability—for data across large-scale distributed clusters. Such clusters are essential attributes of cloud computing.
The Need to ScaleEagle develops investment accounting, portfolio per-formance management and data management software for managing investment portfolios and tracking their performance. A lot of Firenze’s efforts help automate
CHINA MARTENS: VENDORS DISH UP VERTICAL CLOUD APPS
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS ROI NOT SO PREDICTABLE
6 BUSINESS INFORMATION • AUGUST 2014
TREND SPOTTER | MEETING ROOM
adherence to compliance requirements for the invest-ment management companies Eagle sells to.
Because calculations are done for high volumes of data in increasingly shorter windows of time, a highly scalable cloud environment is required. Eagle still uses relational databases, but they’re not the best fits for all the data-heavy cloud processing it needs to run—for ex-ample, to support a new set of applications for measuring portfolio performance and analyzing risks.
“To scale in the most economical manner, we had to introduce some newer technologies,” Firenze said. “And that is where VoltDB came in.”
The project began about two years ago, and the first version of a VoltDB-based performance and risk mea-surement application is now available, he said.
Rigor in the DesignOften, new data architectures enter the enterprise via skunk works; developers download innovative tech-nologies that may be available as open source samples. That approach is not suited to operations like Eagle. Enterprise-level financial software requires considerable precision across a large group of developers, Firenze emphasized.
“My development team is over 300 people. It’s not the kind of thing we take lightly. It’s not like three guys in a garage fooling around with some code,” said Firenze, who has years of IT experience—as a systems analyst for State Street Bank during the client-server computing days all the way to his recent work as technology manager for
Eagle’s move to cloud computing.Firenze said he strives to ensure that his team works
cooperatively and avoids disruption. That includes meet-ings with the business side.
“We bring together our database people, our business folks and our software engineers. And they all work on the design together in a collaborative fashion,” he said.
Focus on APIsFirenze said one of Eagle’s key focus areas in develop-ment is on designing and building application program-ming interfaces, the central medium of data exchanges. He thinks that by building APIs based on VoltDB into an overall cloud services catalog, Eagle can make a smooth transition to the new technology. Most of the effort now is in data infrastructure building that may not be too visi-ble to its users. “Front-end investment analytics are cool. But we do all the stuff on the back end. It is work that is critically important but not so cool,” he said.
Starting slow can be a valuable tactic, he said, because new computing concepts can take some learning.
“Make sure you understand what you have,” he said, referring to new data especially. “And make sure that you have a team that knows what you have.”
Managers need to set up an environment where new technologies can succeed. They also need to know when to give the developers some space, Firenze said.
“Sometimes it is best to just to make sure you stay out of their way and give them the chance to do it.”
—JACK VAUGHAN
Read more TechTarget profiles of business and IT professionals.
CHINA MARTENS: VENDORS DISH UP VERTICAL CLOUD APPS
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS ROI NOT SO PREDICTABLE
HADOOP IS A powerful distributed processing technology, but it’s hard to describe to the C-suite. So vendors came up with an easy-to-grasp metaphor: They want organiza-tions to dive into the data lake, an architectural approach that positions Hadoop as a central repository for the diverse streams of data flowing into systems—relegating the enterprise data warehouse to the IT backwaters.
THE BUZZHadoop clusters based on commodity computers are a relatively inexpensive destination for data. And their waters can hold a variety of structured, unstructured and semi-structured information, including the hallmark of big data applications—log files, Web clickstreams, sen-sor data, social media posts. Data stored in Hadoop also doesn’t have to be cleansed and consolidated up front, as
in an EDW; it can be harbored in raw form and schema-tized as needed for different analytics uses.
THE REALITYAs a term, data lake invites sarcastic variations; data swamp, data marshland and data puddle are examples from the #datalake Twitter stream. More substantively, many organizations are just getting their feet wet with Hadoop and aren’t ready to plunge in. Also, a reservoir of raw Hadoop data eventually needs to be refined to make it fit for consumption by business users. And Hadoop systems don’t exist on an island: Traditional data ware-houses likely will still play a big role in combination with them, leaving IT teams with new development and integration chal-lenges to navigate. —JACK VAUGHAN
TREND SPOTTER | WHAT’S THE BUZZ?
