Contributed to by: George Cohen, GCC, Inc.

Global E-Learning Deliverable Locally ‘From the Cloud’ Anywhere in the World

Austin/London, April 24, 2012 – Lumesse, a global leader in integrated talent management solutions, today announced the latest version of its award-winning Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) learning management system, Lumesse Learning Gateway 5.7, with a wide range of new capabilities that include enhanced reporting, additional languages, improved navigation and full integration with Lumesse ETWeb talent management.

The integration (announced earlier this month) with Lumesse ETWeb, delivered using the new Lumesse ETWeb Exchange service-oriented architecture, offers users fast and easy access to learning from a wide range of e-learning vendors anywhere in the world. Personalized, relevant learning content can be selected and delivered directly from the cloud within the familiar, web-based user experience of Lumesse ETWeb.

“Lumesse Learning Gateway takes the pain out of managing learning,” said Lumesse CEO Matthew Parker. “This release helps both learners and learning managers to find and manage the training they need. Learners can identify and start training that is directly relevant to their career goals and their company objectives through a familiar talent management environment. Training managers can control the process, workflow and reporting of learning with less effort and greater oversight. Organizations get better trained, more motivated people with lower costs and less administrative overhead.”

Lumesse Learning Gateway is a powerful and affordable cloud-based learning management system that delivers and manages sophisticated blended learning programmes that can include mobile and social learning, tests and assessments, personalized e-learning, and instructor-led training. Lumesse Learning Gateway is delivered as a SaaS solution configurable to exact needs to encourage high completion rates, and scalable for any number of learners and any amount of learning. Following is a screen capture:

Among the improvements in Lumesse Learning Gateway 5.7 are:
A new scalable reporting framework generates attractive reports — from a standard, categorized library — that are easy to understand and use.

Added language support for learners: Chinese and Japanese for a total of 22 supported learner languages; and French and Italian for a total of seven supported administrator languages.

A redesigned administrative portal offers simpler, more intuitive navigation of the powerful learning management capabilities in Lumesse Learning Gateway.

In addition, tight integration with Lumesse ETWeb talent management allows a learner-centric, consumerized user experience with single sign-on and a common look-and-feel that increases user adoption by making access and navigation simple and intuitive for all users. Users can quickly find best-match learning activities that support career development and objectives, start e-learning from within the talent management system, and easily identify recommended and mandatory training – supporting increased completion ratios. Direct access to development history and development plans from a Talent Profile give a clear overview of training taken and required, while integrated reporting measures and analyzes progress and completion against planned and mandatory learning, as well as cost breakdowns. Configurable workflows allow managers easy approval of learning activities.

Lumesse Learning Gateway 5.7 is available immediately.

About Lumesse (www.lumesse.com)

Lumesse is the only global company making talent management solutions work locally. We help customers around the world to implement successful local talent management initiatives that identify, nurture, educate and develop the right people, in the right place, at the right time. Our multi-cultural background and presence means we understand how to deliver talent solutions that work the way our customers work, as  individuals and as teams, because no two people, organizations or cultures are the same. We regard differences as strengths, not as obstacles.

1,900 customers work with us in over 70 countries because they recognize that commitment, innovation and value only come from people. We help customers to unlock and inspire that human potential in their businesses. Our integrated talent management solutions are comprehensive, intuitive, secure and fully internationalized into over 50 languages.

Contributed to by: Joey Ashkin, Research Analyst and Consultant with the Brandon Hall Group.  Ashkin is a recent graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a recent addition to the millennial workforce, Joey brings a unique perspective as a rising young professional.

With over 845 million active monthly users on Facebook, 150 million members on LinkedIn and over 140 million active users on Twitter, the social media universe is undoubtedly well established and expanding with the younger generations leading the way. The millennial generation understands the value of these resources and the importance of creating an online identity and leveraging the sites’ abilities for finding jobs. However, using social media as a business tool is not something that many universities and colleges teach. My expertise comes from years of practice: managing my own personal Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts while reading, posting, sharing, and linking online media with friends and family. Like most people of my generation, I do not receive the news on my doorstep every morning. Rather, I “log on” before getting caught up on the world’s news. In the same way, young people aren’t looking for jobs through Internet job boards anymore. Whether that be Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google +, social media outlets enable newcomers to the workforce to quickly spread information about themselves and connect with a vast amount of people.

When talking with other recent college graduates about the job search, the one tool that really stands out is LinkedIn. One of the best features of LinkedIn is the ability to apply for jobs directly on the site or a quick one click navigation to the company’s HR portal. Saving a resume and cover letters on your account makes applying for multiple jobs an intuitive process. LinkedIn makes it easy to find jobs that you are interested in with a recommendations tab, postings from connections on the newsfeed and updates from groups/associations. While LinkedIn does not include all of the personalization options like other online sites, it has the appropriate links to cover all of the bases. You can link your account to your personal website, company site, blog, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. I think of it as a combination of only the best features from the other social media tools.

The two sites that my peers are most familiar with are Facebook and Twitter. Both are great resources for constructing an online identity and keeping up with areas of interest. I have been using Facebook since 2006 and always look forward to new features. Facebook’s direction as a resource for businesses and professionals is both innovative and exciting for the millennial generation because of our extensive background using the site. Companies understand the benefits of social media marketing more than ever and track the frequency of likes and shares on their page. They are constantly pushing out updates, press releases, and job openings. This makes it easy for candidates looking for a job to find everything they need to know about a company in one location. Sharing a blog on Facebook is simple with the notes tool. You can tag multiple people, organize your work under the “My Notes” section and keep track of your interests on the “Pages’ Notes” section.

Twitter is an excellent tool for connecting with other people with the same interests, share your ideas and learn from industry experts. Twellow is an increasingly popular tool linked to Twitter that narrows down search options by searching users’ bios and URLs. This is particularly helpful when looking for employees in a specific company that you would like to know better. Twitter allows users to stay in the loop and build their own online reputation in the social media realm.

I was once told that there are four essentials: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and a blog. All of these help build an online identity and allow prospective employers to learn more about a job candidate than from reviewing a candidate’s resume and cover letter. As a newcomer to the post-graduate world, using each of these resources has been instrumental with connecting to others with similar interests and seeking potential career opportunities.

Saba is keeping their priorities straight – with a focus last week in their Annual Saba Summit on people connections, learning, and relationships. There is no doubt that integrated talent management is important, I’ve studied the positive effects of true integration efforts for years – but many organizations underestimate the importance of Learning while focusing on the bigger picture. Somewhere in the last few years, the overall relevance of the market for developing and connecting people has been lost in the chatter about talent management and human capital assets.

