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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. 

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Well, okay I might be exaggerating a little but we did talk about Mini Coopers on episode 6 of the HR Happy Hour. I am a little late getting this out but since the next HR Happy Hour is not until August 14th, I can be forgiven for being a slacker. Speaking of Mini Cooper’s, I thought I would insert a gratuitous picture of my MINI (for no real reason):

Anyway, click the play button on the Blog Talk Radio widget below and hear all your favorite HR Bloggers talk about the HRevolution and how HR professionals seem to drive Mini Coopers. Make sure you listen closely as Steve Boese makes a nasty comment about HR’s inability to get a seat at the table if they are driving MINI’s.

After you finish with the blog and register for HRevolution, head on over to Steve’s blog and add your comment to his MINI post. Oh and if you drive a MINI or just adore them, please leave a comment on my blog so I can feel the MINI love. Thanks.

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