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Monday's Musings: What Organizations Want From Mobile

Monday's Musings: What Organizations Want From Mobile

Mobile Is The Entry Point To Digital Business

Mobile is a key entry point into digital transformation and digital business initiatives.  Along with cloud, social, big data/analytics, and video, mobile is one of the five pillars of digital.  Mobile is more than the first screen of interaction for many users.  Mobile describes how users expect to access and engage.  While modern smartphones have more computing power than what was used to send a man to the moon, mobile often works with cloud as cloud provides the storage and computational power when connected.   Constellation estimates that by 2018, 2 billion mobile phones will be shipped and that there will be more phones than people in the world.  Today’s use patterns reflect mobility as the first touch point into the digital world.  Further, the average person is no further than 3 feet or 1 meter away from a phone at any point during the day.

Requirements For Mobile App Development Reflect New Patterns Of Use

Conversations with market leaders and fast followers indicate seven key requirements from mobile app dev platforms that reflect these new patterns of use (see Figure 1):

Figure 1. What Organizations Want From Mobile

  1. Write once and really deploy everywhere. Users expect responsive design, yet they also expect access to native device features.  The inefficiency of supporting multiple platforms, channels, and interfaces inhibits rapid design and deployment.  Expect mobile development and cloud computing to go hand in hand.
  2. Centralize security management. Developers prefer to embed security policies and device management at design instead of deploying security policies for every operating system, device, and application combination.
  3. Support BYOD policies without customization. The bring your own device (BYOD) movement comes with a cost as organizations often deploy various policies at a granular level.  Organizations need to support mass personalization at scale without incurring mass overhead.
  4. Manage upgrades with ease. The upgrade process today is fraught with inefficiencies.  Many manual steps are required to design, test, and deploy.
  5. Deliver context in right time not just real time. Users expect context drivers such as roles, relationship, time, location, sentiment, and intent to carry seamlessly across all business processes and journey maps.  Delivering context at scale requires a process point of view.
  6. Enable wearables and support for Internet of Things (IOT). Requirements must support new data and sensor capture requirements.  Online and offline support for access to information power future big data business models.
  7. Allow for agile development methodologies.  Developers expect support for a variety of development methodologies to enable rapid iteration and scale.  Today’s approaches often limit developers to a handful of approaches.

The Bottom Line: Start With Mobile First For Digital Business

Mobile initiatives provide an entry point into digital.  Mobile first is more than a mantra.  Why?  By applying design thinking to solving specific and purposeful tasks and processes, organizations can rethink the digital journey with mobile projects.  More importantly, mobile enables organizations to break the silos of existing systems from mainframes to on-premises systems and bring new life to legacy applications usage.  Many market leaders and fast followers have mobilized their mainframe and enabled users to access data and information with minimal additional cost with a transformed user experience.  Others have used mobile as an opportunity to break down functional fiefdoms and process silos in their digital transformation efforts. 

Your POV.

Are you still seeing the world through the lens of Social, Mobile, Cloud, Analytics, and UC/Video?  Does this help you take the bigger perspective? Ready for digital disruption by starting with mobile?  Add your comments to the blog or reach me via email: R (at) ConstellationR (dot) com or R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org.

Please let us know if you need help with your Digital Business transformation efforts. Here’s how we can assist:

  • Developing your digital business strategy
  • Connecting with other pioneers
  • Sharing best practices
  • Vendor selection
  • Implementation partner selection
  • Providing contract negotiations and software licensing support
  • Demystifying software licensing
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* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions.  However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Copyright © 2001 -2014 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.
Contact the Sales team to purchase this report on a a la carte basis or join the Constellation Customer Experience

 

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3 Key Takeaways from IBM’s Impact Conference - Day 1 Keynote

3 Key Takeaways from IBM’s Impact Conference - Day 1 Keynote

We have the opportunity to attend IBM’s Impact conference - happening in Las Vegas right now. The conference is well attended with over 9000 attendees.
 