Data Lake Touted as Prime Info Real Estate
7 BUSINESS INFORMATION • AUGUST 2014
Hadoop vendors paint the picture of an expansive lake teeming with data from diverse sources. Business intelligence and analytics systems can drink directly from these infor-mation-rich waters or tap into filtered supplies stored in data ware-houses and other databases.
HR SHINES IN TALENT AGENCY ROLEWith the help of new software, personnel departments have moved from collecting old-school performance reviews and benefits sheets to more valuable work: cultivating skills inside and out.
Until recently, human resourcesdepartments have primarily been paper pushers, their days consumed by distributing, tracking and storing performance appraisals and benefits forms, processing new-hire docu-ments and generating reports.
But with compliance duties becoming increasingly automated and skilled labor getting scarcer in the reborn economy, HR is being asked to play a bigger role: nurtur-ing the talent that most companies now see as an indis-pensable strategic resource.
And so a boom in talent management software—tech-nology that helps organizations recruit, compensate, evaluate and train employees—comes at the perfect time. It is helping transform HR into a lean, effective hiring and retention machine. Along the way, it has slashed the amount of paper pushing.
Three years ago, the HR team at OHL, a third-party logistics company in Brentwood, Tennessee, was bur-ied in paper. Printers got an exhausting workout in
9 BUSINESS INFORMATION • AUGUST 2014
SOFTWARE | EMMA SNIDER AND DAVID ESSEX
performance review season.“Think of 5,000 employees who don’t have a com-
puter with a 13-page performance review—that’s a lot of paper,” said Tia Smith, senior manager of global talent. The signed documents had to be filed so they could be retrieved in case of a dispute.
Then OHL adopted learning and performance tools, first from Cornerstone OnDemand and later from re-placement vendor Halogen Software. Now that policies, performance reviews and bonus acknowledgements are all completed electronically, Smith said, the stress on the HR department has eased considerably.
Automation NationBut those efficiency gains could ultimately pale next to the radical change in management training and career development the Halogen learning module enabled, with its links to 120 online courses from Skillsoft. OHL also uses Articulate, a Microsoft PowerPoint-based tool, to teach business processes, and a screen-capture tool called Captivate for software training.
“It really enhances our performance-review process,” Smith said, by seamlessly integrating the career-devel-opment step. Now, after explaining performance ratings to an employee, a supervisor can move right into a dis-cussion about training needed to reach individual and corporate goals—so there’s no need for two meetings. Most of OHL’s career development addresses issues that are particular to the transition into management, such as supervising former peers.
Having performance data more accessible has also allowed OHL to expand its succession planning to more easily spot people who are ready to move up the ladder—and promptly build individualized development plans for them. Though Halogen eSuccession was powered up only last November, it has already transformed the process by making it easier for the company’s CEO and department heads to get involved.
OHL identified its top 180 performers, pinpointed the skills each needed to advance, entered development plans in Halogen and assigned mentors. Retention has also improved. “If we have someone who is a higher per-former and is in danger of leaving, we need to address that,” Smith said.
Fallon Health, a Worcester, Massachusetts, healthcare provider, automated its reviews with software from Sum-Total Systems, boosted the HR department’s efficiency and made the process more transparent, according to Scott Beaird, director of talent management. Today,
HOME
EDITOR’S NOTE
EXECUTIVE DASHBOARD
VERBATIM
CTO CALLS FOR NEW TOOLS, OLD RULES
DATA LAKE TOUTED AS PRIME INFO REAL ESTATE
HR SHINES IN TALENT AGENCY ROLE
ORACLE HCM CLOUD 8 MIXES HR, TALENT TOOLS
TOSSING OLD SYSTEMS, COMPANIES FLOCK TO CLOUD HR
CHINA MARTENS: VENDORS DISH UP VERTICAL CLOUD APPS
CHINA MARTENS: VENDORS DISH UP VERTICAL CLOUD APPS
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS ROI NOT SO PREDICTABLE
10 BUSINESS INFORMATION • AUGUST 2014
SOFTWARE | EMMA SNIDER AND DAVID ESSEX
TALENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE is under the influence of
what market research outfit Gartner calls the “nexus
of forces”: cloud computing, social media, mobile
technologies and analytics. Here’s how they are play-
ing out in each of the technology’s four areas.
