With the first blog promoting the sponsors efforts at HR Tech Europe, and the second featuring initiatives around Women In Tech, this third article looks more to the market view for HR and technology and what steps the HR providers are taking to address the progress.

Each sponsor was asked two questions: –

  1. In your opinion what is the most exciting thing happening in the HR Tech market this year?
  2. It’s a competitive world out there so what are you doing to help progress the industry and make sure ‘HR works’?

Note: I did rather callously cut out the blatant company promotions.

In your opinion what is the most exciting thing happening in the HR Tech market this year?

  • “Social Learning
  • Mobile for everything – all HR applications
  • Learning anyplace, anytime, anywhere, any device – putting the employee in charge!
  • HR Analytics is BIG especially in enterprises where there are large workforces
  • Social Recruiting” Catherine Stenson, Pluralsight

“Mobile, Social and Analytics have all been buzzwords in HR Technology for a couple of years now however we are only now seeing these areas becoming widely adopted by vendors, clients, employees and external talent communities. For example, fully mobile-optimised solutions now permit candidates to apply for jobs on smartphones and employees to complete performance reviews on tablets, anytime and anywhere.” Nick Adams, PageUp

“HR teams have finally begun to embrace HR analytics and we are starting to see the blending of HR data with other business data to drive business value.” Giles Slinger, OrgVue

“Wellness apps! Analytics has been done, mobile is a table-stake, social collaboration is going to be huge but needs a few solid use cases before it really piques people’s interest. On the negative side stress at work seems to be at an all-time high. On a positive side mindfulness courses are starting to come into vogue. What links them, wellness. Watch this space.” Andy Campbell, Oracle

It’s all about the people…..

“The most exciting thing is how technology has really started to focus on the human part of HR. Whilst HR-tech 10 years ago was most about rigid systems now the focus is on making it better for the company’s biggest asset. Their people!” Leo Heijbel, Benify

“Companies are growingly “employee centric”. They are looking for one global platform that allows managing all of their workforce. They seek sophisticated workforce planning software that goes beyond the “typical” administrative operations and that is natively integrated with all the other HCM areas. They are focused on raising the loyalty and satisfaction of the individual worker. They want to make treasure of the corporate knowledge throughout the use of one private social platform where all employees can share their experience and understandings. Last but not least, clients today want to experiment analytical tools and be increasingly confident with concepts behind the big data.” Reka Ujj, Zucchetti

“Talent today is regarded as the most precious resource of a company. HR Tech is reflecting that by focusing on the candidate’s perspective and the candidate journey instead of purely on processes.” Jens Bender, IntraWorlds

“While it’s not exactly a new thing, I’m excited to see that the Candidate Experience has been getting more attention again. Companies should realise that they need to attract job seekers and make them happy, instead of having them jump through many hoops to apply. The days of asking candidates to fill out long forms are over. While you may want job seekers to be dedicated, you don’t want to lose good talent.” Kim Pieschel, Textkernel

Transformation time (again)….

“HR is prime for a services transformation, due to the many repetitive, manual tasks in their workflow. But the HR department is not alone in this pain point. In fact, IT departments have long had to deal with this issue, finding innovative solutions to finally be able to focus on the work that really impacts the organization. One of the most exciting things happening in HR Tech right now is a closer alignment between HR and the CIO, who often has already transformed his/her own IT department. HR leaders are benefiting from the CIO’s experience and learning to create technology strategies that transform the way HR delivers services to the organization. More than ever, the repetitive work that used to take up so much of the department’s time, is being automated. The result of this is an HR department that is now much more efficient, and able to innovate at a faster pace. Whether it’s an HR solution to manage employee requests, an on-boarding module to quickly and seamlessly integrate new employees into the organization or an analytics platform to monitor workforce productivity, 2015 is seeing HR departments around the globe modernize operations, increasing efficiency and producing significant savings.” Jen Stroud, ServiceNow

Technology turning heads…

“Companies are becoming conscious of the importance of investing in human resources and platform modernization (Cloud and OnPremise).” Valentino Girardi, Altevie Technologies

“One of the biggest trends in recent years has been the shift to the cloud. Along with increased security and the confidence that your system is always up to date with the latest functionality and usability enhancements, cloud deployment allows employers to tap into real-time labour data. And I think that’s really exciting! Real-time visibility into workforce trends is the key to managing labour and absence-related costs more tightly. And I think it’s something we’re going to see more and more employers expect from their technology solutions as they seek new ways to use big data to drive enterprise-wide business outcomes. Another trend is using software to help managers anticipate and proactively address potential challenges. Solutions have long been able to inform managers about historical data or current events, but increasingly they’re able to synthesize information about workforce activities, costs, and productivity in ways that can help managers’ best support the business. These types of contextualized “key performance indicators” represent the best type of software innovation because they pack industry knowledge into highly usable new features.” Marcello Sambartolo, WorkForce Software

“Josh Bersin’s predications are always valuable here. {From the ones he set for 2015 I believe the one that has the biggest potential to transform how we use HR technology is ‘Network model trumps walled-off systems (recruiting, performance, learning)’. What makes this so powerful is that every organizational activity around talent draws on the world outside the organization as well as internally. Performance reviews evolve to include assessments of people’s impact in their larger professional communities. Recruiting starts from the personal and professional networks people maintain. Learning embraces everything we engage in together in our work and professional communities as well as internal and external formal programs – so what we read, who we have LinkedIn discussions with, what those are about, where our passions are as well as our skills. For HR technology, this means continuing to integrate, and expanding integrations beyond system-specific modules to include the world of relevant connections people make online every day.” Raly Ivanova, Aasonn

It’s HR!