 
Here are my Top 3 Takeaways from today’s keynote:
 
 
  • Marketplaces are essential - In the new world of elastic resources and next generation requirements, customers want to make their licensing process more agile, too. That will more and more replace traditional marketing and sales efforts - in the ideal case seeing a business executive looking for a solution, purchasing and potentially even starting to deploy it. The infrastructure of choice for this transformation is a marketplace and it’s no surprise, that IBM launched its marketplace today. And it brings together a lot of IBM assets - starting with SoftLayer at the infrastructure, BlueMix at the platform and the IBM SaaS portfolio on the application level. More importantly IBM also opens the marketplace to partners and starting with 200 partners is a key milestone.

    In the IBM vision of the API economy - the marketplace is where commercial success will crystallize for this new way of configuring, delivering and consuming next generation applications. And certainly IBM has hit a user friendly interface to use the marketplace - but as the number of solutions grows we will have to see how the user interface will evolve. Behind the scenes it is the WebSphere (not mentioned a single time by name in the keynote) patterns which are key to automate loads, especially hybrid loads. As we have blogged before IBM is in the enviable situation that when early versions of the marketplace will err more in the direction of more professional service engagement - that is not a bad outcome for IBM.
LeBlanc demos (live!) the market place
  • Mobile remains a priority - IBM spent considerable bandwidth in the keynote with Marie Wieck walking through mobile scenarios and presenting showcase customers and patners. Obviously IBM thinks the train for the mobilization of enterprise content has not really left the station and that IBM now has a viable offering with the SoftLayer, BlueMix and WorkLight offering. Wieck stressed the importance of agility and BigData as capabilities (Cloudant acquisition) - good ingredients and a differentiator for IBM mobile applications. Now IBM will have to show that it can create traction in a mix of mobilizing existing apps and as well building next generation apps.
The new markeplace look & feell
  • Watson is IBM's higher ground - And last but not least it was Mike Rhodin to talk about Watson - and sharing the groundwork IBM is laying with exposing the Watson cognitive APIs to the developer community. IBM has seen a lot of success with its request for ideas, with the semifinalist being unveiled in the keynote. So good ecosystem blocking and tackling, the real value of Watson for the API economy lies in the monetization of cognitive APIs by IBM and the differentiation partners can achieve by using these APIs. It will be interesting to see in the next months how this will develop - in the meantime nobody can really reach 
Rhodin talks Watson

MyPOV

A very good start of Impact for attendees and IBM. This may well have been the first time Robert Leblanc demoed software live in a keynote - for close to +20 minutes. A very powerful testament for the usability of the marketplace, a good demo topic - but also a symbol for the new IBM. With Impact being the former WebSphere conference - I would have expected a few more references to that product - most attendees are using WebSphere in production and IBM needs to be careful to connect status quo in its customer base with an attractive and quickly developing future product landscape. The customer base implicitly knows what is being used and what evolves to what - but sometimes explicit statements (and roadmaps - still MIA) help to chart an enterprises course of future investment. But in the meantime congrats to IBM for an innovation speed very few would have thought would be possible for this company. 
 
 
More on IBM by me:
 
  • Another week and another Billion - this week it's a BlueMix Paas - read here
  • First take - IBM makes Connection - introduces the TalentSuite at IBM Connect - read here
  • IBM kicks of cloud data center race in 2014 - read here
  • First Take - IBM Software Group's Analyst Insights - read here
  • Are we witnessing one of the largest cloud moves - so far? Read here
  • Why IBM acquired Softlayer - read here

 

New C-Suite Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work softlayer SAP Google IBM amazon Oracle Microsoft SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Operating Officer

Briefings this week: April 28 - May 2

Briefings this week: April 28 - May 2

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Here’s who I’m briefing with this week: Tuesday Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud Wednesday Oracle Marketing Cloud   As a reminder, I’m interested in hearing from companies that enable customer experience management, provide marketing services (including agencies and consultancies) and support innovation agenda items. If you are interested in briefing Constellation Research on your marketing technology, visit the Contact Us form. 