I’ll be honest; this is also a bit of a personal struggle for me. At the center of my personal core is a belief in the importance of development. My father was an educator – but more importantly he is a teacher in every facet of his life. I grew up knowing that fundamentally we could change world through teaching, one person, one community, one country at a time. Over time I came to realize that as important as teaching was – people could only learn in an environment that supported their learning. This is where talent management, workforce management, content/information management, and learning management, come together and in doing so they create an environment that supports relationships and learning. Saba’s message last week was focused on transforming the work environment to do just that – support people relationships.

In the last year, announcements from the learning and talent technology front have been reaching a frenetic pace – every month another shoe drops or another company is acquired. Buyers are afraid to take a step forward, unsure of the changing landscape that lies before them – feeling like they are somewhere between Alice in Wonderland and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back – and buyers are looking for some stability.

Saba’s announcements last week were blunt and targeted, with a focus on trying to clear the chaos, and offer a secure solution for today’s buyers. It took them four press releases and a summit to do this. They came close – But it would be nice to see some of the marketing language stripped away.

Bobby Yazdani, CEO of Saba, stated their intentions the best when he stated that their goals were to:

• Dominate the Enterprise Learning Market
• Expand in the Talent Management Market
• Become a Top provider in the Social Market

Saba has approached these goals with a dogged determination, one step at a time. Over the last six years they have slowly been improving their core platforms, building a new socially focused cloud platform, and purchasing targeted systems to support their long term vision. They have also diversified their revenue mix increasing their focus on SMB sales along with vertical and regional markets, and created strategic partnerships with resellers and service providers. They have also embraced the cloud, stating that 80% of their clients are now cloud installations. Additionally billings were up 89% and revenue grew 64% year over year from the Cloud clients. Simply put, Saba has positioned themselves in a sweet spot for organizations looking to transition from SAP/SuccessFactors/Plateau and Oracle/Taleo/Learn – or those looking to upgrade from a traditional learning or talent platform, to a more socially enabled platform.

More importantly in my opinion, they have firmly stated their intentions to focus on the learning market. This is something we are not hearing as clearly from their major competitors– where the mixed message of integration and collaboration is not equating to focus. Saba has specifically put funding, marketing, and strategic efforts behind the learning community. In speaking with Bobby after the analyst event he commented that their Learning Products had double-digit growth in both customers and revenue in the last year – and they expected to see that trajectory continue. This isn’t surprising – based on Brandon Hall Group’s research we believe that the actual revenue opportunities in the learning technology space will outpace talent management dramatically in the next few years due to extended audiences. In our recent survey on relationship centered learning, over 47% of 600 organizations were involved in meeting the needs of an extended learning audience. The extended audiences range from channel partners to individual product consumers, and have increased many learning functions scope considerably in the last few years.
Beyond these strategic messages, there were a few highlights worth noting from the product upgrades and launch discussions as well.

Saba Enterprise Learning

• Saba Unified Learning Platform, in their Saba Enterprise Cloud (SEC) environment saw improvements in their overall packaging and integration efforts. Specifically, I was pleased to see further integration with the Saba Meeting Tool.

Saba Meeting Tool

• Updates to their former Centra platform, now called Saba Meeting. Based on the live demo given at the event I would recommend taking a closer look at this tool. With HD Video capabilities, mobile access, collaboration tools, and social media connections this update addressed almost all of our previous concerns with the old Centra product.

Saba People Cloud

• The Saba People Cloud (SPC) platform – Although this new platform comes out of Saba’s previous work in Saba Social, it is a nice step forward in providing a more socially focused talent and learning platform. For the SMB market this platform offers basic performance, meeting, and learning tools, along with the social tools – but more importantly it doesn’t just mimic Saba’s traditional platforms. It re-engineers how data is captured, used, and processes would be accomplished in a more social environment.
• Inside the cloud, Dynamic Network Analysis (DNA) – this allows users and leaders alike to understand and manage their organizations formal and informal networks, tracking them based on real time data. This is another tool that could be a great benefit for an organization, but it requires that the bulk of employees use it regularly to maximize its value.
• pQ Scores – this is Saba’s version of Klout – an algorithmic generated score based on your profile, recognition, activity, and content rankings among other things in the Saba Social environment. It connections the world of Gamification, Badges, and Talent in a single application. Will it be used or is it valuable? I’m not quite sure about that, but it did spark the largest amounts of tweets and conversations at the Summit.
• Sneak Peak, Recruiting – I also had an opportunity to get a sneak peak at the Recruiting functionality currently in Beta. Designed around how SMB’s tend to manage their hiring processes today – it connects almost seamlessly with social platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook and uses those repositories effectively in the process. For most SMB’s the traditional applicant tracking systems are over-kill, and this addresses that issue.
• Sneak Peak, Developers Platform? There was talk of creating a platform as a service model with a developers platform for the Saba People Cloud (could we see a Salesforce.com like app exchange in their future?).

Human Concepts Purchase

• I’ll be honest I didn’t spend a great deal of time looking into this area. It seems like a good logical move for Saba, and will provide more analytics and talent transition power. If you’d like more detail, I liked Mark Smith’s write up on this acquisition from Ventana Research.

Saba’s solution set won’t be the perfect fit for everyone, and they still have some integration work to accomplish with their 2011 acquisition of Pedagogue and now the Human Concepts platform. Everything isn’t quite as seamless as the marketing looks. However, these integrations are less painful than the current integration efforts of many of their competitors. The one blatant item Saba’s suite lacks is a full recruiting tool – although they do have partnerships with Kognos and iCIMS. They also still have some gaps in their dynamic reporting and dashboard capabilities, and in-depth workforce analytics. For some organizations Saba’s platforms may still be beyond their requirements – but Saba has a plan to coax the hesitant with a 60 day free trial of the Saba People Cloud aimed at SMB’s.

The event looked like a success for Saba – but it was probably more of a success for their clients enjoying both good weather and an opportunity to catch up with friends and colleagues in the industry. If Saba continues to stay focused and manages to diversify their revenue models they could end up in a very good position with all the changes taking place in the current market.