n Recruiting. Social media is all the rage in recruit-
ing, on both the candidate and the recruiter side. For
recruiters, social sourcing capabilities embedded
in the software can help identify qualified passive
candidates before competitors do. As for candidates,
more and more platforms are enabling job seekers to
auto-populate applications with social media infor-
mation, such as LinkedIn profiles. Mobile capabilities
are in the works at most vendors but generally are not
a reality today.
n Performance. Why should performance reviews be
limited to an employee and her manager in the era of
social media? Today, leading performance manage-
ment vendors are adding the capacity to gather feed-
back from a variety of social media and other sources,
thus broadening the traditional review process. Links
between performance and learning let managers rate
employees on core competencies and assign courses
to bolster weak skill areas. Also, as an increasing
number of companies move away from annual re-
views and to a more continual model, modern perfor-
mance technology is enabling real-time feedback.
n Learning. Instead of confining employees to their
desktop computers to take a course, corporate
learning vendors are now making training accessible
on mobile devices so workers can learn on the go.
Courses are also becoming shorter, smarter and more
visual: Vendors embracing “just in time” learning
deliver snippets of information when they’re needed,
often through video. Still too drab? Some learning
management system providers are “gamifying”
courses and encouraging employees to expand their
knowledge with points and leaderboards.
n Compensation. Show me the money! No, really,
show it to me. Some compensation vendors are
now enabling sales reps and other employees on
pay-for-performance plans to calculate commissions
or bonuses in real time—and it can be a powerful
motivator. And since salespeople are often traveling,
vendors are building in mobile capabilities as well.
—EMMA SNIDER
Tech Forces Fuel HR Software Innovations
11 BUSINESS INFORMATION • AUGUST 2014
SOFTWARE | EMMA SNIDER AND DAVID ESSEX
employees can see precisely where they are in the 11-step review process—from goal setting to formal evaluation—at any given time.
The software has proved essential in executing a three-year-old strategy to instill a performance-driven, goal-oriented culture. “It allows us greater consistency, enables us to monitor and oversee the process more ef-ficiently and provides a richer experience for both the manager and employee,” Beaird said.
The improved data visibility has also allowed Fallon to fine-tune how it evaluates individual performance—for example, by understanding rating bias. “We’re able to report on [employee] performance against our strategy—against the goals—and also able to compensate on that.”
Outside InFor Edwin Castillo, vice president of learning and organizational development at San Francisco-based DocuSign, the learning component of talent manage-ment is not just for internal use. For the past two years, Castillo has been developing the e-signature technology company’s learning program for employees, partners and customers with the help of Cornerstone OnDemand for Salesforce.com.
DocuSign has used it to train more than 10,000 busi-nesses on how to use its technology since installing a beta version for customers last summer. Before rolling out the program, approximately 70% of customer calls concerned training, Castillo estimated. That percentage
has been drastically cut back thanks to the online education.
DocuSign has achieved similarly impressive outcomes on the employee side. Before Cornerstone, sales train-ing consisted of an in-person seminar with PowerPoint slides. Today, critical product messaging and sales skills training is delivered online, and competency is measured with automated tests. “We’ve been able to reduce our ramp time that it took [sales reps] to sell their first deal down from nine months to four and a half,” Castillo said.
A Few Good RecruitsMuch of the innovation is happening in recruiting, the very first step in the talent management process, ac-cording to Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research. “With the rise of social media, recruiting is changing rapidly, allowing companies to change their recruiting processes with the ability to micro-headhunt,” Mueller said. “It also allows recruiters to search for talent
HOME
EDITOR’S NOTE
EXECUTIVE DASHBOARD
VERBATIM
CTO CALLS FOR NEW TOOLS, OLD RULES
DATA LAKE TOUTED AS PRIME INFO REAL ESTATE
HR SHINES IN TALENT AGENCY ROLE
ORACLE HCM CLOUD 8 MIXES HR, TALENT TOOLS
TOSSING OLD SYSTEMS, COMPANIES FLOCK TO CLOUD HR
CHINA MARTENS: VENDORS DISH UP VERTICAL CLOUD APPS
CHINA MARTENS: VENDORS DISH UP VERTICAL CLOUD APPS
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS ROI NOT SO PREDICTABLE
12 BUSINESS INFORMATION • AUGUST 2014
SOFTWARE | EMMA SNIDER AND DAVID ESSEX
TALENT MANAGEMENT IS one of the most crowded tech-
nology markets in IT. According to Katherine Jones, a
Bersin by Deloitte analyst for human capital manage-
ment technology, just 1% of market share can repre-
sent a substantial user base for vendors. Follow these
tips from her and others on choosing and then using
software that’s right for you.
n Mind the integration gap. If you plan to buy multiple
talent management modules from a single vendor,
make sure to ask about the integration between them.
