BlogERP: Jim Holincheck's HCM Software Blog

HCM Case Study Finder

2009-07-17T17:02:24-05:00

I was at the IHRIM Global Forum today and it struck me that there all kinds of useful case studies done at HCM conferences and on various sites, but there is no easy way to find one across all conferences and sites. So, I came up with the idea to create a database where people can log and categorize their case studies so that others can benefit from their wisdom and experience. This is how it works:

Step 1: Upload your presentation or case study document to an appropriate site (if it is not already already on a site) where you can control the use of the document. Scribd and Slideshare are good examples. I do not intend to store copies of case studies in the database, just URL pointers. These sites will provide you a URL to directly access the document. Also, vendors and consultants can also add case studies to the database and pointers to their web sites (please indicate if there is any sort of subscription required as shown in the Gartner examples already populated).

Step 2: Enter information about your case study. Below the list of existing presentations, you will see fields to provide a summary of your case study and a link to the site where the case study is stored. The contact name and e-mail address (and phone number if provided) will not be publicly displayed. I have asked for that information if follow up is needed with the person submitting the case study for technical reasons.

After you enter the required information, you can add additional descriptive data about the case study including: organization size, industry, geographic scope, project phase(s), functional scope, vendors and consultants/systems integrators used

Step 3: Search the database for relevant case studies using the provided filters. Obviously, the more case studies added to the database, the more useful the searching mechanisms will become.

I have added a link to a page on my personal blog as a permanent access point (with these instructions). Also, you can link directly to the database as well (it is probably easier to enter the data by following the link than it is to use the embedded version in this blog post). I can also provide you the code to embed it on your site if you would like to make it available (like I have embedded it into this blog post).

Please let me know if you think this is a good idea or how it might be improved via comments to this post.

BlogERP Links 07/10/2009

2009-07-10T02:30:29-05:00

HR’s Job is to Help Employees Create Great Customer Experiences | KnowHR Blog
This is a good reminder that it does not matter if you have the best talent management processes and technology if employees do not do the right thing at "moments of truth". HR needs to work backwards from the "moments of truth" and make sure that talent management processes and technology align to make them come out right.
tags: talentmanagement, HCM

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

BlogERP Links 07/08/2009

2009-07-08T02:30:21-05:00

EMC vs. NetApp and Data Domain: Evaluating a Merger by the Numbers | Blogs | ITBusinessEdge.com
Good analysis for tech vendor mergers by a former colleague at Giga Information Group.
tags: no_tag

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

BlogERP Links 07/07/2009

2009-07-07T02:30:36-05:00

A Software Insider’s Point of View » Monday’s Musings: Industry Vertical Pivot Points Still Matter Most
Interesting viewpoint on the importance of industry/vertical market segmentation of business applications.
tags: no_tag
Inflexion Point » Blog Archive » SHRM 2009 - Observations & Conclusions
Interesting take on the SHRM 2009 Conference.
tags: shrm, HCM

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

BlogERP Links 07/02/2009

2009-07-02T02:30:13-05:00

Listening to the Process Owner
Great post by fellow Gartner analyst David McCoy on the role of process owners in process design and execution. Good food for thought for HR processes.
tags: HCM

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

BlogERP Links 06/26/2009

2009-06-26T02:27:58-05:00

The Generational Techno-Divide - Human Resource Executive Online - Story
A good summary of a Conference Board study of social software usage.
tags: socialsoftware, socialnetworking

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Misunderstanding Magic Quadrants, MarketScopes, and More

2009-06-18T17:54:54-05:00

I know I have not posted for a while. Work commitments and posting more on Twitter (at jimholincheck) have taken an inordinate amount of time (that and being on vacation and then ill after vacation). However, two things happened that pushed me to do this post. First, Bill Kutik did a nice article on what an industry analyst does. Second, I saw a tweet questioning the value of Gartner Magic Quadrants (MQs). It is certainly not the first time nor will it be the last time that there is criticism about MQs, but I think there is a lot of misunderstanding out there about what they are and how they are used. Since Bill did such a good job on the industry analyst bit, I thought this would be a good follow on.

What is a Magic Quadrant?

Let me begin by saying these are not the official Gartner definitions with all of the nuances. I am trying to keep it simple. With the disclaimer set, a Magic Quadrant is a relative comparison of vendors in a specific market on their ability to execute and completeness of vision which is plotted in a 2x2 matrix (four quadrants - each with a different name: Leader, Challenger, Visionary, and Niche). Let me parse this further:

Relative Comparison - The placement on the MQ chart is based on relative scores against the criteria. An important implication is that a MQ is a point-in-time view of a market. To update a MQ, all of the vendors considered need to be re-evaluated at the same time (or else you cannot do a relative rating)
Specific Market - An analyst evaluates vendors in a market in a MQ. It is not just a product evaluation (though product/service is one of the criteria). A common complaint I hear from vendors is "how can you rate vendor X better than vendor Y when vendor Y clearly has a better product". The answer is that product/service is just one part of the overall rating of the vendor, but it is not the only thing evaluated.
Ability to Execute - This axis of the 2x2 matrix is a composite of a number of evaluation criteria including:

Product/Service Capability
Overall Viability
Sales Execution/Pricing
Market Responsiveness/Track Record
Marketing Execution
Customer Experience
Operations

Completeness of Vision - This axis is a composite of the following evaluation criteria:

Market Understanding
Marketing Strategy
Sales Strategy
Offering (Product) Strategy
Business Model
Vertical/Industry Strategy
Innovation
Geographic Strategy

The analyst(s) writing a MQ chooses weights for each of these criteria. This is pretty straightforward. However, it is surprising how many times vendors will make comments like "how can vendor X be rated more highly than vendor Y when we beat them all of the time in deals". Well, if you look at the evaluation criteria, you can see how that can happen. Vendor Y may beat Vendor X, but they are in far fewer deals because they have much lower market awareness, for example.