Stacey Harris
Brandon Hall Research Group

This week I had two service experiences that were worlds apart – One was a very nasty US Airways supervisor that ruffled even my easy going travel composure, and the other was an exceptional waitress in a little restaurant in the Charleston, SC airport. Both employees deal daily with stressed and rushed customers, and both employees, I admit, have very difficult jobs. Their attitudes had a direct impact on my own mood which of course will have a direct impact on my buying decisions for the future. As an industry, front line service professionals are rarely given their due for the impact they have on an organization’s bottom line.

An organization that is hoping to improve the engagement of front line employees is PeopleMatter, a talent management platform designed specifically for the hourly workforces in the service industry. In 2010, PeopleMatter launched their first module HIRE with the goal of creating an integrated platform that was tailored for the service industry and built for ease of use. Over the last two years they’ve continued to launch two additional modules including LEARN, and SCHEDULE, with a goal of launching ENGAGE in late 2012 or early 2013.

When you speak to the PeopleMatter product team you hear a few themes continuously mentioned:

• One thought per screen
• Clean and intuitive user interfaces
• Big, big, big buttons to guide your actions
• Pre-designed for mobile and tablet environments

These design principles sound great, but as any developer will tell you they can be very hard to manage when you are trying to develop a complex people management system.

They also take their prioritization and product development cycles very seriously, using a numbering system driven by client requests to drive road-map decisions. Their energy isn’t placed on creating a feature rich platform; instead it is spent on creating an engaging platform that meets specific industry challenges and audience expectations.

This week was a busy week for PeopleMatter, over the course of three days they held events around collaboration, capitalization, a product launch, and information sharing.

Collaboration

On Sunday, PeopleMatters welcomed forty customers to their Collaborate 12.1 event. Their target clients are the mid-market convenience store, restaurant, hotel, and retail service providers, predominantly those between 10 to 1,000 service locations. Their key customers range from trendy local restaurant chains including Scotty’s Brewhouse and Boloco to larger organizations such as Ruby Tuesdays and Rickers Convenience Stores.

I spent the day with their customers, and the one thing you noticed immediately about all of them was that they were passionate about changing the way employees were viewed in an industry were turnover rates average in triple digits. In their view, PeopleMatter, was the technology that would enable their organization to create a better working environment for their diverse workforce. According to the BLS and Industry association numbers, In 2011, the service, retail, and hospitality industries employed somewhere between 30 to 50 Million people in the United States.

Capitalization

On Monday PeopleMatter announced a $14-million Series C round of venture funding led by Morgenthaler Ventures. Current investors Noro-Moseley Partners, C&B Capital, Intersouth Partners and Harbert Ventures also participated in this investment round. Gary Little, partner at Morgenthaler Ventures and a new PeopleMatter board member, stated “PeopleMatter is the only company that caters to hourly workers in the service industry – this is a $2.5 billion market that’s underserved and rapidly growing. There is a huge opportunity here.”

This funding allows PeopleMatter to continue their quick development pace, and provides the ability for them to grow their client base. It also continues to show the increased confidence from the investor communities in “SaaS” based talent technology.

Product Launch

In a live demonstration on Tuesday, PeopleMatter launched their new scheduling tool that is both smart-phone friendly and provides an automated voice recognition option for land-line or flip phone access. If you want to make the lives of both employees and managers easier in service based industries, then work to improve shift scheduling and workforce management. In an industry where work schedules change daily, or sometimes hourly, optimizing staff to sales ratios leads to real bottom line differences. Service organizations know that managing your workforce is a constant struggle.

PeopleMatter’s integrated platform, with the innovative scheduling tool, takes talent management to the most important level – the employees. It puts the employee in a position of ownership, with shift sharing technology that gives them options. This is especially important as 20% of the targeted work force is in the teen to early 20’s range – the intuitive mobile environment is the real game changer for PeopleMatter.

Information Sharing

After the SCHEDULE module was introduced, PeopleMatter also took some detailed time to walk industry influencers through their roadmap and future plans. Brandon Hall Group has highlighted PeopleMatter in the past for their unique vertical focus, but this week we had a chance to see how they plan to expand that vision. Nate DaPore, president and CEO of PeopleMatter, shared a vision that included a deeper focus on the service industry, ranging from improved HR and Operations platform tools to future hopes for offering services directly to the service industry job seeking and consumer markets.

To me, this was really the most interesting part of the week. Due to PeopleMatter’s vertical focus, they didn’t just have the usual financial and talent analyst attending their event. They also had a large group of industry specific news and association representatives that were also speaking about them and promoting their work including:

• Angel Abcede, from CSPNET, PeopleMatter Launched Mobile Scheduling Software
• Melissa Kress, from Convenience Store News, Top Story, PeopleMatter launches third module schedule

This type of vertical promotion can only lead to good things for PeopleMatter, but it also highlights the hunger for vertical specific solutions. As the Learning and Talent Technology industry has been recently focused on major mergers and acquisitions, it has created a void for solid innovation and simpler solutions that offer less features, but more services. Vertical solutions may be able to fill that void.

If you have some thoughts on creating or using vertical specific offerings, feel free to share your thoughts. We’d love to hear more about how your company is addressing your talent needs.

Stacey Harris

Brandon Hall Research Group

As we wrap up January, mergers and acquisitions and new product launches are heating up – Two this week that may have an impact on the Brandon Hall audience include:

• Peoplefluent, Talent System, announcing its acquisition of Strategia LMS
• Mercer Global HR consulting and outsourcing firm announced the launch of their new IKnow Workforce metrics and analytics tool

Brandon Hall Group has been taking briefings non-stop since the first of the year – but these two announcements were of particular interest to me this week. In different ways, both of them address some very real issues voiced by the learning and talent buying communities.

With all the changes in the market - buyers are a bit bemused, frustrated, and overwhelmed. They feel like they are facing both great opportunity and great risk when making purchasing decisions and they are desperate to make the right choices for their organizations – as well as their own careers.

I thought it might be helpful if I shared a few comments on the recent industry announcements, in the context of what I’ve been hearing from the buying community. As it were, directly from the buyers lips:

Don’t tell me you can help me manage my Talent if you can’t. If you tout yourself as a Talent Management system or solution provider, but you don’t have strong talent acquisition, performance management, and learning and development capabilities that are actually integrated then you are missing fundamental elements. Solid partnerships are good to know about and I’m smart enough to know the value of those connections. But don’t sell me on the value of integration when I still have to do most of the integrating myself.