Many platforms were created through acquisition,
and vendors don’t always do adequate behind-the-
scenes work to make acquired modules integrate
seamlessly with ones developed in-house.
n Determine your No. 1 priority. Talent management
systems tend to be strong in some modules and weak
in others. Before you buy, discuss which module is
most important to your company and look for a ven-
dor with a strong offering in that area.
n Use automation as a springboard for change. If your
company is moving to talent management software
from paper-based regimens, take the opportunity to
re-evaluate your talent strategy and processes. Don’t
re-create redundant or confusing processes.
n Make your vendor shortlist longer. There are lots
of solid software options; a 2013 IDC industry report
named seven market leaders. Investigating vendors
big and small won’t just ensure that you get the soft-
ware that best meets your needs—you also might
score a deal if you play your cards right.
n Practice good change management. Since talent
management software is often rolled out to an orga-
nization’s entire workforce, getting people to use the
system is critical. Ensure that all employees know
about the new technology and have proper training.
—EMMA SNIDER
Going Shopping? Make Sure You Buy Smart
HOME
EDITOR’S NOTE
EXECUTIVE DASHBOARD
VERBATIM
CTO CALLS FOR NEW TOOLS, OLD RULES
DATA LAKE TOUTED AS PRIME INFO REAL ESTATE
HR SHINES IN TALENT AGENCY ROLE
ORACLE HCM CLOUD 8 MIXES HR, TALENT TOOLS
TOSSING OLD SYSTEMS, COMPANIES FLOCK TO CLOUD HR
CHINA MARTENS: VENDORS DISH UP VERTICAL CLOUD APPS
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS ROI NOT SO PREDICTABLE
13 BUSINESS INFORMATION • AUGUST 2014
SOFTWARE | EMMA SNIDER AND DAVID ESSEX
actively rather than posting on job boards.” Recruiting was the automation challenge at LCS, a Des
Moines, Iowa, developer of senior-living communities. Without a tracking system, the company relied on the fax machine to process resumes. “Because we’re in 30 states, it was very difficult and time-intensive to process a resume,” said Cynthia Thorland, vice president and di-rector of educational resources.
SilkRoad’s Open Hire recruitment module assuaged the problem by automating the application process. Then Thorland tackled another sore spot: performance. “We knew there were pockets across our organization that weren’t doing performance appraisals, but it was hard to track.” With the adoption of SilkRoad’s performance module, Thorland can now prove definitively that all workers are being evaluated.
Recruiting is staffing company Yoh’s bread and butter, so having shoddy talent acquisition technology in place isn’t an option. Yet before implementing SuccessFactors’ recruitment marketing module in 2010, the Philadelphia organization’s career site wasn’t driving much traffic.
With SuccessFactors’ help, Yoh revamped and opti-mized the website to draw more eyeballs and target its marketing campaigns more effectively by, for example, spotting the best-performing regional vendors. “We can see very quickly into our cost per click, cost per offer, cost per hire,” said Cynthia Lombardo, director of candi-date marketing. “You have this beautiful picture in front
of you of what is truly working for your business.”Just one year in, the before-and-after statistics
astounded Lombardo. “We saw a more than 200% in-crease in unique visitors, and we increased the number of candidates in our ATS [applicant tracking system] by 350%,” she said. In addition, average time to hire was slashed by 15 days.
Lombardo also used SuccessFactors to help her company tackle the same economic and labor pressures as its clients do. “For three years, our budget didn’t move a penny. But despite that, every single year we increased the hires that we did”—by more than 30% annually. “And we reduced our cost per hire by 30%, which is phenomenal.” n
EMMA SNIDER was the associate site and news editor of TechTarget’s SearchFinancialApplications. DAVID ESSEX is an executive editor in TechTarget’s Business Applications and Architecture Media Group. Email him at [email protected].