Sometimes you will also hear criticism that Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision do not matter as decision criteria for customers. I think the evaluation criteria within Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision give a well-rounded view of a vendor and its place in a particular market and that is really the point of a Magic Quadrant. A 2x2 matrix is a really convenient way of showing the relative comparison of vendors. However, there are actually a number of different ways we could choose to present the results based on how the scoring is actually done.

How Clients Use Magic Quadrants

My previous comments have included mostly vendor reactions to (ok complaints about) Magic Quadrants. There is a perception out there that clients basically will look at a MQ and put the vendors in the Leaders quadrant on their short list. There is no doubt that some clients do that. They shouldn't, but they do. However, the majority of clients do not do that. Most clients use MQs to get better educated about what is happening in a market. In business applications, clients do not make these purchases very frequently so clients will use it to find out the current state of the market. In addition, they often use it as a way to put together a long list of vendors to do more research about. More importantly though, most clients will set up an inquiry (or a series of inquiries throughout the selection process) with an analyst to discuss their specific requirements.

As I indicated above, a Magic Quadrant is a point-in-time view. Things change, so clients want to see what has happened since publication. In addition, customer requirements differ and priorities may be different from what we used in the MQ evaluation. In many cases, non-Leader quadrant vendors are actually a better fit for a specific customer situation. We make this point in the research and end user clients get it. They want the best fit for their specific needs.

The research we do into the markets and vendors and the interactions we have customers and Gartner clients gives us perspective to tailor our advice for customer-specific needs. So, is the Magic Quadrant a good tool to use to make a vendor selection? It can be, but using a Magic Quadrant along with analyst inquiry is a much better way to go (and the way most clients do go).

MarketScopes vs. Magic Quadrants

Magic Quadrants are among the most well-known Gartner research deliverables. However, we do have other vendor comparison research we publish. That brings us next to the MarketScope. A MarketScope differs from a Magic Quadrant in the following ways:

It is an absolute, not relative rating of vendors
It is used primarily for early stage or late stage markets
It uses a different graphic (each vendor is rated on a five point scale between Strong Negative and Strong Positive instead of plotting the vendors on a 2x2 matrix)
It uses a subset of the Magic Quadrant evaluation criteria (up to seven criteria)

The process for creating a MarketScope is very similar to a Magic Quadrant. However, it is easier to change as you do not need to update ratings for all vendors at the same time (because it is not a relative rating). So, it can be changed more frequently for early stage markets or changed less frequently for later stage markets.

We publish a MarketScope for Large Enterprise HRMS (Gartner subscription required) because it is a later stage market (though you could argue that the emergence of SaaS alternatives may result in a new buying cycle - so we do keep an eye on things like that). However, we now have a new note type that provides another vehicle for vendor comparisons called Critical Capabilities. We will use this methodology for some of our forthcoming HRMS research.

What are Critical Capabilities?

This is a newer type of research note for Gartner and I am quite excited about it. A Critical Capabilities note evaluates a group of vendors/products against key product capabilities for different use case scenarios. Critical Capabilities (CCs) differ from MQs and MarketScope in the following ways:

CCs evaluate product and product capabilities not vendors in markets. So, the product capabilities could span more than one market.
MQs or MarketScopes have one set of weightings for the evaluation criteria. Each use case in a CC has a different weighting.

A CC note can be very complimentary to a MQ or MarketScope because it allows a deeper drill down into product capabilities than we can get into in the other vendor comparison research. I will put in a shameless plug for one of the analysts on my team, Debbie Wilson, who just published one of these notes called Critical Capabilities for Best of Breed E-Procurement Vendors (Gartner subscription required), In addition, it allows for vendor comparisons before a market is really established around a set of capabilities. The Critical Capabilities for Talent Management Suites note I am working on with Thomas Otter and Carol Rozwell is a good example of this usage.

Hopefully, I have cleared up some of the misunderstanding out there. Questions and comments are certainly welcome.

BlogERP Links 06/09/2009

2009-06-09T02:28:15-05:00

Compensation Cafe: Employees Really Want Performance Management to Work
Good thoughts on performance management and links to related research.
tags: EPM, talentmanagement
Social Media vs. Job Boards: The Ultimate Winner
Interesting survey results about the candidate perspective for job searching.
tags: E-Recruitment

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

BlogERP Links 06/06/2009

2009-06-06T02:28:25-05:00

12 Ways to Keep Recruiters Busy : ERE.net
When I saw the title, I was going to get the flamethrower out on this one. Creating busy work to keep people on staff usually is not a good idea. However, there are a number of good ideas (outplacement services, building talent pool pipelines, training hiring managers) that are relevant in good times as well as bad.
tags: E-recruitment
Intuit makes two-pronged PaaS and SaaS push | Software as Services | ZDNet.com
This is an important development in the SMB space, not only for PaaS and SaaS, but also for payroll outsourcing.
tags: HCM, SaaS, HRO, PaaS
Who Are These 'Analysts' Anyway? - Human Resource Executive Online - Story
I would be remiss if I did not link to this article by Bill Kutik. It explains well the difference between financial and industry analysts (as well as providing a nice plug for us industry analysts).
tags: HCM
Social Software at the Japanese BI and IM conference
Great post by my colleague Jeff Mann on social software in Asia.
tags: socialsoftware, socialnetworking

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

BlogERP Links 06/02/2009

2009-06-02T02:28:19-05:00

Vurv Creator Buys ATS Services
For those interested in Vurv founder, Derek Mercer's next gig.
tags: e-recruitment

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.