 

Marketing Transformation Chief Customer Officer Chief Marketing Officer

Some Thoughts On The Downfall Of Google+

Some Thoughts On The Downfall Of Google+

It has not been a good week for Google+. Yesterday Vic Gundotra head of the Google+ division announced he was leaving Google, then today TechCrunch is reporting 1000-1200 employees will be moved off of Google+ onto other projects.  

Many of you may not even know what Google+ is, and there in lies the problem. On the surface, the easy explanation is that Google+ is Google's version of Facebook. It's a social network where people create circles of friends, family and colleagues allowing them to share status updates, pictures, videos, etc. with each other.

However, thinking of Google+ as just a social network does not do it justice.  Yes, feature-wise, Google+ is far superior to Facebook. Circles are much better than lists. The Google+ stream has much more functionality than Facebook's news feed. Hangouts are far more advanced than FacebookB Messenger. Google+ photo albums are way better than Facebook's, and the list goes on.  But Google+ is more of a "social layer" that a social network.  The core components of Google+, including your Google ID, circles and +1's together create a framework that ties together not only Google products, but potentially any other website as well.

So why is it not as popular as Facebook?

There are two theories most commonly discussed:

1) The network effect, where the value of a service is dependant on the number of people using it. In this case, it boils down to "Everyone is already on Facebook, so why would anyone ever use Google+"? Still, there are some communities that are very active on Google+, such as photographers and writers. They have taken to Google+ because of some of the features I've mentioned above were important enough for them to move. Well probably not move, but use Google+ as well as Facebook. But for most people, Facebook does enough of what they need, so why would they use both. Essentially Facebook wins because they were there first. Sure other networks such as Pinterest, Instagram, WhatsApp have come along and won over millions of users. But in each case they provided something Facebook did not, not just a better version of it.

2) Google annoys people by pushing Google+ on them. This one is more technical and impacts less people, but if it bothers you... it really bothers you! What Google did was take Google+ and make it the unifying layer across almost all of Google's services. That means Gmail, calendar, Youtube, Piccasa, Hangouts, Drive and many other products all become linked together via Google+. For example, if you're in your Gmail you can sort or send messages by Google+ Circles. If your posting a file to Drive, you can easily share it to Google+. The one that really annoyes people is that comments on Youtube videos became conversations in Google+.

It's this second theory that troubles me the most. As someone with around 20 years of experience in collaboration software, my advice to Google would have been to do exactly what they did, integrate all their services into a more seamless platform. In fact, here's what I wrote back in 2012:


April 16, 2012 - MyPOV: Google should provide integration with Gmail, Google Docs & Google+ to make their upcoming Google Drive file sharing service standout. Imagine sharing files with specific circles. Imagine saving a file in Google Docs and broadcasting that event to your Google+ stream.

Sept 26, 2012 - I imagine a time in the near future (2013ish) where there will no longer be distinctions between Google, Google+, Google Apps, Gmail, Google Chat, etc.  Instead there will just be "Google" which offers many (seamless/integrated) modes of context creation, discovery, communication and collaboration.

I wish I could predict the lottery numbers as accurately.

However, I also wrote
March 10, 2012: I've been asking the non-tech people in my life if they've heard of Google+ and the overwhelming response has been "No. Is that a new search tool?" By no means am I jumping on the "Google+ is a ghost town" bandwagon. I like Google+, but it is clear that it is still FAR from mainstream or a household name the way Facebook and Twitter are.

And that remains true still today.

Yes, Google made several "execution errors" with Google+, starting with the "real name required" scandal up the Youtube comment annoyance, but for me the network effect issue is the main reason I don't spend much time there anymore. It's a shame, because it's a great tool.

What do you think?

 

***********************

Some other posts of mine that provide supporting information about Google+ as a "social layer"

March 11, 2012 

Google 1.0 was a new company that changed the way we search for content on the internet and it became a household name.
Google 2.0 developed a set of consumer services like email, apps, maps, YouTube, etc.
Google 2.5 started to provide those services to the Enterprise and Education markets
Google 3.0 built a revenue model to layer onto #2 via advertising. The majority of non-techies probably have no idea that this is their core business
Google 4.0 is about building a new "social DNA" across all Google properties as well as across the web. This will try together people and content, and provide even more context for Google's Ad business.