CHINA MARTENS: VENDORS DISH UP VERTICAL CLOUD APPS
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS ROI NOT SO PREDICTABLE
14 BUSINESS INFORMATION • AUGUST 2014
INNOVATION SPOTLIGHT
Oracle HCM Cloud 8 Mixes HR, Talent Tools
WHAT IT IS
Oracle’s flagship cloud-based human capital management offering. It combines Fusion human resources tools and talent management capabilities from Taleo, acquired by Oracle in 2012.
WHAT USERS SAY
“I travel quite a bit, and now that I have access to this applica-tion on the iPad, I can handle the executive referral issues that come up from an airport or a hotel.”—David Muller, vice pres-
ident of talent acquisition
at academic publisher
Cengage Learning
WHAT IT COSTS
Base pricing starts at a monthly rate of $9.50 a user. Cost varies significantly depending on implementation requirements.
WHY IT MATTERS
It’s a full HR-plus-talent management package in the cloud, with core HR features, like employee profiles and payroll support, along with performance management, recruiting and career development—not to mention trendy
social media and workforce modeling features.
SOURCE: ORACLE
15 BUSINESS INFORMATION • AUGUST 2014
HOME
TOSSING OLD SYSTEMS, COMPANIES FLOCK TO CLOUD HRFrustrated with the performance of their Y2K-era human resources management systems, organizations are looking to the cloud for 21st-century functionality.
CASE STUDY | JAN STAFFORD
About four years ago, social mediacolossus Twitter got fed up with its on-premises human resources management system. Most data entry was manual, and the company couldn’t track all international data in one system.
Using the aging ADP HR system was “quite painful,” said Renee Taormina, director of HR and recruiting technology at Twitter. “Running all of our processes in spreadsheets was just not going to be an effective or scal-able process.”
So Twitter turned its gaze toward the cloud. It de-ployed Workday’s human capital management cloud services at the end of 2012. Rather than having multiple systems around the world, Twitter now has everything—applications, integrations, data and security—running on the same system. “The power of one is tremendous,” Taormina said.
Twitter isn’t the only one trading on-premises HR for a cloud-based system. Taormina and other project leaders
CHINA MARTENS: VENDORS DISH UP VERTICAL CLOUD APPS
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS ROI NOT SO PREDICTABLE
16 BUSINESS INFORMATION • AUGUST 2014
CASE STUDY | JAN STAFFORD
described their transitions during a Workday conference in San Francisco. Hewlett-Packard needed to harmonize business processes across 175 countries as well as manage HR system performance. And credit reporting company Equifax wanted better merger and acquisition support for HR in its workforce information services division.
Majority RulesAs soon as the economic recovery started rolling in 2011, businesses began dumping legacy human resources management systems like old Christmas trees. Bought in the big-box enterprise resource planning buying spree around the time of the Y2K scare, these aging,
Global AppealAbout half of new deployments of human capital management systems are happening in the cloud, with most of the activity now in North America, said Chris Pang of market research outfit Gartner. He expects cloud HCM deployments to pick up in Asia and Europe in the next few years.
SOURCE: GARTNER, JULY 2014
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on-premises HR management systems are costly to up-grade and lack 21st-century capabilities such as mobile self-service, internationalization features, consumer-ori-ented self-service and social media-based recruiting, said R. “Ray” Wang, an analyst at Constellation Research. Cloud computing also created a variety of new options for users.
“Cloud has been and will be the choice for the ma-jority of HR system buyers in this refresh cycle,” Wang said. And Gartner is predicting that cloud systems will account for almost half of the $9 billion human capital management systems market in 2015.
But cloud HR isn’t all silver-lined. Companies that have moved their talent management system to the cloud often report challenges integrating it with the on-prem-ises systems they still need for employee records man-agement, benefits administration or payroll. Outsourcing those functions to a cloud service can raise cloud-to-cloud integration issues. Plus, there are other generic cloud tradeoffs, such as forced upgrades, smaller feature sets and lack of customizability.
And not all cloud HR systems are enterprise-ready. All the benefits of cloud don’t make up for lags in capability and functionality, Wang said. Tarik Taman, general man-ager of software vendor Infor’s HR and ERP operations, agreed. He has seen businesses make the transition from on-premises to cloud-based systems and lose 50% of their capabilities. “Dive deep during the evaluation process and make sure you can replicate your current environ-ment,” he said.
