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Posts Tagged ‘Chief HR Officer’

Event Report: Customers Very Happy At Ultimate Connections 2013 (#ulticonnect)

Published on March 29, 2013 by R "Ray" Wang

Partnership Announcements Enhance Ultimate Software’s Offerings

Amidst a crowd of 1500 customers, partners, and attendees, Ultimate Software held their annual gathering from March 12th to March 15th, 2013 in Las Vegas. Geared towards the medium sized to enterprise markets, Ultimate Software has steadily taken market share from ADP for payroll and expanded out into operational and strategic human capital management (HCM) capabilities. New mobile access, generation 4 cloud architecture, and timeline features for employee’s highlight Ultimate’s growing ambitions and customer requirements.

At the event, Ultimate announced two strategic partnerships that bode well for customers and prospects facing an increasing level of customer complexity and growing need for global capabilities:

Celergo partnership adds global payroll capabilities to internationalization efforts. Celergo’s founder and CEO, Michele Honomichl, and Adam Rogers announced on stage global payroll services support for 110 countries and the ability to process payroll in over 150 countries. In addition, Ultimate’s Spring and Fall 2013 release of the flagship UltiPro includes support for 28 country specific localizations such as Australia, Brazil, China, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, Spain, and Thailand. Other key features include, global compensation management, localized compliance for data and employee privacy rules, and additional language translations.

Point of View (POV): Ultimate’s customers operate in 144 countries. As organizations follow the growth overseas, the global payroll connector and Celergo partnership gives mid market and enterprise customers a competitive option as they expand their presence abroad and usage of UltiPro. These proactive steps to address global capabilities now, provide a key differentiation among potential competitors and places Ultimate Software in a potential position of international expansion.

Informatica partnership paves the way for future cloud partnerships. At the conference, Informatica announced a self-service solution for HCM data connections. Built on top of UltiPro Carrier Network (UCN), customers have access to over 100 packaged connectors to benefits carriers and third party solutions.

(POV): Customers and prospects do not want to worry about integration of their employee records or people management solutions with medical, dental, vision, and other benefits providers. In the long term, customers seek worry free integration platforms to third party applications, cloud ecosystems, and mobile ecosystems. The partnership with Informatica solves the needs of complex integration scenarios and Ultimate customers do not pay for the integration tool. However, customers who are looking for a lower cost integration solution for non-UCN endpoints may want to consider more cost-effective offerings for more point to point integration scenarios.

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Tuesday’s Tip: It’s Time To Consolidate Social Business Platforms

Published on March 5, 2013 by R "Ray" Wang

Greater Adoption In Social Business Signifies A Move To Consolidate Platforms

Constellation’s buy-side clients tend to fit in the market leader or fast follower categories when it comes to organizational personas of disruptive technology adoption. Since 2010, respondents have progressed through the DEEPR framework and the latest results from 2012 indicate that most survey respondents have moved to Level 3 (see Figure 1). Changes between 2010 and 2012 show the following top three priority shifts as users move from Level 2 (Experimentation) to Level 3 (Evangelization):

The top challenge among respondents is choosing the right platform (63.8%) among the many inside an organization.
Over half (56.8%) of the respondents have incorporated social into business models.
Respondents fostering internal collaboration (53.5%) now must worry about adoption challenges.

Figure 1. Respondents Shift to Level 3 in DEEPR Framework for Social Business Adoption

The Bottom Line. Its Time To Scale The Technology While Pushing Ahead On Innovation

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Tuesday’s Tip: Focus On The Business Outcomes, Not Technology With Big Data

Published on February 26, 2013 by R "Ray" Wang

The Why Behind Big Data Starts By Asking What’s The Business Outcome

So organizations have lots of data. New techniques have emerged to correlate big data. Enamored by the potential of big data, leaders are now reinvesting in technologies to find hidden nuggets of insights with the business goals of:

Mitigating regulatory risks
Identifying operational efficiencies
Improving revenue growth
Creating market differentiation
Expanding the brand presence

These big data use cases often follow the business hierarchy of needs, which are based on concepts pioneered by Maslow (see Figure 1). More importantly, a key question in big data has been to ask the right question.