June 27, 2012 
I think Google is creating an incredible foundation for collaboration with circles and +1's. They are showing what's possible by building UI instances of this DNA with things like Google+, Hangouts, Events and are adding integration with Picassa, YouTube, Google Docs, Gmail and more

March 10, 2012
A private and integrated offering composed of Google Dashboard (iGoogle + Google+'s stream), Google People (Google+'s profile + a nice directory + Circles for groups), a combined version of Google Apps (email, calendar, doc, spreadsheet, presentation) and Google Sites (where circles provide access), Google Media (Video + Picassa) and Google Communications (chat + Hangouts) all wrapped with Google Search, Google Analytics and +1s would be an awesome enterprise collaboration platform.

 










 

New C-Suite Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth Marketing Transformation Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Data to Decisions Google Chief Customer Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief People Officer Chief Human Resources Officer

No BS! The Reality Versus Hype of Working Social

No BS! The Reality Versus Hype of Working Social

Often enterprise social networking platforms are touted as the solution to every communication and collaboration problem that organizations experience. While it's true "working social" has many benefits, it's naive to think it does not have its own set of challenges. Don't worry though, there are solutions to these challenges. 

This presentation cuts through the "fluffy" industry hype and provides a realistic look at social networking. The slides may be hard to follow with the words though, so feel free to contact me for more details and stay tuned for a written report on this topic.




Future of Work Marketing Transformation New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Innovation & Product-led Growth Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Revenue & Growth Effectiveness Chief Customer Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief People Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Human Resources Officer Chief Revenue Officer

Request For Case Studies – High Level Marketing Optimization Capabilities

Request For Case Studies – High Level Marketing Optimization Capabilities

As the application for the Constellation Research Super Nova Awards are coming up soon (and winners revealed at the Constellation Research Conference, The Connected Enterprise, I am listening very closely for companies that are actually implementing their marketing automation capabilities fully. What I mean by that is that often software can offer quite a lot but are companies really taking advantage of all the capabilities? How well have they integrated the application to deliver on business results.

And the other part of that is does the staff have the skills to use the software? So take a look at the marketing optimization report – the 5 levels and see where you think your company is. If you are at level 3, 4, or 5 – I’d love to hear from you! How are you using your marketing automation software to drive innovation, revenue, new markets, etc…? Here’s the link to a snapshot of the report! And below is the diagram that shows the progression of Marketing-Decision Making vs Innovation Capabilities:

Progression of Marketing Decision Making to Innovation and Revenue Creation

Progression of Marketing Decision Making to Innovation and Revenue Creation

 

Twitter: @drnatalie 

SAVE THE DATE!
Constellation’s 4th Annual Connected Enterprise 
The Executive Innovation Conference | October 29th-31st 
Half Moon Bay, CA | Ritz Carlton

 

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Infor, The Teenager

Infor, The Teenager

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I attended the Infor Innovation Summit in NYC last week.

It was a good event, headlined by Infor CEO’s Charles Phillips and most of his senior staff.  There were lots of presentations – but also oodles of conversations and questions with the ~60 analysts in attendance (from all walks of like, independent to large research house).  Anyone who has a say in the world of Enterprise Software was there (and, yes – the agenda was a cute attempt at civility, we were behind schedule just 10 minutes into it).

My attention was piqued in the last couple of years as I saw Infor progress from a collection of acquisitions to putting a credible story together.  I wanted to see what was the glue holding all this together, how it fared as built, and how it compares to the rest of the market.  I was not disappointed, Infor delivered all the information needed to make this assessment.

What? The title you say?

I thought you’d never ask…

I am in the middle of my oldest daughter’s awakening into a teenager.  Thanks, I appreciate the sentiment – as I hear, it passes in another 15-20 years.

I may be biased coming into this, but I am seeing similar behaviors and issues with Infor as I see in my daughter: all the elements that would make them a great vendor are there – just not all in the final form or matured enough.  Let me explain.