All Over the WorldExamining the breadth of cloud HR providers’ interna-tionalization features such as language support is a must for global business buyers. Like Twitter, Equifax moved to cloud HR because it needed better international HR support, said Mike Bause, vice president of HR systems and innovation. Equifax, based in Atlanta, has about 7,500 employees and 5,000 contractors in 18 countries. Before moving to Workday cloud HR in 2012, each of those 18 branches operated independently and had lim-ited visibility into corporate data. Management’s view of the branches’ data was also limited, as local HR managers manually input data into spreadsheets. “Access controls were a mess,” Bause said.
Within weeks after deployment, every HR manager could access a master spreadsheet that contained all data on compensation, performance, management structure and demographics. “Being able to use one process for all of these countries that met their needs was fantastic,” Bause said.
Improvements in data access and sharing have made a big difference at Twitter, too. “Having analytics with global data sets has been really impactful for us,” Taormina said. The system gives HR more credibility with the business, because HR managers can point to re-duced costs and employee innovation. “We can show our client groups insights into data that we just didn’t have before,” she said.
Analytics functionality is a real value driver for cloud
CASE STUDY | JAN STAFFORD
HOME
EDITOR’S NOTE
EXECUTIVE DASHBOARD
VERBATIM
CTO CALLS FOR NEW TOOLS, OLD RULES
DATA LAKE TOUTED AS PRIME INFO REAL ESTATE
HR SHINES IN TALENT AGENCY ROLE
ORACLE HCM CLOUD 8 MIXES HR, TALENT TOOLS
TOSSING OLD SYSTEMS, COMPANIES FLOCK TO CLOUD HR
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CASE STUDY | JAN STAFFORD
PUTTING APPLICATIONS IN the cloud can be a quick,
push-button process. But cloud deployments call for
almost the same amount of design and planning as
on-premises systems do. Here are six planning tips to
follow before you deploy:
Evaluate the different ways employ-
ees, partners and customers access
information—and then map out data
access and sharing points. For example, an assess-
ment could show that users often access a site and
download the data there to build a report. A new
workflow could make the data accessible from the
intended report.
Don’t roll out all features at once.
“It’s just too much for the end user to
absorb,” said Amelia Generalis, head of
talent for Anaplan, an integrated business planning
software provider. “Use an iterative methodology and
pilot and then deploy in pieces.”
Implement during slow periods.
“Are people focused on completing
year-end, mission-critical activities?”
Generalis asked. “If so, then it’s not a good idea to de-
ploy software, even on the cloud.”
Prepare for change management. Cloud
providers typically update their appli-
cations a few times a year. A cloud app
user should have an update process, test scripts and
a team ready to respond, said Constellation Research
analyst R. “Ray” Wang.
Create a repeatable process for testing
and deploying product updates, and
don’t rush it. At Twitter, which uses
Workday’s cloud-based human capital management
service, update testing takes two or three weeks. “It’s
like a playbook that you have, and you go through it
with every update religiously,” said Renee Taormina,
Twitter’s human resources and recruiting director.
Communicate any resulting shifts in
job responsibilities. “Moving to the
cloud does not change all jobs but does
change some,” said Tarik Taman, general manager
of Infor’s human resources and enterprise resource
planning operations. “Don’t surprise anyone.” n
Six Things to Do Before Setting Cloud Apps Loose
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EDITOR’S NOTE
EXECUTIVE DASHBOARD
VERBATIM
CTO CALLS FOR NEW TOOLS, OLD RULES
DATA LAKE TOUTED AS PRIME INFO REAL ESTATE
HR SHINES IN TALENT AGENCY ROLE
ORACLE HCM CLOUD 8 MIXES HR, TALENT TOOLS
TOSSING OLD SYSTEMS, COMPANIES FLOCK TO CLOUD HR
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CASE STUDY | JAN STAFFORD
HR, said Scott Spradley, global functions chief informa-tion officer for HP. Closing IT services deals is easier when one can pull up reports on the spot that show staff allocations and other factors of interest to clients. “Now we have relational data ... right there on a mobile phone or a tablet,” Spradley said. “They’re making decisions in seconds instead of months.”