Figure 1. The Business Hierarchy of Needs Drives Many Big Data Use Cases

An Information Flow Approach Moves The Discussion From Data To Decisions

Unfortunately, the problem is most organizations start by talking about outcomes and then get mired in the technologies to achieve these outcomes. Big data technologies include advanced business analytics, application of existing technologies such as data warehousing and business intelligence. In many cases, application of decision automation, semantic technology and collaborative tools are also needed. Yet, from Data to Decisions requires the integration of quite a few disciplines.

Data to decisions is about taking data sources, transforming them into useful information, gathering key insights, and then making the right decisions (see Figure 2). Data sources, information, and orchestration belong in the realm of IT and hopefully will be delivered via the cloud. Insight, decisions, and actions are line of business driven areas which deliver the most value add:

Data sources. Expect a mix of structured, semi-structured, and lots of unstructured.
Information and orchestration. The mix of information types include physical, virtual, machine, and contextual.
Insight. Information translated to insight considers performance, deduction, inference, and prediction.
Decisions and actions. The outcomes are driven from next best action, prevention, suggestion, and even no action.

Figure 2. The Flow From Data To Decisions

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Market Maker 1:1: Steve Miranda, Oracle Fusion Applications Update – The Inside Story

Published on December 31, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

The Inside Story On Oracle Fusion Apps At The End of 2012

Constellation sat down with Steve Miranda, Oracle’s Executive Vice President of Oracle Applications Product Development to discuss the state of Oracle Fusion Apps in a no-holds barred honest conversation about what’s working, what’s not, and what to look forward to in 2013.

R “Ray” Wang (RW): Steve Miranda is Executive Vice President of Oracle Applications Product Development. He is responsible for leading all aspects of product strategy, product development, and product delivery for Oracle’s applications and related cloud services. This includes Oracle Fusion Applications and Oracle’s newest products for customer service and support, commerce, and talent management.

Mr. Miranda joined Oracle in 1992 and has held a variety of leadership positions within the development organization. In 2007 he was asked to lead the engineering of Oracle’s next-generation suite of software applications, Oracle Fusion Applications. Under Mr. Miranda’s leadership, Oracle has continually delivered on its promise to help its applications customers innovate and remain competitive while leveraging their existing IT investments and increasing the value of those investments with new Oracle products and services.

Prior to Oracle, Mr. Miranda worked at GE Aerospace. He holds degrees in mathematics and computational sciences from Stanford University.

CATCHING UP ON ORACLE FUSION APPLICATIONS TRACTION

(RW): As 2012 is coming to an end it is a good time to reflect on how Oracle Fusion Applications has been doing this year. It would seem that Oracle’s been quite quiet about Oracle Fusion Applications throughout the year. Is the product selling? What’s the state of the Oracle Fusion Applications product lines?

Steve Miranda(SM): Oracle Fusion Applications is doing very well. We’re actively selling the product. In fact, we already have over 400 customers on Oracle Fusion Applications. We’re doing better than Salesforce.com when they started. Keep in mind, we have a rich customer base looking for innovation.

RW: When you say “Oracle Fusion Applications is selling well”, is that the whole suite or components of Oracle Fusion Applications?

SM: We are actively selling the product. More than 400 customers are on Oracle Fusion Applications, that’s any part of Oracle Fusion Applications, not including RightNow, Taleo, Oracle Business Analytics, or Oracle Fusion Middleware. Two thirds of the customers have chosen to deploy in a SaaS model. Then the second largest deployment model but far below are on-premise and the rest are hosted in our managed services.

RW: Does “managed services” means they own their own license, right?

SM: That’s correct. What’s powerful about these deployments patterns is that customers are accessing innovation faster than before. We are at over 100 live customers and are averaging one go-live a day right now.

RW: I understand that Oracle deployed Oracle Fusion Applications internally? How was that experience in “drinking your own champagne”?

