Making the Business Case for Talent Management and Learning Systems
Dr. Katherine Jones has been working with the Vital Analysis team here for the last 18 mos. or so. If you don’t know her, she’s quite an expert on HR and ERP technologies. Recently, she penned a research report on building a great talent management business case. Katherine’s posted this announcement on the Vital Analysis website and has graciously offered to make it available to others. Simply complete the request form on this website or send us an email at contact@vitalanalysis.com .
Here is a small quote from this report:
“The most successful business cases are tight in their focus; rather than promising to do everything that may relate to corporate goals at a specific time, narrowing the intent of the technology to the most important and attainable objectives. Map key business needs to learning and talent improvement requirements, then focus on the results expected: for example, improved customer engagement through better trained sales and service personnel, or retaining skilled workers with hard-to-get skills through a better rewards system. “
Jeffrey L. Williams (Jeff), good friend and colleague, and I took a fairly good look at Intacct recently.
If you don’t know Intacct, they’ve got a solid SaaS (software-as-a-service) Accounting solutionthat integrates with many best of breed solutions to round out an entire suite. We’ve interviewed top management, participated in product demonstrations, and more to develop this report.
Here’s an excerpt from our Market Prognosis section of the report:
We particularly like the following about Intacct and its products:
The company is very focused on its product line focus (financials) and its sales strategies.
The company’s distribution channel is quite enviable. Moreover, the solution very elegantly solves a number of business needs that accounting firms (and their clients) have.
We also liked the team at Intacct and believe them to be motivated, sharp and focused on the right priorities for the company
We believe additional focus may be required in these areas:
Intacct does not currently offer a PaaS. We believe this could be a limiting factor in its attractiveness to other software firms, systems integrators and other potential partners. Clients would benefit from a PaaS as well.
Supporting multi-nationals may force Intacct to develop more skills, more product capabilities and more local sales/support personnel. Rolling this out will need to be carefully metered if the company is to maintain growth rates cost effectively. Multi-lingual support is just one need here.
We believe the products could go even further up-market. The functionality may already adequate to do so for many prospective customers. However, Intacct will need more applications/application coverage to improve its penetration in larger accounts. This may also require an upgrading of Intacct’s service partner ecosystem, too.
Overall, Intacct should exhibit better than average growth in the SaaS financial software space. As long as the company continues to serve customers well (e.g., no material system outages) and develops more product and architectural capabilities in a timely manner, they should do quite well.”
Tom Ryan, good friend and colleague, and I took a fairly good look at Plex Systems recently.
If you don’t know Plex, they’ve got a solid SaaS (software-as-a-service) ERP solution. We’ve interviewed customers, top management and more to develop this report.
Here’s an excerpt from our Market Prognosis section of the report:
“Currently, Plex Systems is enjoying significant market uptake in spite of the general economy. Why? We believe software buyers are becoming ever more attracted to the favorable economics behind true SaaS products. For those customers who are in the verticals that Plex Systems supports, Plex Systems has very limited competition.
The competitive landscape may change soon as RootStock, a NetSuite based MRP solution, may be gaining ground in the SaaS space. Likewise, we anticipate SAP making new moves with its Business ByDesign product suite. Mark Symonds, CEO of Plex Systems, remarked that SAP’s announcement of Business ByDesign in 2007 was a positive for his firm as it showed a major ERP vendor embracing software as a service.He added that SAP’s decision to slow down or halt sales of that product was an even
bigger favor.
VisionPlex, the Plex Systems PaaS, may benefit from additional utilization by Plex partners. Product line extensions by these partners will only extend the market uptake of Plex applications.
We believe that Plex has market awareness, customer credentials and market momentum going for it now. It will need to embrace more service partners, strengthen the relationships it has with current partners and aggressively position its SaaS credentials
before prospects as competition will undoubtedly increase.”
We recently completed a report about large enterprises and their adoption of SaaS applications. When this kicked off, we thought we’d find a lot of firms telling us they’re still worried about data security in the cloud. We thought we’d hear a lot of hemming and hawing.