Equifax also needed better support for ongoing merger and acquisition activities. Consolidating personnel and financial records and systems after an acquisition took months of work on the company’s old system, Bause said. Shortly after deploying Workday’s cloud software, how-ever, migrating operations for 380 new employees took only three days. Then new employees could use self-ser-vice tools to sign up for and monitor benefits and direct deposits and input emergency contact updates.
A Productivity BoostUnfriendly self-service is a common problem with Y2K-era HR systems, Wang said. The self-service forms are typically hard to access and their user interfaces aren’t intuitive. Unwieldy to work with on desktop systems, the forms are “impossible” to use on mobile devices, he said. That’s all changed with the easier-to-navigate, Web-friendly apps typical of cloud-based systems.
How much does better self-service functionality im-prove productivity? After HP’s March launch of Workday cloud HR, help desk tickets from HR system users have
dropped from 1,200 a day to around 20. Better self-service UIs help HR managers, too. The
transactions needed to put through an employee’s pro-motion, which took 45 minutes on HP’s legacy system, now take one minute on cloud HR. “That was 45 minutes spinning through about 10 different systems and looking at 20 to 27 different screens,” Spradley said.
Workday’s self-service functionality paired with its so-cial media-like communication systems help employees feel better connected, Bause said. “We can communicate informally if we want to, and we find the more that we do that, the more we’re having managers respond to us.” HR, after all, is about humans. Making people “feel part of the family,” he said, increases innovation, productivity and employee retention.
JAN STAFFORD is an executive editor in TechTarget’s Business Applications and Architecture Media Group. Email her at [email protected].
Vendors Dish Up Vertical Cloud AppsThey’ve been serving vanilla applications in the cloud but now are mixing in more industry flavor. Should or- ganizations sample that software or make their own?
THE MARKET FOR cloud-based enterprise applications is in a healthy state of flux—good news for organizations look-ing to do away with hefty maintenance and IT costs. Buy-ers who five years ago had, at best, one or two choices now face an array of alternatives.
But when it comes to applications that address the specialized needs of industries such as banking, health-care, manufacturing and the public sector, the pickings are slimmer; buyers may have no cheaper cloud alterna-tives to on-premises software.
Large vendors like Salesforce.com and Workday, which have their beginnings in the cloud, haven’t strongly “ver-ticalized” their cloud software. Neither have on-premises vendors like Infor and SAP. The focus instead on the wider market led to heavy-duty customization, often
to meet the needs of one company. In contrast, smaller cloud players have grown by focusing on one industry—for instance, providing customer relationship manage-ment tools to nonprofits or enterprise resource planning software to manufacturers.
But customizing can keep users waiting for the indus-try-specific features they need. Or they may just be un-aware that such capabilities have already been built.
Cloud Vendors Show IndustryThat’s all changing. Companies have a growing appetite for cloud applications, and vendors hope verticalization will satisfy it.
The likes of Infor, Salesforce and SAP are promising to deliver their first substantive cloud application suites for specific industries, often with specialized analytics and dashboards. At the same time, cloud manufacturing ERP vendors such as Kenandy and Plex are expanding into verticals with similar needs, like the food-and-bev-erage industry. And larger cloud rival NetSuite, which already caters to several industries, is deepening its ver-tical credentials through acquisition or partnerships. For example, its purchase of Retail Anywhere expanded its offerings in multichannel commerce—and Order Motion added order management to its list of specialties.
Companies that can’t wait for vendors to develop the
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perfect industry application have other avenues.Cloud vendors are aware of the need to provide busi-
ness opportunities for their partner consultancies, sys-tems integrators and independent software vendors by opening their platforms to third-party developers. An ISV with expertise in a microvertical—for instance, dairy farmers or wine growers—could build specialized add-ons for retail applications.
User-developed industry cloud applications are start-ing to emerge—and they could remake the competitive landscape. A pharmaceutical company building cloud ap-plications that are widely adopted by its peers could end up dominating parts of its market. Application vendors know they may find themselves competing with their leading customers and are starting to work closely with industry leaders on “co-innovation.”
