As you might have noticed I took a little hiatus from my blog. It was only (ahem) a couple of weeks right? Well, worry no longer. I didn’t fall into a black hole or get kidnapped by mafia drug lords. It’s been a busy winter for me. I changed jobs, consolidated 2 households and added a gorgeous 8.5 year old Tiger Brindle Greyhound to keep my other Greyhound company. So what’s next you say?
This year Aquire has a separate Workforce Analytics track and I am pleased to be speaking on the down and dirty world of finding and cleansing data needed for Workforce Analytics. I know you are dying to know the details of my session so here is the title and description:
Session Title: All the Data You Need vs. The Obstacles to Grab it
Part presentation, part interactive activity! This session discusses data needed to do workforce analytics and the obstacles to tracking it down, making sure it is clean, and tips you need to make these processes work. There are key tricks to understand that can drastically speed up the process of working with your data, and relieve the stress of doing so.
It’s that time of year again when all of us in the HR Technology business book our airline and hotel reservations and congregate in Chicago for the annual HR Technology Conference and Expo. Wait, did I say Chicago? Sorry, this year the conference was in sunny Las Vegas Baby! Anyway, this post is way late (and probably a dollar short) as the conference was over weeks and weeks ago. I have a good excuse or ten for being tardy on my post but I won’t bore you with the details. In my prior blogs posts about the 2009 and the 2010 conferences, I waxed on about the conference being about connecting with my social media network (especially my Twitter buddies – AKA my Tweeps). Making connections with the Tweeps was still an important aspect of this year’s conference. The Social Media factor at the conference continues to grow each year and I think we might have finally reached a tipping point. This year so many people were using the #HRTechConf hash tag on Twitter that the tweets were streaming into TweetDeck faster than I could read them. Information overload. So kudos to the conference organizers and all of my HR Tech Twitter buddies who helped promote the Social Media aspect of the conference. On the good news/bad news front the sponsored Wi-Fi was very spotty especially in some of the conference rooms that were more out of the way. In the larger sessions when everyone powered on their tweeting devices the Wi-Fi came to a standstill. What’s the good news in this? If the Wi-Fi had been 100% rock solid the tweet stream would have been OUT OF CONTROL.
What I Learned This Year
The expo floor as always abounded with a zillion vendors hawking their wares. I was having a conversation with one of the vendors who mentioned that in general the vendors were unhappy with Vegas/Mandalay Place in comparison to McCormick Place because the attendees were not a captive audience. At McCormick Place there was nothing around the conference center to do or see so most attendees with any free time would stroll through the expo floor. At Mandalay Bay, the attendees often used any free time to stroll over to the casino floor instead of the expo floor. Speaking of vendors, there were a ton of announcements at the conference and I do mean a ton. I’m too lazy to track them all down so here is a great summary of the announcements from Marketwatch.
Mobile was a huge topic at the conference this year but let’s first talk about the attendees mobile devices. The news reports indicate that the iPad has decimated the Netbook market and I can tell you first hand that this rang true at the conference. The iPad ruled and I could have counted on one hand the number of Netbooks being used. In a slight twist to last year, I witnessed a strong showing of people using physical keyboards with their iPads. In another nod to the strong growth of Apple, the MacBook Air also had a very strong showing among the attendees. Sorry Microsoft, the traditional laptop seemed pushed out this year. Hope you have big plans for Windows 8 to stem the market share loss.
Unlike mobile which has been brewing for a couple of years, gamification seemed to blast out of the woodwork from seemingly obscurity at the conference this year. For vendors and for companies the message this year is that if you want adoption of your application you need give workers a reason to use the app. Enter gamification which uses games design techniques applied to HR applications to encourage people to use (or adopt) the software. Gamification is no longer just badges but now includes awarding and redeeming points, achievement, challenges and recognition. There were many vendors showing applications with gamification built to the core or at least gamification techniques applied to bits and pieces. I’ll be curious to see in future surveys if gamification does indeed make a difference in adoption.
Just like mobile, analytics is HOT HOT HOT this year. The good news is there are now solutions that cover the spectrum of needs. Vendors are adding transactional analytics into their applications at a minimum and strategic analytic solutions are coming on strong. I encourage customers to take the long view when implementing disparate HR systems that each have their own transactional analytics to think about the impact of providing too many disconnected metric reports to their end users. While it might make sense to dip your toe into analytics by starting with built-in transactional metrics, only rollout the metrics that make the most sense and determine your long term analytics goals up front. Maybe an enterprise wide HR Analytics/BI system should be in you HR Technology Roadmap.
SaaS continues its steady march to replace on-premise HR applications. Nearly all vendors with on-premise solutions are re-architecting, re-coding or at least re-marketing their apps to say they are SaaS compliant. Don’t believe the marketing message however. Customers will need to dig deep and ask tons of pointed questions to determine exactly what flavor of SaaS the vendor is supporting. From the Talent Management panel the big take away was SaaS is really Saa (Software as a…). Service is still missing from many SaaS vendors. Customers are having to redo their contracts with SaaS vendors at renewal time and substantially beefing up the SLA and Service agreements.
The Awesome New Technologies for HR session was a hit again this year with the instant responses from the Twitter peanut gallery providing lots of colorful commentary. The Twitter users at the conference are pretty savvy HR Technology users so hopefully the vendors participating in the session captured the tweets (both good and bad) for future consideration. The iPad demo’s from Workday and Peoplefluent seems to garner the most interest and praise from the crowd and the tweets. Workday’s iPad app interface with the Swirl pretty much stole the show. By the way, for any session presenters reading this post don’t say “San Fran” when you mean “San Francisco”. You know who you are.