SM: Ray, that’s correct. We did drink our own champagne and we are now using Oracle Fusion CRM internally instead of Siebel.. We have a global single instance for the business. When we deployed, we started out with 2 instances to show case a co-existence approach and an end-to-end Oracle Fusion Applications approach. As of June 1, 2012, Oracle Fusion CRM was up around the world. All the territories, forecasting, quotas, sales force automation, and contacts are in Oracle Fusion CRM globally.

RW: Is it one instance now?

SM: Yes. We also went live w/ Oracle Fusion Financials Accounting Hub on the back end. We replaced Hyperion and Oracle E-Business Suite GL and also went live June 1, 2012. We’ve already done several month-end closes and we also have Oracle Fusion Talent Performance Management up live. Employees and managers are now doing goal setting and appraisals.

RW: To be honest with you Steve, we aren’t seeing Oracle much in head to head competitive new deals. We don’t see big press releases about new wins. Where are the customers? Who’s buying what and why?

SM: Well, first of all, many of our existing customers are coming to us about Oracle Fusion Applications. Second of all, and you may not believe this, we’re not focused on publicity, but rather we want to ensure customer success.. Each go-live is very important to us. In our first set of go-lives, we have 10,000 customers who want to talk to the first 10 go lives. We also don’t want to overwhelm our initial customers.

Let me give you some details and examples so you understand the breadth and depth of what the Fusion Apps base looks like and so there’s no confusion. Here’s a selected slice:

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Monday’s Musings: The New Engagement Platform Drives The Shift From Transactions

Published on August 27, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Convergence In The Five Forces Of Consumerization Of Technology Drives The Next Big Thing

Social has given us the tools to connect. Mobile has given us the ability to interact any time and anywhere. Cloud delivers access points to us with a rich array of content and information. Big data provides us with the context and information to make decisions. Unified communications and video transform how we share ideas. This convergence of the five forces of consumerization drives the next shifts in technology. The move from transaction to engagement and from engagement to experience is happening now. The era of transactional apps rapidly makes way for the era of engagement.

If Business Value And Outcomes Are The Goal, Then We Need An Engagement Platform For The Enterprise

The arrival of engagement platforms does not signify time to throw out the transactional systems. In fact, those systems provide the foundation required for engagement. The engagement layer exposes transactions and allow for deeper interaction and richer sources of information. However, the transactional systems lack the ability to support engagement.

In fact, organizations around the world struggle with building the right engagement strategy for their customers and employees. While crafting the right strategy should be designed prior to any technology selection, once completed, the technology to support the strategy does not exist out of the box from ANY solution provider. Unfortunately, the technologies to achieve engagement remain disparate and hodge podge. Many solution providers seek to achieve the engagement layer from different heritages:

Figure 1. Technologies Will Evolve From Transactions to P2P

The Engagement Platform Requires Nine Main Technology Components

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Market Maker 1:1: #HRTechConf Preview w/ Bill Kutik

Published on August 7, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

15 Years of HR Technology At The Industry’s Premier Event

The fifteenth annual HR Technology Conference and Exposition returns to McCormick Place in Chicago October 8th to 10th, 2012. HR Tech is the industry’s longest running event looking at technologies that influence the Future of Work.

The Inside View With Bill Kutik – Future of Work Pioneer And Co-Chairman of HR Tech

Since 1990, Bill Kutik has been a Technology Columnist for Human Resource Executive® (and for HREOnline™ since 2006,), also serving as co-chairman of the magazine’s famous annual conference, HR Technology® Conference & Exhibition, since it began in 1998. In 2008, he started The Bill Kutik Radio Show®, a bi-weekly online talk show with industry leaders.

HR World named him one of “The Top 25 HR Influencers of 2007.” More recently, he was named a “Top 25 HR Digital Influencer 2009″ and a “Top 100 Influencer.”

For 20 years, he was consulting editor for Esther Dyson’s leading computer industry newsletter, Release 1.0. Previously he was the founding editor of the monthly magazine, Computers in HR Management; managing editor of Ziff-Davis’ Computer Industry Daily; and a reporter for The New York Times and The New York Daily News. He has also published articles in Newsweek, Washington Post, Institutional Investor, New York Magazine, Business Month, IHRIM Journal, Cruising World and Backpacker (where he was the founding editor).