Developing vertical applications in-house is a luxury large companies can afford. But for smaller ones with limited development dollars, the best option may be pooling resources with peers. Companies can fund com-munity development carried out by a third party—the cloud application vendor or one of its partners—with the aim of selling the products themselves. Or they can band together with their own partners or even competitors.
Moving Up, Moving OutBut change is also afoot in the cloud development plat-form arena. Application vendors that once were seem-ingly hardwired to their platform-as-a-service offerings are now open to adding in a third-party service such as
Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services or standardiz-ing completely on one.
What do these PaaS consolidations and shifts mean for organizations looking to develop industry applications? And where will they sell the applications? Despite high expectations, business app stores haven’t yet turned out to be the Amazons or iTunes of enterprise software.
It’s no longer certain that a business will stay within the boundaries of its original vertical. Many industries are undergoing major change as the rise of subscription services and the promise of the Internet of Things and other technologies create new revenue opportunities. Think about a door manufacturer that now sells monthly subscriptions to keyless door entry or the large manu-facturer of construction equipment that’s seeing more demand to rent its machines than buy them.
As organizations think about running industry-focused apps in the cloud, they’ll also need to decide what kind of business they want to be in—whether it’s delivered through the cloud or not. A retailer might add a distribu-tion arm while a bank sells commemorative coins. A gym chain could run its own construction operations.
To do all this, they’ll need more flexibility in their industry applications, a more modular approach that allows them to mix horizontal and vertical capabilities. The trick will be getting the recipe just right. n
CHINA MARTENS is an independent business applications analyst and freelance writer. Email her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter: @chinamartens.
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS IS all the rage right now, and it’s easy to see why. After all, who wouldn’t want to know the future? But perhaps it’s time to ask what kind of value businesses can really reap from reading the stars in their data. What is the return on investment?
Predictive modeling has become very popular in marketing—but to what end? It’s now possible for mar-keters to make a bold prediction about people who have searched online for, say, socks—they may be interested in buying socks again in the future. Knock me over with a feather! Technology has also enabled marketers to fol-low the clickstreams of Web users and gain insights into their future behavior. And people generally take being followed as a sign that they’re loved, right?
Healthcare organizations are also using predictive
analytics to forecast all kinds of things, like which dis-charged patients are likely to be readmitted, and which diabetic patients have not received preventive care. But given the shape the healthcare industry is in—the U.S. ranks near the bottom among industrialized nations in treatment outcomes—it may be just as good to assume that all discharged patients are likely to be readmitted and every diabetic patient hasn’t received preventive care. N=All!
It goes to the deeper point of the value of prediction. In the 18th century, French astronomer Alexis Bouvard used a mathematical analysis of unexpected changes in the orbit of Uranus to predict the existence of Neptune. That was a great scientific advance, but humanity is still waiting on the ROI. You can’t even buy a baguette on Neptune yet. Mon dieu!
There’s also the problem of predictions becoming foregone conclusions. In 1996, then chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank and sage of the stock market Alan Greenspan obliquely predicted that what he called irra-tional exuberance in the market would inevitably lead to an economic slowdown. Some commentators at the time said his statement may have actually contributed to even greater irrational exuberance—people who weren’t in the market thought that if everyone else was in, they should be too. Predictably, the Greenspan-induced fervor
Predictive Analytics ROI Not So PredictableCompanies are investing in the software to gaze into the future and learn more about customers and business opportunities. Is it prophesy, or fallacy?
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HINDSIGHT | ED BURNS
contributed to the stock market crash in 2000, when the dot-com bubble burst.
So does this mean predictive modeling has no value for businesses? Obviously, there are some success stories to point to. President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign leveraged uplift modeling, a form of predictive analytics, to help get out the vote, leaving conservatives looking for a new way to get him out of the White House. And by using a predictive modeling system, agricultural services company Southern States Cooperative was able to significantly improve response rates to direct mail campaigns while also reducing the number of catalogs it mails out by almost 75%.
Only time will tell if companies launching new proj-ects will see the same kind of results. But my guess is businesses that ask themselves what they realistically expect to get are on the right track. Those that invest in predictive analytics simply because it’s the latest tech-nology may make some interesting predictions—but without specific uses in mind for the technology, those predictions will have little business value.
At least, that’s my prediction. n
ED BURNS is site editor of SearchBusinessAnalytics. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @EdBurnsTT.
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