The Challenge For Next Year
The market for HR Technology applications has exploded the last couple of years. Core HR systems are hot again, suites continue to be rolled out, Analytics are front and center, Social Media is being embedded and everything is mobile, mobile, mobile. I found myself this year really feeling like I missed out on way too much. Trying to find time for all the great sessions, the expo floor, vendor briefings and hallway conversations with the attendees was impossible. The challenge for next year is to find a way to make more time available for all these things. Longer Expo hours, repeated sessions or maybe an additional day added to the conference might do the trick. Kudos to Bill Kutik and LRP for another great HR Technology Conference.
He once had an awkward moment, just to see how it feels.
He co-chairs the HR Technology Conference just because he can.
You can see his charisma from space.
His charisma compels people to write blog posts about the HR Technology Conference.
His business card just says, “I’ll call you.”
His tacos refuse to fall from the shell.
His personality is so magnetic, he is unable to carry credit cards.
Even his enemies list him as their emergency contact number.
He is so generous that by using Promotion Code INFOBOX11you get $500 off the conference rack rate.
He once engaged in a staring contest with a fish and won:
This sure sounds like Bill Kutik to me but let’s talk about more pressing matters.
This year is the 14th annual conference and Bill tells me it’s going to be the largest and most exciting yet with an incredible, educational and entertaining speaker line-up. Speaking of speaker line-up, I will be participating again on the Second Annual Social Media Panel where my cohorts will be tackling all your sticky social media deployment questions (in an incredible, educational and entertaining way of course). So for goodness sakes don’t miss our session. But wait, there’s more. Don’t miss the Great Technology Debate between Naomi Bloom and Jason Averbook, the Expert Discussions, the public debut of the 14th annual CedarCrestone HR Systems Survey by Lexy Martin and the always popular Awesome New Technologies for HR. Oh and don’t forget to bring comfortable shoes to walk the expo floor where you can get hands-on demonstrations and one-on-one Q&A from tons and tons of vendors. All this can be yours for $500 off the conference rack rate by using promo code INFOBOX11 (all caps).
Got an HR Technology question or a problem? Everyone you need to know to answer your question or solve your problem will be there. Did I mention that all your favorite HR Technology Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, BeKnown, BranchOut and Google+ peeps will be at the conference? Frankly you can’t afford not to be there. As I said in my post-conference blog post from last year:
“I met CEOs, HR Bloggers, Industry Titans, Consultants, HR Professionals and Techies. I can’t think of any other conference where you have such easy access to such a diverse group of people.”
If you still need more information, you can download the PDF of the full conference brochure, read the post-conference blog posts from last year’s conference or forget all that and just take my word. I’m trustworthy. Right? Don’t forget my promo code of INFOBOX11 (all caps) to get $500 off the rack rate of $1,795. But don’t wait as this promo code expires on September 19th. If I still have not convinced you that you must register this very instant, here are 10 more reasons to attend the conference presented by Bill Kutik:
Go register now while I open a nice cold bottle of Dos Equis and ponder The Most Interesting Man In The World … Bill Kutik … the HR Technology Conference.
Assume or act like you are smarter than I am. I can’t believe I have to put this on the list.
Be extremely difficult and inflexible when it comes to scheduling the presentation of your bid.
Having asked for and received a written description of the project, come to your bid presentation meeting and ask me describe the project again instead of presenting your bid.
Present a lame bid just because you are sure you will get the project.
Ask me questions during the presentation and then interrupt me each time I try to answer.
Fail to actually read and digest the written description of the project and then present a bid for the wrong project.
Pay no attention to the budget parameters given to you and bid significantly higher than my budget.
Give me a reference to call but have the reference not be a customer that has actually used your services.
Re-bid the project three times and still not provide a bid that meets the project parameters.
Assume you know more than I do about application implementations and technology.
Assume you know more about my IT infrastructure than I do.
Assume or act like you are smarter than I am. Yes, I listed this twice. *sigh*
That’s my quick list but I know I just scratched the surface so feel free to leave your own tips in the comments section. Any vendors brave enough to leave any tips for potential clients?
Laurie Ruettimann thinks HR Technology Conference co-chair Bill Kutik is no Old Spice guy. Or is he? “Hello HR Professionals, look at your HR Technology, now back at me, now back at your HR Technology, now back at me. Sadly, your HR Technology isn’t state of the art like me, but if you stopped using [...]
Guess what? The rumor on the street is that HR leads the industry in using the Software As A Service (SaaS) delivery model. Surveys say that customers still prefer best-of-breed solutions over integrated solutions so that means more HR applications instead of less. Guess what also is true about many of these SaaS applications? They [...]
In a previous post I gave out some software demo tips for vendors. Since then I have participated in another round of software demos and this time I have some tips for all you customers out there. Yes, you read that correctly. Customers also needs some tips to get the most out of software demos. [...]
On episode 45 of the Bill Kutik Radio show, Bill Kutik interviewed Jason Averbook and Jason Corsello regarding the HR year past and coming up. During the show the topic turned technical and Bill Kutik brought up the topic of whether SaaS will become the dominant delivery method for HR applications. In answering the question, [...]
The Carnival of HR has landed right on the tail of Mardi Gras so grab a Sazerac or Hurricane and some Jambalaya, pull up a chair and settle down for some fantastic blog posts. As you know, Mardi Gras is a downright fun celebration but sometimes people imbibe a few too many hurricanes and need [...]
Since @williamtincup over at Starr Tincup did not ask for my predictions for 2010, I guess I will have to blog about them right here on my shiny new WordPress Blog. Since it is New Years Eve and my brain is now official mush for 2009, I could only come up with 5 (really lame) [...]
