by Michael Krupa on October 31, 2009
Well okay, the Carnival of HR was a few days ago but I have been traveling the last few days and have not had a chance to create this blog post. So, sue me. Anyway, the HR Bartender has done a fantastic job of hosting the latest Carnival of HR – Halloween Spirits Version.
At the carnival you will find out the favorite drink of many of your favorite HR bloggers. Me? My favorite drink is the Caipirinha. So go now to find out who is a Scotch, Tequila,Vodka and Beer drinker and who is a Coffee, Tea or Soda drinker. Oh, and while you are there, click the links and read some great blog posts.
My blog post for the Carnival called “Is HR Afraid of Technology?” is still accepting comments. Please tell me if you agree or not. The comments so far have been great so do add your thoughts.
by Michael Krupa on October 25, 2009
So I realize this post is VERY late but I had a couple of conversations this week about Oracle Fusion Applications where I ended up pointing people to the blog posts I could remember off the top of my head. Since it is cold morning, I though I would trudge over to the local coffee shop, order a large mocha and compile my list of Oracle Fusion blog posts. So without further ado, here are the blog posts (you can thank me later).
Jim Holincheck wonders how real are the Fusion Apps AND has a Q&A post that is a must read.
Bill Kutik indicates the brief look we got at Fusion indicates Oracle Fusion HCM seems to be only on par with our best current software.
Ray Wang says Oracle takes a two prong strategy and seeks domination in the market.
Paul Hamerman provides some insight post NDA.
Steve Boese muses on what to think about while waiting for Fusion.
Jason Corsello proclaims that Oracle Fusion Apps Have Finally Arrived…Kinda.
Josh Greenbaum thinks the compartmentalization of Fusion Apps will work to Oracle’s benefit.
For Vinnie Mirchandani, his Fusion question remain unanswered.
Michael Fauscette believes the Fusion Apps are very well designed, extremely usable, modern and offer significant value for customers throughout the different modules.
Official Oracle OpenWorld flickr photostream here.
If you wrote a post on Oracle Fusion and would like me to add it to my list, leave a comment and I will see what I can do.
Updates:
Frank Scavo spins the Fusion timetable in both a positive and negative light.
Merv Adrian skipped Larry’s keynote entirely.
by Michael Krupa on October 8, 2009
My day job is keeping me pretty darn busy right now so I’m going to give you my (brief) thoughts on the HR Technology Conference.
The conference was a great opportunity to make the rounds on the show floor and get some first look demonstrations for core HR and Talent Management systems. I am a big supporter of SaaS based systems so I was able to take a peek at the offerings from vendors such as Workday, Taleo, Authoria, KMS, Enwisen, SuccessFactors and many others. I am also a PeopleSoft HRMS customer so I visited the Oracle booth to get a demo of PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 and PeopleTools 8.50.
The show floor
- Workday continues to add functionality to their HCM offering at an astounding pace. They are nearly functionally complete in core HR and are now aggressively adding Talent Management functionality.
- Self Service, Actionable Navigation and Actionable Reporting are at the core of Workday and I saw a lot of other vendors with a renewed focus on Self Service and Actionable navigation this year. My guess is this is a direct response to the positive buzz that Workday is receiving.
- Taleo and Authoria continue their rapid pace at adding new functionality into their Talent Management offerings.
- The PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 demo was plagued by either bugs or infrastructure issues and didn’t demo well. I think 9.1 Bundle 1 will be probably be available shortly.
- KMS Software appears to have an interesting wizard based onboarding solution but unfortunately they were not able to demo the solution to me.
- I saw huge and positive usability improvements in many of the other vendors offerings as compared to last year.
The keynotes
I enjoyed all the keynote sessions. I am eager to read Don Tapscott book “grown up digital”, fell off my chair laughing when Wayne Cotter declared the true meaning of SaaS was “slice away annoying staff”, marveled at the knowledge on the Industry Analyst Panel, was in complete agreement with Naomi Bloom that it’s time to “Turn of the wing nuts” and sing The sun’ll come out Tomorrow…
The sessions
The sessions were great. In particular the Talent Management Panel and the Recruiting Panel stood out. As always, Naomi Bloom in her expert panel shared great information on HR system selection and upgrades. In “Metlife Tackles Workforce Analytics” I learned a better approach for implementing analytics.
The shootout
The Shootout was a mixed bag for me. I believe at the shootout last year that Authoria used an electronic magnifying glass so that the people in the audience could easily see what was happening on the big screens. Salary.com was also in the shootout last year and did poorly when the audience voted. Apparently Salary.com was paying attention and this year came out swinging with their UI changes and use of the magnifying glass. What difference a year makes. The actual presentation from their CEO was a little lacking (reading from notes was a big no no). I was surprised that none of the other vendors employed the magnifying glass during their demonstrations. Unfortunately some internet connectivity issues marred the presentations of a couple of vendors and in the end all the vendors seem to have similar user interfaces and capabilities. Although Salary.com won the shootout I didn’t see a clear winner.
Thoughts for next years HR Technology conference
- Chicago: Been there, done that. How about someplace else?
- With the now pervasive use of Twitter and live Blogging, I believe the conference should offer affordable or no cost Wi-Fi. I’ve been to volunteer run tech conferences that cost a couple of hundred dollars for the week that offer free Wi-Fi for conference attendees.
- Make sure the conference facilities are not a big black hole for cell phone coverage. McCormick Place (almost) completely blocked out cell data coverage from AT&T.
- Embrace the use of Twitter at the conference. How great would it be during keynotes and sessions if one of the big screens was showing the live tweets as they came in.
- Wrangle up some actual customers who are willing to demo some of the really cool technologies they are using.
Final thoughts
My company was not planning on attending this year due to budget cutbacks but at the last minute decided we should go. I’m glad they found the money. Between the show floor, keynotes, sessions, shootout and the chance to spend time with all my tweeps (who are now peeps), the HR Technology Conference was worth the time and money.
Big thanks to Bill Kutik (look, I spelled it correctly this time) for all he does before, during and after the conference.