Peoplefluent and Strategia’s announcement was a positive, if a bit overdue, announcement. Strategia is a solid LMS platform that has built a loyal client base. Peoplefluent is the descendant of two of the most successful performance, succession, and recruiting platforms in the industry (Authoria and Peopleclick). This is a good match between two organizations with similar philosophies in customer care. For Peoplefluent adding Strategia to their portfolio and discussing aggressive plans for technology integration puts them in a much better market position as a Talent Management solution provider.

Don’t underestimate my user community. My audience is made up of savvy consumers. They have high expectations for technology today and they have very little patience for awkward user interfaces and outdated platforms. They want to manage their talent and learning in the same place where they accomplish their work. If you can help me accomplish this, then I will be successful.

A major opportunity that could come out of the Peoplefluent acquisition is their ability to transfer their unique approach to creating an immersive mobile environment for managers and end-users to the learning industry. When talking to the Peoplefluent product team, you really get the sense that they understand where work happens – and it isn’t inside a talent or learning tool.

On the other hand, the announcement that Rypple, a performance feedback tool, was purchased by Salesforce.com in early December indicates that the work world may not be willing to wait for HR to get their solution providers clued in on these issues much longer.
 

Don’t give me technology without experience. Look, as a solution provider you’ve been through multiple configurations, implementations, and change management efforts. Why is it so hard to aggregate that valuable insight and share it in a format that can help me? I’m floundering in bad data, internal politics, and people who just don’t get it. Help me look good!

The other announcement that caught my attention this week was Mercer’s product launch for iKnow. Known for their great consulting and advisory services in core HR, in 2010 Mercer threw their hat into the talent technology space by offering a customized version of the Peoplefluent  platform. With iKnow they are now launching a workforce analytics tool that would sit on top of the various systems a client may have, both Mercer and non-Mercer technology products, and provide both standard workforce analysis and capabilities for more sophisticated predictive models. By itself the tool isn’t extraordinarily unique. It is built on the backbone of a standard business intelligence tool-set, but integrated with Mercer’s years of consulting expertise and data, along with the bundled education and consulting offered with the service, they could possibly create something that is more than the sum of its individual parts. Time will tell if Mercer is capable of truly integrating the technology and their expertise, but their continued focus on offering this packaged approach is something to watch carefully. If they can build a successful model – the real winners would be their clients.
 

If I’m a client of an acquired company, be transparent and quick with your communications. Mergers and acquisitions are common in today’s business environment, but as a current client I want to hear more than just how great the acquisition will be for my organization. I’d like to understand realistic timelines, expected changes, and genuine explanations of how my service will change in the next 6 to 12 months. I realize some of those details may still be undecided, but without information I will imagine the worst. If you can provide me with clear upfront information on possible pricing changes, service reductions, and contact changes – then I look like I’m in control in front of my leadership. I can make a case for the changes and be prepared for the questions. If after we discuss the changes it makes more sense for us to move to a new solution provider and you can help me ease that transition – then you (the vendor) become a real hero. What an interesting concept.

Some companies handle mergers and acquisitions better than others. We’ve had a number of organizations coming to us with plans for switching from recently merged learning or talent providers because in their mind more features, more complexity, and less communication is just not better than what they had with their original organization. These are issues that can be addressed with some open conversations and honest assessment of both the clients needs and the new direction of the now merged solution provider. Many times buyers are making these decisions based on frustration and fear, versus solid information.

These were only a few of the topics that buyers have been bringing to our conversations - but if the solution providers just addressed these four areas they would go a long way in creating better conversations.

I’m excited about both of these announcements. I think these organizations have a clear view of what the buying community is looking for and they are working to answer these concerns. I’m rooting for all the solution providers trying to make improvements today – because If they get it right the real winner is the buying community. Buyers are looking to create partnerships with solution providers who can help them improve their own careers along with meeting the business needs.

Career enhancing projects used to rest squarely in the business systems space – if you successfully worked on launching the company’s new ERP, CRM, or Product website, then your contributions were valued in terms of business outcomes. This same level of respect was not generally allocated to those who implemented the HR, talent, and learning solutions, but this is changing. These solutions are now in the spotlight and so are the buyers making solution decisions or managing vendor relations.

Solution providers, your buying community has the opportunity to shine – how are you going to ensure their work with you is career enhancing and not career ending?

Stacey Harris

Brandon Hall Research Group

If you didn’t see the announcement this Saturday about SaaS based Talent Management suite SuccessFactors being purchased by ERP SAP for $3.4Billion, then you aren’t one of the small percentage of HR professionals and techies who follow the twitter feeds and news blogs even on the weekends. Instead you are a normal HR and learning leader trying desperately to get your work caught up before the holidays, and you found out on Monday like the rest of the world.

Like many of you I spent Monday and Tuesday working on my day job and watching the onslaught of blog postings, analyst insight articles, and twitter comments hitting the Internet. By making the announcement on Saturday, SAP had the rapt attention of global audiences not dealing with day to day business issues – and created exactly the level of hype they were hoping for with the purchase between industry analysts, financial analysts, and technology news writers.

If you are looking for some of the better commentaries and recaps posted on Monday and Tuesday, here is my own top list, many of these commentaries are good in their own right or they provide a list of additional links that go in-depth on technical discussions or the financial impact of this merger.

SAPs acquisition of SuccessFactors re-energises its hcm and saas strategy; Great Overview of the event and things to consider by Paul Hamerman, Forrester Analyst

SAP acquires SuccessFactors a first take; Dennis Howlett had some good early commentary on the opportunities this aquisition creates

SAP acquires cloud hr vendor SuccessFactors, ERE’s John Zappe did a nice job of re-capping the weekend high-lights

Finally, SAP and SuccessFactors acquisition, Jarret Pazahanick did a nice job answering those pesky questions and linking to the most thought provoking comments from seasoned commentators.

This purchase has more immediate concerns for the solution provider space than it has for the buying and purchasing community. In multiple commentaries in the last two days we’ve seen remarks ranging from: “It’s the “beginning of the end” and “the sky is falling”, to “watch out for an M&A war in the Talent Management Space”. We’ve also seen an immense amount of coverage on what this acquisition will mean for existing large talent management systems and predictions for both doom and glory for newbie Workday, seen as being vindicated as well as put on the hot seat due to their unique position as the growing HRIS SaaS system, reaching for ERP status. There is no doubt that you will see a rash of additional acquisitions in the coming months, although many of these discussions have been on the table for a while, this weekend’s announcement simply put those discussions into high gear.

