I’m extremely tired, and after talking to many clients of and executives at Successfactors (SF), I feel more enthused about their product direction. We’re not alone when it comes to our admin issues and our flexibility needs! It’s refreshing to meet other clients with some of the same issues and hopefully, we can leverage these in the future. Their foray into social collaboration seems timely given the economy and the potential impact it can have for companies trying to create more value with less people. This is intriguing. If they can add some meat to this offering (security, reports, workflow), then they might have something unique in the marketplace. Let’s wait and see.
The two days began with an Advanced Admin Boot Camp training session. I was cautiously optimistic when we saw this offering. We have challenges managing forms and processes given the dynamic and flexible nature of our organization. To my dismay, my cautiousness was warranted. The ‘Advanced’ workshop was more basic than expected and didn’t address our needs. Don’t get me wrong, I did learn some things and the instructor was engaging and informative. However, our hope was to learn how we might be able to manage the admin craziness that we deal with on a daily basis. With that as success criterion, we failed.
The official conference began with Successfactors’ CEO talking about their roadmap (and Employee Central as the headline), a case study by a Vail project manager, a look into mockups of Successfactors’ revamp of their ATS, and a deeper dive into Employee Central.
The ATS looks impressive. Rich and dynamic but it’s still too early to make any conclusions. Thanks to the Siemens deal, the ATS looks like it’s going to be extremely robust. A big plus, given the potential integration benefits with other SF tools. Wait. No integration to competencies! What? Seems like a waste if you’ve developed some valuable strategy aligned competencies.
Employee Central. Is SF getting into the Employee System of Record (SOR) business or is this simply a new way of managing core HR data? I didn’t get a definitive answer. One thing is for certain however. For some companies that don’t have an HRIS system, Employee Central may meet their needs, especially if SF adds configurable custom fields (which sounds like is on the roadmap). It’ll be interesting to see how this unfolds.
The second day began with a talk from SF executives about how a company might align the SF tools with business strategy, more learning and sharing with other clients, and chats with SF product management about product direction. Message to SF. Project based companies are a reality, learn how to capture the formal and informal relationships inherent in these organizations (employees and non-employees), build security, reporting tools, and workflow around these relationships, and you will be on your way to capturing the future of organizations.
Thoughts?
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