Infor has in my opinion the most advanced architecture for cloud I’ve seen among large #EnSw vendors.  It can support any “model” of cloud their customers throw at them – but this is mostly because they had the good fortune / foresight of re-architecting in the past few years from a non-existent platform that held it all together to a great three-tier, metadata-based (and this is the key, btw), public cloud that can also bastardize itself to be private or hybrid if their customers are not yet that advanced in the cloud world (something that will be solved in the next 2-3 years more or less).

Further, their ION EAI layer is one of the best answers I’ve seen from vendors to bring legacy solutions into the new world of cloud; it does the job well and the clients I chatted with like it and see it as a great interim step to move forward into the world of cloud.

They really thought about it, and the platform is well built and being adopted at a good pace by existing customers migrating from the old products into the new platform; we shall continue to see this if all my conversations are any indication.

They also distinguish themselves from other vendors by their UX (uber friend Paul Greenberg discussed this in detail in his post last year about this, read more there as I won’t be as detailed).

Using their Hook-and-Loop (I am a brand-killer, I am sure they don’t use the name that way, but works better for me – sorry) agency they have some of the most amazing UI I have seen for Enterprise Software in many years if not ever.  Mobile, desktop, tablet – all well covered and retaining the main attributes of the interfaces.  The ability to build and modify interfaces easily also supports the move to adopt mobile as the leading platform by most organizations.  All in all, definitely a key differentiator for them if not the best.

This to me is the equivalent of a teenager that takes care of their appearance (starts working out, stops eating junk food, buys more fashionable clothes, spends 2 hours every morning doing their hair – I mean, seriously? at 11? — sorry, I digress), begins to understand their likes and dislikes, their preferences, and puts a good amount of time into deciding what their looks are and how the world should see them.

And this is who I see Infor today: a teenager.  All the elements are there, they are lean, buff, and decided.  They have all the components that make up who they are – but are not yet ready to use them all together in critical situations.  They are learning (And having great successes in areas like Public Sector and Healthcare) what they have and how to use it, how to learn from the early mistakes and how to get better.

Infor, the teenager, has a great future as an adult if they continue on this path.  Will continue to watch them over the next few years to see where it goes.

I just hope they don’t spent 2 hours each day doing their hair…

Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Marketing Transformation Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity infor Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer

Report: State of Community Management

Report: State of Community Management

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The Community Roundtable, founded in 2009 by Jim Storer and Rachel Happe, has deep expertise in advancing the business of community. This week The Community Roundtable has released the 2014 State of Community Management report, with three key findings:

  1. Community maturity delivers business value.
  2. Advocacy programs increase engagement.
  3. Executive participation impacts success.

The Community Roundtable State of Community Management 2014

To download the full report, click here.

 

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

Startup Hacks: 10 Ways to Increase Your Startup's Valuation When Pitching VCs

Startup Hacks: 10 Ways to Increase Your Startup's Valuation When Pitching VCs

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2014-04-18-valuation.jpg

Being on either the pitching or receiving end of over 200 venture capital presentations has left me examples of a long list of things that do not work. Unfortunately however, rarely do I get asked what does not work, more frequently I get asked what works.

And precisely, I get asked, what works in supporting valuations. Thank you to all those who have pitched me, or listened to me pitch enabling the 10 items below.

 

  1. Have a killer brand and image before you pitch -- investors know that commerce happens because of influence, influence is the currency of customers making a decision to buy. A good brand and a killer visual identity help investors "see the cognitive leap" customers will take to drive sales. I learned this from Chris Walsh in 2001.
     
  2. Do not overstate your total addressable market (TAM) -- overstating TAM is the easiest way to say to an investor, "I barely know anything about how businesses work, and will not spend your capital wisely." Pick a TAM that you can nail, and show an evolution to an increasing TAM, this way your valuation is solid and difficult to negotiate down, instead of inflated and a target for negotiation.
     
  3. Have a well-documented sales process in your pitch -- most investors ran businesses before and know that no matter what you build customers will not come rushing to your doors. You must demonstrate a well thought out sales process, one that shows you already understand customer's objections, resistance to your value proposition, and a commitment to making customers satisfied.
     