I won’t pretend to have a crystal ball, but SuccessFactors announcement of their purchase of Jobs2Web early on Tuesday morning, right on the heels of the SAP announcement, can give us some idea of the possible pace of this acquisition. For some time it will be business as usual for SuccessFactors, they have a lot of work internally still making sense of their own acquisition efforts in the last two years.
 

Figure 1 is an image of SuccessFactors’ acquisition history timeline.

Both SAP and SuccessFactors leadership have stated that for the moment SuccessFactors will continue to be managed as a separate entity called “SuccessFactors, an SAP company”. This integration both in terms of talent and technology will take a while to work out.

Even with all the great articles and discussions, here are a couple of areas I still have questions on:

Vertical Sales and Support Models
SAP Sales and Implementation processes are highly connected to industry/vertical sales and support models. Although there are pockets of enterprise budgets – a lot of resources are focused on tailoring to the needs of verticals such as Retail, Finance, Oil and Gas, or IT. What does this mean for SuccessFactors, and the SaaS Talent Management space in general. The whole point of SaaS is that it is configurable, but not tailored as heavily as a vertical specific solution requires.

As many of the analyst comments point out, SAP’s current SaaS strategy has not done so well. I don’t follow the entire ERP market enough to comment on that issue – but I did start my career developing training and support for SAP systems in Retail and I can see the issues between the vertical sales and support models, and the configuration model of large talent suites.

Global Perspective and View
How does this acquisition play out in the global market? The real growth opportunity beyond today’s estimated $4 Billion Talent Management systems market is in emerging markets, all of which are facing real talent gaps today with limited systems capable of handling the pace and scope required to fill those gaps.

End-User Experiences
SAP, SuccessFactors, and Plateau are all known as solid products, built from an engineer’s precise perspective. Unfortunately, success or failure of talent or learning initiatives have little to do with the perfect system architecture. Fair or not, it often has more to do with the end-users perception of the front end portal design. If the systems setup is handled poorly, then end-users can quickly be left with a system that is too complex, especially for a tool that is accessed on limited occasions.

During some recent European research interviews, I had two organizations tell me that they had purchased SuccessFactors only to scrap it after a year or two of effort because it hindered rather than helped their performance processes. I was once part of a retail organization that was almost brought to its knees because it couldn’t get product on the shelves during the holidays due to a poor SAP implementation. We hear these stories more than we would like in the analyst space, especially knowing that just a little additional time in strategy, governance, change management, and portal work-flow design could have made all the difference.

How will these three giants come together to meet the new workforce expectations for simplicity, ease of use, and system environments that don’t require a manual or performance support tools to navigate? This is a question that is as much about their leadership as it is about technology.

Plateau Customers
In April of this year Plateau brought 350 customers and a very strong Learning Management System to the Successfactors family. Plateau customers were just getting used to being part of a larger program, and were already starting to challenge increased prices and the loss of some services they were seeing coming down the road. This announcement is concerning to many of them, and this is where we have been getting a lot of our calls on this acquisition. Customers who once held the spot-light as key to Plateau’s future, including many key US government organizations, have now gotten farther away from being able to influence decisions on the platforms future.

Like everyone else, I agree that the best action to take right now is a wait and see approach. SAP has had considerable challenges meeting the diverse and heavy requirements of the learning community over the last few years – and as recently as early 2010 I had SAP employee’s telling clients not to look at their current LMS as a viable option. The SuccessFactors purchase by SAP was probably heavily dependent on their own purchase of Plateau earlier this year. My hope is that SAP realizes the wonderful talent they now have in the existing Plateau team members and leverage that across their entire strategy to meet the needs of the learning industry. When you consider both internal and extended enterprise learning audiences, as well as the natural overlaps with Sales and Marketing outreaches – Learning technology sales could outpace the talent technology sales if handled appropriately.

Thoughts for Buyers
Earlier this year I wrote a blog on the M&A worries of our members, and some best practices in managing solution providers and selections with vendors in the midst of acquisitions – this advice is as applicable today as it was earlier in the year. As these organizations continue to merge into larger entities, the market will continue to change. In this market we may never see the type of buyer consolidation witnessed by the ERP or even HRIS’s, in the 80’s and 90’s. This is a new world and the terms “cloud’, “SaaS”, and ”mobile” are driving the change. We are still at a point where small and mid-market firms can pick up considerable market share from large organizations. As recently as last week I had two very large organizations come to me and tell me they were leaving their large talent suite providers for smaller niche providers that offered them more innovation and influence on the product direction. This is the beauty of the SaaS model, they can leave without losing large investments in hardware or resources.

Simply put, this market isn’t baked yet – and I don’t believe we’ve seen what the ultimate products will look like, I think organizations like PeopleMatter, Rypple, Salesforce.com, and Glassdoor.com  have a lot to add to this discussion going forward.

In today’s business the only thing you can really count on is change.

Yes, this acquisition will cause some deals to speed up. Yes, this is a nice validation in the general IT space that HR systems are important. Yes, this is a big announcement. Buyers should understand it – know its specifics, and make sure it is included in their future IT discussions. However, it shouldn’t ruin your weekend or holiday plans as it did for many of the analysts and solution providers this week.

Feel free to share your thoughts and questions on the changes taking place in today’s Talent Management systems market directly at stacey.harris@brandonhall.com.

Stacey Harris,

Brandon Hall Group Research

Every company wants their workers to be engaged, inspired, and working towards a common goal. But not every company has a plan for making that happen. An engaged and inspired workforce inspires people to work for your company, do business with your employees, and buy your products. How does an organization set themselves apart as a place where people want to work and that people want to work with?

All organizations need a reason they do business, a reason this company is special, and a common goal for everyone to work towards. In the book The Zappos Experience Five Principles to Inspire, Engage, and Wow Joseph Mitchell talks about the Zappos mission and culture. Zappos wants to “Deliver Happiness” and they make sure that every new hire understands Zappos’ core values and is a fit for their unique culture (32). For an engaged and inspired workforce, your people need to have a mission to engage and inspire them. At Zappos they want to serve customers. At another organization, the mission will be different, but every organization needs a “why” that is communicated clearly and often to its employees, customers, and the marketplace. A simple monetary or production goal is important, but today’s workforce requires more than money to perform at their best every day. A company that does not know how they serve the marketplace needs to figure out its “why” or they do not have a compelling story for either their customers or their employees.