We sat down with industry pioneer Bill Kutik for a preview of this year’s event:

1. Where do you see the new trends in HR tech going? What’s changed since last year? (Have we moved beyond Cloud, is everything social?)

Bill Kutik (BK): This year marks an inflection point in HR technology – perhaps in all of IT – the end of one era and the beginning of another, a generational shift in computing.

It happens every 10 – 15 years and remarkably HR has often been at the leading edge of change, either because corporations thought it didn’t matter if IT experiments failed there or because it’s the only department that touches every employee in the company.

Remember, PeopleSoft released the first packaged client/server application (for HR but the first for any function) in 1989, which started the death of the mainframe. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s claims aside, HR has been using hosted applications (perhaps not anyone’s version of true SaaS) for recruiting since 1998 and major web-based applications since 2000.

Now the combination of SaaS (Cloud Computing) plus Social in the Enterprise – companies using private collaborative software to get real work done – are marking a new era in computing.

These will be among the major topics this year at the HR Technology® Conference in Chicago, October 8-10.

2. Why the continued interest and investment by organizations in HR and related technologies?

BK: The main reason is the 50-year-long lie in large type in corporate annual reports is finally seen as true: “People are our most important asset.” People costs, even in manufacturing firms with huge capital investments, are more than 50 percent of the annual run-rate. Obviously closer to 90 percent in knowledge-based firms like consulting, law, accounting and software.

To succeed in 2012, organizations must have an effective people strategy aligned with their goals. They must identify the best players, assign them to the right work and keep them engaged. Technology doesn’t create this strategy – executives do – but they can’t properly execute their strategy without the right technology to enable it.

HR technology isn’t for HR anymore. The latest applications reaching mass adoption – such as the Talent Management suite – are now used almost exclusively by line managers and employees after HR has purchased the software and configured it properly.

3. Are 2012 HR technology budgets increasing compared to prior years?

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Research Summary: Why the Move from Transaction to Experience Requires Better Analytics

Published on April 12, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Forward And Commentary

This trends report examines how changing expectations among business leaders and the consumerization of IT will shape the future of insights and decision-making. As organizations make the move from transactions to engagement to experience, a new type of analytics will be required.

A. Introduction

Business leaders seek better insights for smarter decision-making. Unfortunately, today’s traditional intelligence tools were designed for two-dimensional transactional systems. As data from consumer trends such as mobile, social, cloud, big data, and video make their way into the enterprise, organizations seek new tools to discern insight from these new engagement and experiential systems.

The shift from transaction to engagement to experience depends on better business analytics. Success requires that new business analytical tools support the information supply chain as data moves from a cacophony of upstream data sources to new and innovative downstream modes of consumption.

B. Research Findings – Why the Move from Transaction to Experience Requires Better Analytics

Leaders seek more than just reporting and dashboards, they expect to make real decisions. A recent Constellation Research survey identified key expectations from business analytics to include: supporting business strategy and planning; optimizing costs across the value chain; identifying hidden patterns and relationships in big data; providing context for relevant engagement; and predicting demand in networks. Along with these key trends, the report discusses the:

Five Consumer Forces Influence the Future of Analytics
How Business Leaders Move Beyond Simple Reporting and Dashboards in Their Expectations of Business Analytics
Why Organizations Seek Insight to Make Better Decisions in the Shift from Transaction to Experience
How Big Data Provides the Key Element in Moving from Real- Time to Right-Time

Figure 1. Moving From Transaction To Experience

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Executive Profiles: From Transaction To Engagement – Michael Park, Microsoft Business Solutions

Published on March 12, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Welcome to a new series of interviews for 2012 with business leaders making the move from transaction to engagement. The interviews provide insightful points of view from a customer, industry, and vendor perspective. We’ll be taking limited interviews throughout the year for publication as we also try to catch up on the Disruptive Tech Leaders series.