Instead, we found big, really big firms, adopting SaaS applications. These firms told us about their plans to implement more and more SaaS applications. More amazing were the numbers they shared with us regarding how much less these applications cost than on-premise products.
This is a big report with a lot of surprises. And, more than anything, it showed us that SaaS is no longer the domain of early adopters and innovators. It’s now well within the realm of Geoffrey Moore’s Early Majority.
Our expanded team of analysts (including veterans from Gartner Group, Aberdeen Group and another Software Intelligence star) have just completed a number of analysts reports on:
– SuccessFactors
– Workday
– Financial Force
– Plex Systems
– Taleo
– NetSuite
– and many more firms
We’ve been furiously interviewing companies with great cloud/SaaS stories and we’ve even been canvassing the marketplace talking to SMB and large enterprise users of cloud applications.
We’ll be posting lots of new information re: these very shortly.
HRMC Acclaim – A Very Different/Powerful Way to Recruit Talent
Most application software is designed by automating a manual process. The automated version usually resembles the manual process in an almost exact manner. The new solution may be more efficient and less error prone but it doesn’t necessarily reflect new thinking, new approaches or new methods.
HRMC clearly turned recruiting on its ear. We’ve documented their approach in this detailed research report and we think you’ll find it very interesting and very thought provoking. If you are interested in a new way of recruiting, check this report out.
To order this report, please complete our report request form on the website. Report cost is $395.
We recently began coverage of Cytiva, the makers of Sonic Recruit and other HR applications. We’ve developed a research report on the company and its products. The report is available for $395 and can be ordered via our request form on this website.
Here’s an excerpt from the Solutions section of the report:
The breadth of Cytiva’s product line has grown over the years. Essentially, the solution set began in 2001 as an applicant tracking solution that morphed into a recruiting solution (aka SonicRecruit). The product line now contains modules for:
– hiring manager
– staffing firm portal
– hourly employee solution (aka SonicEntrée)
– on-boarding – released in 2006 (aka SonicLaunch)
One observation we made is that Cytiva’s solutions cover both professional and hourly workers. Many talent management solutions have a distinct bias for one class or the other while professing coverage for both worker groups. The amount of energy and functionality Cytiva has placed into the hourly worker space is refreshing.
The company has recently announced a new module called SonicPerform Enterprise. This module provides Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) functionality. This product features “Jump Start Text” – a capability that expedites the completion of performance reviews for managers by translating numeric, Likert scale values into suggested textual commentary.
Cytiva offers SaaS (software as a service) solutions.
We recently developed a new research note on Sonar6 – a genuinely novel firm with a superlative performance management toolset. Actually, we were quite impressed with this solution’s user interface – be sure to check out their ‘helicopter views’.
The report costs $395 and can be ordered via our request page from this site. Be sure to check this one out.
Our report on SilkRoad’s Red Carpet offering last year was one of the most requested reports we produced. Because of that market interest we sought out the SilkRoad executives at this year’s HR Technology show in Chicago to get a more detailed briefing on their products and their vision of the HR space. SilkRoad investor Flip Filipowski sat in on much of that conversation.
In short, we continue to be impressed with the company’s marketing efforts, the enthusiasm they project in the space, the additions to the product line and more.
The new report is much longer and covers more than just the RedCarpet product. OpenHire, WingSpan, GreenLight and Eprise are also covered in this new document.
This report costs $395 for a single-user copy. It will be available to requestors for no charge until December 15, 2008. To receive a copy, please submit a request through our web site.
This fall, Vital Analysis is producing a number of new reports as well as materially update a number of prior reports. Here is a partial list of upcoming reports:
– Cornerstone
– Cytiva
– HRMC Acclaim
– Jobs2Web
– SHL
– SilkRoad
– Sonar6
– WinShuttle
– Workscape
We are also preparing a number of blog posts on the Software & Services Safari blog. More details later this week.