“It’s HR… there have never happened any real exciting things in the HR Tech market as far as I can remember”

“Finally, HR buyers are going beyond drab and boring to fun and exciting.”

Yeouch!!

It’s a competitive world out there so what are you doing to help progress the industry and make sure ‘HR works’?

“We hold monthly roundtable discussions with thought leaders in HR to listen and exchange information on new initiatives. Through these discussions, we’re working together to marry technology with the latest HR essentials in the market. These conversations augment the regular interactions with our client base, as well as with industry analysts, that we conduct during our regular course of business.” Marcello Sambartolo, WorkForce Software

“We are bringing our clients into the innovation process of everything we do. It means the development of our solution is more created by HR for HR. This makes sure that our features are not just techy but also have their base in the reality that all HR managers face.” Leo Heijbel, Benify

“I believe that the most important thing is spreading and sharing the Human Resource culture, especially on a cross industry level and focusing on specific market segments. Learning is the first thing of course. Also, in Zucchetti the average age is 35, we have the fortune of being a company in which four generations work on a daily basis side by side: we personally experience and comprehend the criticism related to human resource management and how these are changing over time. We learn from first-hand experience, turning this experience into added value for our clients. In Zucchetti, the real life gives birth to the corporate vision.” Reka Ujj, Zucchetti

“Day-to-day demands and inefficient processes can rob the HR department of the time and budget they need to make strategic contributions to the organization. ServiceNow’s HR Service Management solutions help HR managers focus their resources on strategic priorities, creating a system of engagement that complements existing applications for core HR, talent and workforce management. We help companies automate workflows such as on boarding, employee change and off-boarding, so that HR professionals can focus innovation and employee engagement.” Jen Stroud, ServiceNow

“When you look at the full HR ecosystem and observe how it is being revolutionised by cloud technology, there is one major gap — global mobility. Today, 89% of organisations plan to increase the number of internationally mobile workers in the coming two years, but only 8% believe they have a sophisticated and innovative global mobility programme (PwC). That is why organisations need the innovation more than ever. I have seen with our customers that by introducing intuitive and modern technology and joining it up with services to manage talent mobility programs in a single hub, everyone involved in an employee’s relocation can achieve incredible operational efficiencies, compliance and employee satisfaction.” Brynne Herbert, MOVE Guides

“Aasonn’s entire business model is predicated on supporting implementations that support business outcomes. Like all technology, HR tech is only as good as the uses we put it to – Aasonn’s focus on analytics, HCM, and managed services does 3 critical things to help progress the industry: (1) analytics only have an impact when people know what to do with them. We help people make sense of what the data are telling them; (2) talent technology only makes sense when it clearly supports decision making about how best to align people to achieve an organization’s goals. Aasonn’s HCM consulting helps keep the lines of communication open between the business (profitability, market share, product and process excellence) and the best uses for the resources that drive the business (recruiting, talent development, leadership, rewards); (3) Aasonn’s Employee Cloud brings a managed services model to clients, who can fully offload the daily transactional work associated with their talent and HR processes to Aasonn, and focus their internal resources on the strategic support of their business where they can make the most difference.” Raly Ivanova, Aasonn

“Over the last 10 years we have been working on projects where trust and commitment are mandatory. Our knowledge on SAP HCM, Oracle database, Microsoft .NET and other technologies allow us to implement projects in companies with heterogeneous and complex landscapes.” Paulo Martins, konkconsulting

“Together with our industry-leading clients we are constantly innovating how companies should systematically manage the relationships with talent and engage with them along the entire career lifecycle.” Jens Bender, IntraWorlds

“By democratising professional learning and the availability of courses for everyone not just price per module.” Catherine Stenson, Pluralsight

“The HR Tech marketplace is indeed competitive and maturing at a significant rate. In the race to deliver product many vendors overlook the usability and intuitiveness required for successful adoption across the workforce. We work directly with our clients to ensure the user experience is the best it can be for their current employees and their future talent: engaging, simple to use and supportive of the employee brand.” Nick Adams, PageUp

“We give HR strategic and operational tools to help solve many problems that have henceforth been ‘unsolvable’, including workforce planning and transition management. We run monthly analytics workshops to help make sure HR practitioners have the requisite skills to perform impactful workforce analysis.” Giles Slinger, OrgVue

“If you compare the HR function with our peers in Finance, Marketing, Sales and Operations we are still behind the curve. We need to learn the lessons from these other areas if we really want to progress and make HR work. For example, we personalise the user experience for our customers, but so often take a one size fits all approach to our employees. That needs to change.” Andy Campbell, Oracle

GET IN TOUCH

There’s still time to meet the sponsors onsite, or go to http://london.hrtecheurope.com/sponsors and request a meeting – I’m sure all the sponsors will be happy to hear from you.