Michael Park, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Business Solutions

Biography

Michael Park is the corporate vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) sales, marketing and operations at Microsoft Corp. MBS develops and markets Microsoft Dynamics, a line of simple to learn and use enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) applications which bring together a broad array of Microsoft software and online services to deliver end-to-end business solutions for customers. Microsoft Dynamics is designed to work the way people and organizations work, enable them to make more informed decisions, and is delivered through a global network of partners with deep industry expertise.

Park is a software industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience in key leadership roles, most recently as head of Microsoft’s U.S. Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partners (SMS&P) Group leading sales, marketing and partner professionals, including U.S.-based Microsoft Dynamics partners, serving more than 6 million business customers.

Prior to joining Microsoft in October 2005, Park held key leadership positions with major companies such as SAP where he defined the market strategy for the company’s service-enabled business applications platform and built the infrastructure of people, processes and systems for small and mid-sized businesses. He also defined product strategy and pioneered Siebel Systems Inc.’s first vertical CRM solution for consumer products and life sciences. Park began his career in sales and brand management at Procter & Gamble.

Park has an MBA from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Rochester.

The Interview

1. Consumerization of IT (CoIT) is playing larger role in the daily lives of workers and the workforce. How do you see this shift playing out?

Michael Park (MP): Ray, it comes down to people. In our case, it’s making business applications easier for people to consume. If people can’t do their jobs better, then the technology isn’t delivering on its promise. Why? People are the heart of every business and you have to empower them for success. What’s happening on the consumer side is that people are getting their hands on some really exciting technology that is easy for them to use and this is getting those in the enterprise thinking. People want to work with anyone, anywhere, on any device; they want to be connected. And even though running an enterprise requires complex technology, this trend is forcing us to address the customer experience. It is where the rubber hits the road– the power button is the training manual. It has to be that easy for everyone.

2. In this new shift from transaction to engagement, what changes within organizations from culture, to process, to technology do you anticipate happening in the next three to five years?

(MP): I think this shift will put enormous pressure on IT to deliver effective technology and flexibility at low cost to the end users. Business apps will need to enable the connected state; anytime, anywhere, through any device. These new apps must support how people work and the fact that they want to work collaboratively and communicate with other people, systems and data both internally and externally. Simply rendering forms and lists doesn’t cut it anymore. Apps of the future are connecting people across organizational boundaries, across the business ecosystem and across cultures, time zones, and languages. Culturally it means that employees will be impactful if they can actually use the applications they implement the way they expect them to work. This leads to better context upstream and downstream which helps you not only make better decisions but have better ideas about how you can move the business forward. And that is also where flexibility comes into play. Business applications will need to be flexible enough to change, create, and refine themselves on a different order of magnitude than what’s previously been possible and this needs to go hand in hand with ease of use.

So in the next three to five years, if we give the software the ability to do this, employees will be in a good position to make decisions and deliver impact. When an employee or employer is making a difference, it’s the highest level of impact and accomplishment. If all your apps can help that happen then you are on your way to becoming a dynamic business and leveraging the full power of what your people can do.

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News Analysis: The Implications Of Oracle’s Acquisition Of Taleo

Published on February 9, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Catch my colleague Yvette Cameron’s point of view here. She covers Future of Work for Constellation Research, Inc.

Oracle Plays Catch Up With Public Cloud Ambitions

On February 9th, Oracle announced its intention to acquire Dublin, CA based Taleo for $1.9B. Taleo is a cloud based talent management software provider with 5000 customers and 1400 employees. Key take aways to consider:

Moves by SAP and Oracle intend to compete with next generation cloud HCM companies. Taleo provides recruiting and on boarding, performance management and goal setting, compensation, succession, and learning and development. This complete suite tied to reporting and analytics is designed to streamline human resource operations and employee career management across retail and hospitality, travel, healthcare, media and entertainment, financial services, technology, and energy and mining. Marquee customers include Starbucks, Starwood, Hyatt, JP Morgan Chase, HP, Dell, Conde’Nast, United, American Airlines, Tesora, Blue Cross blue Shield, and Sutter Health.to customers.