  4. Know where you are on the hype cycles -- nothing says to an investor "invest in me the founder" like a founder demonstrating deep and immersive understanding of their invention on the Gartner Hype Cycle, and an appreciation for how adoption of their invention will perform under the lenses of the theory of diffusion of innovation.
     
  5. Show that you prioritize with a focus -- while cash is king, focus is queen (thank you for teaching me this). Investors want to know that you will prioritize a client meeting over an investor meeting, or you will prioritize a partner/reseller meeting over a press opportunity. Don't chase the shiny objects, show focus and investors will believe in your value.
     
  6. Leave the CEO role open -- investors value companies that will grow to be successful over companies that have great ideas but may never get out of the gates. When an investor sees the CEO role open and vacant, they know that the founders will be willing to bring in talent to "grow the business" and hence they respect the valuation. If the CEO seat is filled, investors see a "battle ahead" of replacing the CEO, which says "RISK" and the default reaction is to negotiate the value of the company down to reflect the risk of the "battle ahead". This lesson came from Atul Chowdhry recently.
     
  7. Have a list of "BTDT" advisers -- I learned the phrase BTDT from the Irish Angels, a VC group in South Bend Indiana associated with Notre Dame in 2002. Been There, Done That; investors want to see advisers that have built successful companies before on your advisory board. Pick them wisely.
     
  8. Get more than press relations -- Companies succeed because influential people want them to. Show investors that influencers and analysts (this is your influencer relations and analyst relations) believe in our concept enough to write about it, and hence you have "IR and AR" credibility. PR, is not the same as IR and AR.
     
  9. Plan for pivots -- the best businesses in the word learn to pivot as a part of the plan. Investors want to invest in companies that will "pivot into the opportunity" instead of staying the course on ego. You pitch should show to investors that you have thought through alternative pivots, and... you are willing to spend their money wisely on opportunistic pivots over staying the course of your ego. This lesson came from Ray Wang, one of the best in advising pivots.
     
  10. React like a pro -- the last thing that helps your valuation is the way you react when an investor says "I think your valuation is too high." Don't defend your valuation, and for heaven's sake don't ask them why they think so; just keep a poker face and wait in silence. You will know the numbers better than any investor being pitched, let them voluntarily go down the dangerous road of trying to poke holes into your valuation. You have the upper hand in this debate because if your immersion in the numbers; don't give that away by speaking first.

Go raise money, and don't sabotage your valuation by not thinking through the 10 items above.

-- Richie

 

New C-Suite Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Chief Executive Officer

Musings - What is the future of recruiting?

Musings - What is the future of recruiting?

With one of the leading recruiting conferences starting this week, it was time to spend some thought cycles on the future of recruiting. And the purpose of this blog post is purposefully slanted in the direction of provoking some new thoughts on the subject – more than nailing what will happen in 2015 or even easier what is today’s state of the industry.


 


If you step away for a moment from the rush of multiple releases per year and look over the last decades on what has happened in enterprise applications overall, a major trend becomes pretty clear: 


Enterprise automation is all about giving control in the hands of the business (end) users. 
Starting from the reporting punch cards ceremoniously handed by (then) IT gods half a century ago (remember they wore white lab coats then) to obtain their weekly report – it’s been all about getting the business user into a position where they can get the information needed and execute the processes required to do their jobs. The area where this is most evident in the HCM arena is the functionality around HR Core processes – almost all driven by the end user. Rarely a member of the HR department will anymore do data entry around a single employee – something that was a staple of HR department activity maybe even 20 years ago.

And while many end users complain about the additional work loaded on them by self-service functions, at the end of the day they empower end users to enter and process information when they want and please to. Instead of walking over to the HR department, getting and filling out a form and then hoping for the real world to accurately reflect the status change – users can now fire up their devices and - apart from the occasional system downtime - execute their core HR transaction when it works for them. And it’s not a one way street – users can go back and see that this address change has really gone through in the system.

Equally managers have seen self-service trends, too. First of all they are employees, too – and do all related activities under employee self-service. And then they have managerial duties, mostly approvals, but also budgeting and planning functions.