Once an organization has a “why,” it needs to look for people that believe in the mission and will work towards fulfilling those goals. Hiring someone who just has the necessary computer or service industry skills needed, but does not believe in the organization’s stated goals can lead to some long term challenges. That hire may be a satisfactory employee as far as getting their job done, but what will it take to get them to go above and beyond in their job? Looking for employees that share a passion for your organization’s mission, and then taking the time to develop possible skills gaps and required capabilities can be a better long term solution for many organizations. When employees are all working together towards a shared vision, they work harder, longer, and better than simply working for a paycheck and waiting for the weekend.

Once you have a mission and some great hires, how do you keep your workforce engaged and motivated? Onboarding is a critical piece of the engagement process. Every time someone joins your organization, make sure they have the tools and skills needed to do their job. No matter if you are hiring a waitress or a software engineer, if you neglect to provide training that is specific to your organization you will not only frustrate the new employee, but their co-workers and support roles. Make sure your onboarding process is comprehensive and gives your people the tools they need to succeed in their jobs.

Once people are on board, then you need to figure out how to further engage and develop your employees. Is it more training in a specific area? Is it encouraging them to mentor new employees? Every organization needs to discover ways to keep its people challenged and developing towards goals that are important to them individually.  Feedback can be a key component in ongoing development, as well as an appropriate way to provide employees with a clear understanding of their current performance. Once performance is assessed, an honest discussion about development opportunities and successes creates a transparent and positive work environment.

Finally, never forget the value of simple recognition that is tied to that company vision. This can be as simple as a manager telling an employee they’re doing a fantastic job, recognizing people who go above and beyond during a staff meeting, giving someone a special t-shirt, or a monetary reward for reaching a particular goal. Never underestimate the power of a $25 gift certificate!

Engaging and inspiring a workforce goes beyond simple talent and learning processes, and starts at the heart of the matter – your company’s goals. Supporting that goal and vision should become the driving force behind your efforts as a learning and talent professional. If an organization has a mission that engages and inspires the right employees it can transform the company culture and those effects will reverberate through how the company does business and deals with clients. For further research on this topic please refer to Brandon Hall Group’s White Paper on Engaging and Inspiring a Workforce.

In a given year there are dozens of industry conferences to attend – and although Brandon Hall Group loves to participate any time performance focused professionals gather – obviously we cannot be everywhere. The thing about HR Tech  is that it is a one stop shop for analysts; an opportunity to speak to a multitude of practitioners asking questions, vendors launching products, and industry experts commenting on the market.

It is also a uniquely integrated event. What do I mean by integrated? Well this is the event where you will find vendors of all types – pure learning solutions, full assessment offerings, talent suites, HR services providers, and so on and so forth. I would go so far as to say that this event spawns some of the most successful relationships – and later acquisitions – undertaken in our market today. It is also here, where buyers will see the potential for future connection points across various HR Technologies and supporting processes.

As HR Tech 2011 begins to fade into memory, you’ll see a lot of commentary about what was “hot” at this year’s conference – and terms like social collaboration, analytics, ERP resurgence, HTML 5, and gamification were definitely flying around the conference floor. The vendors were selling the concepts, the speakers were talking about their limited use, and the analysts were looking for realistic applications – but the practitioners seemed a bit overwhelmed by these discussions.

With over 60 vendor announcements  that ranged from acquisitions to new product offerings, I personally didn’t feel like this year’s event high-lighted any real game changers. Vendors spent the challenging economic year focusing on brand awareness, filling gaps in product or services offerings, or figuring out mobile delivery strategies. What we did get were a few sneak peeks of potentially ground-breaking shifts to come in the next few years.

So here are the interesting areas I will be keeping an eye on coming out of HR Tech. My advice is to keep your ear to the ground on these topics and figure out where they fit into your future technology goals, but for right now focus your buying plans on immediate needs:

Weighing the Value of Relationships

The idea of social collaboration rests on one thing, the relationships between people. Technology supports those relationships, but can’t force relationships if participants find no value in the connections. Any vendor who didn’t already have a social component was either launching new tools or announcing partnerships with existing tools and platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or Chatter. What I was looking for was vendors who were taking social to a new level. One vendor doing this is Silkroad:

A talent suite provider, SilkRoad shared a new social product “Point”  launching in January. The tool not only allows people to make a social connection, but also tracks the value of those connections and tracks the work that is accomplished through those connections dynamically. It assigns a numeric value based on the influence, relationship, and the skills an employee uses daily. This type of tool is only valuable if used by all the relevant people in a group, because the value is found in the spaces between the connections and relationships.

The most intriguing element of this tool is its ability to see the impact of removing or replacing any one individual from an existing work eco-system, based on the skills and influence that would be lost. Now think about that for a second – how many times has a company discovered the real value of an employee after they have gone? Job descriptions rarely define the most important elements of an employee’s job– but this system, if it works as described, would seem to provide that insight dynamically. I have to admit that I find SilkRoad’s new offering fascinating… but as I suspected, the few buyers I spoke with were overwhelmed by the layout, gaming elements, and complexity of the ideas. Additionally, without a way to connect to existing social platforms, many organizations may find it difficult to convince employees to participate in a completely closed social platform. Many products are beginning to track the value of influence, but this is the first I’ve seen to connect that analysis with work activities and skills. I think it is something to watch closely.

Aggregating Cloud Data

Everyone is talking about releasing the power of the cloud, and the discussion is often focused on the technology behind those decisions, but the real power of the cloud is consistent shared data that can be analyzed for insights. Traditional HR service providers such as SHL , Kenexa, Mercer, and Talx  all shared plans to use the amazing amount of data they have gathered over years of managing their clients’ HR transactions to provide decision making insights and benchmarking back to those clients on workforce planning, job matching, and forecasted business outcomes based on people decisions. My recommendation is to keep your eyes on this new trend in data aggregation:

Talx, an Equifax organization, handles the most basic HR transactions including payroll, tax, and onboarding services. Talx announced their acquisition of eThority at HR Tech. I highlighted eThority last year as a company to watch because they could help combine business data with HR and learning data in single, easy to use analytics tool. Now that power will be combined with an immense amount of data gathered through Talx’s assessment tools, industry compensation surveys, and on-boarding programs. Think about both the possibilities and risks.

Today you may look at Glassdoor.com as a source for candidates and insights on the real culture of an organization – but tomorrow you may view them as the number one tool in your workforce planning arsenal. Glassdoor.com has now gathered information from interviews and company reviews for over 130,000 social participants. If they begin to leverage their aggregate data, they can provide real insights into the reasons behind people leaving an organization, their development challenges, or even trends for their movement and compensation requirements.