Point of View (POV): Oracle sees advantages in acquiring a leading player in the talent management space . For years, both Taleo and SuccessFactors ate into Oracle’s existing customer base for talent management. Consequently, other cloud based HCM and HR Tech vendors such as Ceridian, CornerStone OnDemand, FairSail, Kinexa, UltimateSoftware, and Workday continue to attract line of business customers looking for innovations not being delivered by their core HCM providers (i.e. Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP). More importantly, cloud computing if properly designed can improve the pace of innovation delivered to customers.

Oracle continues to buy its way into a public cloud. Oracle continues to react to buyer sentiment and preference for cloud based solutions with this second major acquisition in what they term the “public cloud” space. Oracle purchased RightNow for $1.43B on October 24th to address its gaps in customer service solutions. The Taleo purchase addresses a gap in Talent Management solutions that rival SAP plugged with its recent acquisition of Success Factors for $3.4B .

Point of View (POV): These defensive plays indicate a realization that Cloud delivery emerges as the predominant option for applications. Based on Oracle’s current road map, one can expects Oracle to acquire its way into many other edge applications not listed on its Public Cloud road map (see Figure 1). Some other applications could include social business solutions, expense management, learning solutions, pricing management, identity management, and mobile device management. However, Oracle’s public cloud acquisition strategy so far lacks a key requirement – a choice for multi-tenant architected solutions. While both RightNow and Taleo have some modules that are multi-tenant, in most instances, these applications have been delivered in single tenancy or in multi-instance. Multi-tenant solutions will provide clients with the most efficient upgrade path and lowest long-term cost structure. The lack of a public strategy to address this issue remains a significant concern for customers and industry observers.

Figure 1. Oracle’s Vision For A Public Cloud

Source: Oracle Corporation

Seats matter most in a world of CoIT. Oracle hopes to gain massive cloud scale through Taleo’s 74 million transactions per day and 240 million candidates on Taleo Talent Exchange. The sheer number of users is massive.

POV: Unlike CRM or ERP, the play for HR is all about acquiring the biggest base of users – employees. With consumerization of IT (CoIT) in full swing, the goal is to grab as many users upfront and then over time cross-sell them into other edge applications which converge between enterprise and consumer. Why? The new strategy among the enterprise apps vendors is land and expand. The largest active user bases will win the war of attrition.

The Bottom Line for Customers: Goodbye On-Premises, Hello Cloud World!

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Monday’s Musings: Seven Basic Privacy Rights Users Should Demand For Social Business

Published on January 15, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

Public Outrage Grows Over Lax Privacy Polices At Popular Social Networking Sites

Recent actions by social networking leaders in the market place have brought new attention to a user’s privacy rights. Despite the fact that these sites provide a freemium service to users, abuse and arrogance of a user’s privacy rights combined with user ignorance has led to not only a public outrage, but also increasing action from privacy advocacy groups to petition government agencies. Three public examples include:

Google+ Search Plus Your World controversy. The recent decision by Google to feature personalized search results from one’s contacts has generated an uproar. While users may opt out of receiving search results based on personal data, users can’t block information found by their Google+ contacts including those that are +1 pages, messages, contacts, and videos. Despite the personalization benefits to users and the fact Twitter and Google could not agree on terms on real-time search, the forced march and prioritization raises concerns over a user’s rights. Consequently, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has asked the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Google’s practices.
Facebook Timeline uproar. When Facebook recently rolled out their new Timeline feature, users expressed outrage. Though Timeline simplified access to a user’s profile, the lack of time to make changes, suddenness of announcement, and confusion over public versus private data furthered complaints. The constant stream of privacy changes without user control led to EPIC’s petition to the FTC and Facebook’s settlement. Facebook’s market dominance (see Figure 1.) and public proclamation that “The Age of Privacy Is Over” should lead to greater scrutiny by privacy advocates.
LinkedIn Ads backlash. Rolled out in June 2011, LinkedIn exposed the products and services of interest to members for use with advertising. Advertisers could then display which members “endorsed” products and services from an advertiser. The lack of solicitation from an opt-in process led to a backlash from users and LinkedIn backing down to consumer pressure.