When it comes to recruiting – for now – it pretty stays in this realm, too. Only that for current common practice - recruiting is probably the area where a manager does the most data entry for an HR related process. Creating and filling out requisition forms – no matter how much they get defaulted – is probably the most tedious data entry job for managers… and with that not popular.

On the recruiter side there is an arms race raging, with new vendors coming in the market and using new technologies like social media, analytics, BigData and video to give recruiters the leg up over their competition. And let’s not forget that recruiting is the most measured job in HR, many recruiters understand themselves more as sales professionals than HR practitioners. .Recruiting is the one HR job where a practitioner can be fired for nonperformance as a matter of a few months… and as such recruiters always look for the best tool to give them an advantage to recruit talent better than their peers in house and in the competition.

So what will happen when self-service transforms recruiting practices?

Here are some of the functional building blocks next generation recruiting need to have – powered by self-service:
  • Continuous talent monitoring - Imagine if a manager could continuously monitor the talent of their teams. No longer the “that’s it moment” looking for outside talent - often delayed by the work to get a requisition into the relevant systems. No longer opening a requisition because the headcount was approved, but because talent should be monitored continuously.
     
  • One big talent pool - Systems will consider inside and outside talent to the enterprise. Including advanced and accelerated training of employees, considering campus recruiting, skill shifts and cost change in external talent pools, acknowledging succession management considerations etc.
     
  • Requisitions no longer exist - Managers should always see – for each position in their team – which talent is available inside and outside their enterprise for each team position. Include internal global talent in the search.
     
  • (Real) analytics tell when to hire (or not) - Have software help with picking the best candidates, start the whole candidate relationship management (the other ‘CRM’) process, checking which candidates said no last time, but may be say yes this time around etc.
     
  • Continuous talent management - Given the cost of hiring an employee the manager should see what training and learning opportunities are available to bring an employee and the overall team in better shape.
     
  • Automated onboarding - If the hire is made – trigger all onboarding processes including background checks etc. – and allow the new hire to self-onboard, including benefits enrollment etc.
     
  • Complete Automation - A resignation will start a talent search. A termination will have had a precursor of a talent search. A transfer-in will trigger a transfer-out or termination. And so on.
     
  • A talent depth chart - Similar like professional sports teams and some military units have a depth chart, managers will have a talent depth chart, telling them what to do when the number one talent is no longer available or when it is time to re-prioritize the depth chart etc.
     
  • Full consideration of the P - New hires or transfers into teams need to fit – and for that personality and psychological factors need to become part of the recruiting decision. But not just individual candidate characteristics, but also team dynamics on how a candidate fits into the new team, is compatible to work with peers, customers and superiors.
     
  • Full cost considerations - Managers will be able to see the full cost aspect of recruiting scenarios – including cost to onboard, train and come up to speed. Knowing these costs should enable managers to make smarter hiring (or internal transfer and training) decisions. 

Where does it all leave the recruiter?

When above happens, it will be the end of the recruiters as we know them today. Does it mean the end of recruiting – certainly not – but recruiters will have to move away from the transactional aspect of recruiting – as the software will handle all of that and the managers will trigger these transactions – and become talent coaches, recruitment advisors, system specialists, algorithmic specialists – and maybe even software vendor employees.


MyPOV

As I mentioned in the onset – this post was more about being thought provoking than stating where the industry is today and / or will be soon in 2015. But self-service is a force to be reckoned with, and humans generally like to be empowers. If a manager can run talent for his team better and faster than dealing with the traditional recruiting setup of recruiters, sourcing, job sites etc. – we will see it – sooner than later. And ‘real’ predictive analytics become more powerful, science can be used to find the best candidates and they can be served to the decision maker, the hiring manager right away. Chime in on the comments.

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More on Recruiting by me:

  • HRTech 2014 takeaways - Read here.
  • Why all the attention to recruiting? Read here.
 

And  more on Payroll:
 
  • Could the paycheck re-invent HCM – yes it can – read here.
  • And suddenly, payroll matters again! Read here.

 

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