Have Profile, Will Travel

Let’s be honest, the reason career pathing and career management programs often don’t work is that they assume that the goal of the program is to give direction. In reality, most successful professionals and skilled laborers want to know their options and benefits, but they don’t really want to be directed. The original job boards and LinkedIn may have been the first iteration of travelling resumes – but there are growing discussions among vendors to begin offering career tools that can travel with an employee from job to job, or more likely from company to company.

These are profiles and career management services that not only include self-reported data, but also include employer defined information that is approved by employees on training programs, assessment data, recognition, interviews, and performance – that can be accessed from industry specific or neutral platforms. This is in its early days – and is tentatively being discussed by only a few vendors. This is a trend to think about carefully, but if managed effectively it could create a unique employee benefit – and create a much stronger occurrence of “Yo-Yo” employees, who return after they have gained valuable experiences.

Business Tools are the Best HR Tools

So a big theme this year was the advances seen in the ERP space, especially in HR and Learning. This will continue to be an ongoing discussion. Should an organization attempt to use their challenging ERP as a talent platform or do they use the more innovative and flexible tools built specifically for the purpose of managing talent. This debate won’t be answered today – but organizations like WorkDay the newest SaaS based ERP like tool on the block, are beginning to drive change in this space. I also spoke with a few vendors that were taking tools originally created for marketing, customer service, or business analytics and morphing them to meet HR needs. This isn’t a new idea, but I think it is a trend to keep in mind these days. Just a few of examples include:

•  Dovetail Software– A simple HR case management and support services tool that comes from the customer service industry, think Best Buys Customer Service Case Management tool.
• MiiATech - Their “Goldfish” tool was promoted as a better way to match HR data and resumes. In their words, “they are using a natural language processing platform TautonaTM to understand the meaning of what is being searched for and can deliver the precise information required faster and more accurately than traditional keyword-based search or text”. This is a tool that would be imbedded in existing platforms, but it isn’t native to the HR space, rather the technology comes from the marketing industry.

As you look at the tools your business professionals use daily, you may want to keep an eye on their application to learning and talent needs. Could Salesforce.com and Facebook be your next talent or leaning platform, it may not be as far away as you think.

Summarizing Conference Trends
HR Tech, like any industry event, provides a great opportunity to learn a bit more about both vendors and buyers alike. I was pleasantly surprised to see the increase in the learning industry focused vendors and buyers participating in HR Tech this year, as it was a big focus for my briefings and interviews. I saw many positive vendor updates that we’ll include in our Learning and Talent KnowledgeBases, but to learn a bit more about the various commentary and discussions that took place, I also recommend visiting these blogs as well:

• 2011 HR Tech “Gamified”, Participants View
• Social Media and HR,  Great recap of Social for HR panel
• Impressions from HR Technology Conference 2011, If HR Tech had a fairy godmother, Naomi Bloom would be it… a personal favorite of mine, her no-nonsense insights are valuable
• John Ingham’s Multiple Blogs, Be sure to read all of John’s blogs, he does the best job in capturing the essence of HR Tech Confernece, with both visuals and his smart insights.
• HR Tech Las Vegas: Crowds, Jugglers, and Another Try at a Great Debate,  Great piece on the scope and size of HR Tech

You’ll notice that my personal focus wasn’t specifically on the technology but rather on what technology can enable – as you look at your plans strategies for the coming year, be sure to remember that technology is a means to an end, not the final outcome.

Stacey Harris

Brandon Hall Research Group

When you think of the future of North America, do you think of Manufacturing? Probably not. The new U.S. economy has been built on knowledge and services, but not on manufacturing. Today manufacturing makes up anywhere between 10 to 13% of the U.S. labor force, and has dropped from a workforce of 17 million in 1982 to a little over 11 million today.

Source, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011

Off-shoring and outsourcing are seen as the primary culprits for the decline of U.S. manufacturing. As a long time Ohio resident, located in the area affectionately known as the “rust-belt”, I have personally seen the impact of outsourcing in U.S. manufacturing. But outsourcing is not the only reason for losses in manufacturing jobs. In 2003 Gartner research found that global manufacturing job losses were rising around the world due to simple technology improvements and lean manufacturing practices. These improvements not only reduced the need for manual labor, but also changed the work environment and remaining employee skill requirements. In today’s manufacturing organizations both the environment and workforce are focused on maximizing machine outputs and reducing labor costs.

In our current climate where unemployment hovers at 9%, and manufacturing continues to see improvements from technology are we really facing a skills gap? Recent data coming from today’s U.S. manufacturing organizations is pretty clear. Not only do we have a skills gap, but that gap is going to cost over 55% of the top U.S. manufactures each over $100 million dollars in the next five years. Additionally, 31% of manufactures said they currently have over 20 open positions that require skilled labor, and many comment that they would hire more than they need, just to ensure they have the skill for the future.

I had the opportunity to spend some time in mid-September at an innovation and trade show for U.S. based manufacturing organizations: IMX: A Commitment to the Advancing U.S. Manufacturing. I was invited to attend by one of the key sponsor organizations Society of Manufacturing Engineers, and a recent acquisition to their organization ToolingU. ToolingU provides on-line development programs to help manufacturers compete through knowledge and expertise. Many of these programs focus specifically on helping address the “skilled labor gap” audience.

In the midst of cryogenic machine tooling demonstrations from Mag , and innovative supply chain and talent presentations from Kennametal , I heard a constant focus on development and hiring challenges. There is no doubt from listening to the chatter on the floor and the facts from the various speakers that the U.S. does have a skilled labor gap today. Thoughts and frustrations from the participants could be summed up by a single comment I overheard on my first day at the event by a manufacturing leader, “I’m tired of trying to find them [skilled labor], it isn’t worth the time. I need to focus on building them internally.”

I came away from this event with more questions than answers:

• What is “skilled labor”; how is it defined, what are the skills, background, and knowledge required to fit into this category?
• What is creating this gap? Our educational process, our society, speed of change, or all of the above?
• What is the U.S. plan for filling this gap? Government S.T.E.M. programs, collaborating industry leaders, aggressive talent management and development programs by individual companies, or increased foreign labor acquisition?
• Is this a short term resurgence in the market or a long term market issue? Is this a global issue as well as U.S. issue?

In my discussions and interviews, the answers to these questions were not only unclear across multiple organizations; the lack of answers was also a key factor in the frustration of manufacturing owners and leaders alike.

Although there are no easy answers to these questions and challenges; I do think that the talent and learning communities have a real opportunity to do more than sit back and take a passive role in what could be the right time to help support the sparks of “new” life in an “old” industry. We can help drive a focus on areas that could dramatically impact not only the current skilled labor gap, but help change the view of manufacturing jobs in a very jaded U.S. labor market.

If this is an area you have a passion for and would like to hear more about this topic from the Brandon Hall Group, please feel free to comment. We’d love to hear about how your organization is addressing today’s skilled labor gap.

Stacey Harris

Brandon Hall Group Research

In the last few weeks I’ve had a chance to speak with many of our Brandon Hall Group research members, learning more about each of them and listening closely to their insights and questions.  These individuals along with their teams hold significant responsibility for improving the performance of their organizations, and in support of these roles they are constantly looking for market insights concerning the learning and talent technologies they’ve selected to help them with those goals.

In our conversations their most frequent questions focused on the continued merger and acquisition activity among the long-standing learning and talent management vendors.  If you’ve been following the learning and talent technology chatter at all in the last year then you’ll already be aware of the recent round of M&A activity that is concerning the user community. Starting with Taleo’s early acquisition of Learn.com for $125 million and SuccessFactors $290 million dollar purchase of Plateau in June of this year, then adding SumTotal’s acquisitions of GeoLearning in January, as well as their recent pick up of  the Payroll system vendor Accero and Workforce Management solution CyberShift , the market has been shifting.   Add to that the March IPO of Cornerstone OnDemand leading to their raising of $136.5 million dollars, and you can see why both the learning and talent management communities have a lot of questions concerning focus and options in today’s market.

Commonly asked questions:

• Will these larger more complex solution providers continue to stay focused on my company’s individual needs?
• If I’m a large organization looking for a learning or talent solution today, do I need to look further than the newly combined giants in this market space?
• My ERP system has been slow to make innovative upgrades; will this now be the case with these much larger – often share-holder focused mega Talent Management suites as well?

We had an opportunity to speak with SumTotal following their recent M&A announcement. What many felt this deal did for SumTotal in terms of products and offerings, was to put them one step ahead of many of their competitors with integration plans for workforce management, and a limited offering in payroll.  I personally would take more note of how they plan to integrate CyberShift’s practical on-the-ground workforce management solution and mobile technology; these will be real benefits for SumTotal clients over time if integrated well. Where this deal will probably have the greatest impact in the short term is in the continued stretch of the support, operations, and research work within the growing organization, an organization that is already supporting multiple legacy systems.

In our briefing they shared a positive outlook on their integration plans, pointing out recent accomplishments in last September’s quick and effective integration of the Softscape organization. They also shared strong growth numbers, both in new clients and in their expanded ability to cross-sell within the organization. A common theme of the entire conversation was focused on growth and stability. They continued to point out that they will not force existing clients on legacy platforms to transition to the new SumTotal platform, noting that the legacy platforms would continue to have great support but limited upgrades.

We’ve had similar briefings from our friends at Cornerstone OnDemand and SuccessFactors, and we agree that they are all making efforts to quickly refocus their energies on the client needs and away from recent discussions of IPO and M&A activities. In good faith all of these companies are working on meeting client needs, but there is no doubt that the road will be bumpy.

As an existing talent or learning solution customer, or even if you are a buyer new to the market here are few things to keep in mind as you traverse these shifting waters.

Legacy System Customers

Create a transition plan. If your current platform is labeled a legacy system even if you just purchased it, begin developing a transition plan immediately. Over time legacy systems will receive less attention, resources, and definitely less focus.  You should have a plan for either moving to your solution providers current platform or looking externally again within the next two years. This should be a thoughtful exercise undertaken with good planning, versus a rash decision made two years down the road when you become frustrated with the lack of attention.

Become active and vocal. This is good advice for any member of the buying community, but especially important when the organization you have partnered with has been acquired or gone through recent leadership changes. Get involved in advisory or industry groups, beta testing, and user events. Your voice is always greater when combined with others, and the one thing we’ve heard from all of the solution providers is that they are client driven.

Get to know your solution providers new leadership. Feel comfortable voicing your needs no matter how big or small your organization is in the new company. They want to keep your business and now is the time to get to know their views. If the conversations don’t go well be sure to voice those issues as well, and create a plan for your own next steps.

Current Buyers

Don’t limit the search to those solution providers with the largest marketing budgets. The learning and talent technology space continues to include many viable options in both complete suites as well as niche players. In recent months I’ve seen some impressive briefings from both the major solution providers listed above as well as unique organizations offering solutions that are tailored or niche offerings.
These are industry focused organizations like PeopleMatter a talent management solution focused on the service industry space who recently won a significant deal with Applebee’s Restaurants- capable of effectively meeting the needs of the large and diverse workforces in their niche market, their practical approach with this audience is garnering attention.  Digitalignite,  another example of a solution provider who offers a niche learning platform tailored for professional development and associations. These organizations often have membership models that reach over 100,000 participants or more annually. They have completely focused their research and development efforts on the needs of this audience, creating unique e-commerce, accreditation, and registration capabilities within their platform. Innovation is best driven through good clean competition.

Look for innovation in multiple locations. Before settling in to finalize requirement lists and final vendor lists, spend some time looking at tools and solution providers who are expanding the way we think about learning and talent management. New comers to the market like Zapoint who have a unique approach to filling in career-pathing and career-mapping recommendations based on social data, or Rypple’s open approach to feedback and coaching can help you rethink your own strategy to managing talent.

Know your vendor style. Much like a personality style, a vendor style is an understanding of the type of vendors that your organization works with best. Is your IT staff flexible or rigid? Does your organization generally select vendors where they are a big fish in a small pond, on the cutting edge and willing to take risks, or those that are focused on stability or value? At some point in time, almost everyone in your company will interact with a learning or talent technology if it is enterprise wide, so ensure that it matches the culture and values of your organization.

In the end – this market will continue to change, and we expect to see a sustained interest in this space for capital investment and M&A activity over the next few years.  As the basic functionality across all of these systems converges into industry standards – the real differentiators for buyers will come down to culture, fit, industry focus, and the ability to innovate.

Thanks for the warm welcome from the Brandon Hall members, we will continue to listen and answer your questions as quickly as possible, please feel free to continue to send them my way at stacey.harris@brandonhall.com