Interview with Riges Younan How HR Can Maximise ROI in SaaS Talent Management Solutions Published Oct 19, 2015, Inside HR Magazine.
How is SaaS technology influencing strategy and process around talent management in organisations? SaaS is transferring control over technology from the IT organisation to the HR organisation. The CIO is stepping out of the direct delivery of computing power and saying to the business people choose what you want as long as it meets our standards of security, reliability and performance. This is a great opportunity for HR leaders to make their own decisions on how they operate certainly at the strategic level. I think the best SaaS systems bring their configurability forward to the business user. This is absolutely essential for talent management, where there is no one formula that works for every company and no one formula that always works. Great processes evolve over time through experimentation and optimisation. There is no point in trying to be agile if you don t have technology that is easily configurable and agility is a must today. Good SaaS solutions evolve constantly through high-frequency, non-disruptive upgrades. This creates a steady flow of new functionality for the HR organisation to work with. Compare a mobile optimised employee portal that has built-in chat and 2
connects with an HR mobile app to your legacy HR self service portal its a totally different user experience. In the minds of your users, you have a 15-year-old HR system competing against consumer websites like Amazon and Facebook. SaaS lets you level the playing field get the engagement and adoption that your talent management programs need. 3
What are the key trends you see in the space over the coming 3-5 years? I think the visionaries in talent management are going to redefine it completely over the next few years. They are going to abandon the stand alone solutions that were deployed with limited organisational impact: succession planning systems for a 5% of the company and performance management software that just focus on recording annual reviews. We ll see these solutions expand into a much broader solution for internal mobility that impacts the entire organisation, that is transparent, motivational, and agile. In learning, we ll see a radical change from tracking solutions to in-system training with a strong emphasis in social learning and organic knowledge distribution. The next generation talent management solutions are going to focus on broad company engagement and will most probably be based on a social model not too dissimilar to what is seen in the consumer internet. In the end, the suite is being replaced with a social platform that everybody is part of. And of course, accessibility from any device will be the norm. 4
How will these trends impact the business? There are the obvious benefit of having fewer systems. But I think the real benefit with the new model for talent management is that businesses will get better value out of their workforce and will be able to adjust more quickly to changing market conditions. It will also help better engage talented people and reduce unwanted turnover. 5
What benefits can SaaS add to organisations looking to streamline their approach to talent management? I think that the next generation of talent management systems will allow the HR organisation to get their hands around the DNA of their people, to get into the more subtler aspects of how employees engage with each other and participate in the business. These systems will contribute important data to the Big Data story because Big Data is not your payroll, your financial data or your inventory; it s things like what your customers think and alternately what your employees think of you. The configurability that supports creative program development by the HR organisation and the analytical capability that comes from having all your programs in the same platform are going to allow HR to drive change based on the strategy of the organisation. These things combined are going to redefine the relationship between HR and the rest of the workforce, and particularly reboot the relationship between HR and the C-suite. 6
What are the challenges and pitfalls of the process for organisations looking to upgrade to a SaaS solution and maximise ROI? Historically, and due to their rigidity, legacy systems as well as some first generation SaaS - forced customers into a one-sizefits-all model, dictating the way processes could be executed. With second generation, top SaaS solutions, you have a much higher level of flexibility. My advice here is to work hard on mapping future state processes without worrying about technology restrictions. This empowers innovation and creativity and also reduces the risk and pressure of the implementation process: if you didn't get it 100% right or if the circumstances unexpectedly change, you can adjust your configurations while in production mode. Another challenge can be scalability and configurability. For the global enterprise, it s a must to choose a solution that allows multiple processes to be set up for different countries or business lines, in multiple languages, with the right data segmentation and security to comply with the various regulatory requirements. In Asia Pacific this is a key consideration given the language 7
requirements and the unique regulations of countries like Australia, China, Korea and Singapore. Lastly, I would also recommend you have the right change management plan in place and that the plan includes communications at all stages of the project lifecycle. This strategy increases user adoption and end user satisfaction which again is a major contributing factor to HR delivering on its role to align people with the business strategy and creating an engaged and productive workforce. 8
What steps can HR take to ensure they make a more proactive and informed decision in the business? I would say don t get trapped in SaaS solutions that are designed on the vendors view of how your business should work. It s not possible for a vendor to know how you should run and optimise your talent management programs. Make sure your vendor is giving you the right tools and the best support so you can go through the discovery process that you need and are able to optimise your solution over time. HR should leverage the tools that SaaS delivers, particularly realtime talent analytics, to demonstrate how the HR strategy is driving revenue, lowering costs and reducing people risk by creating a productive and engaged workforce. These are the things that are important to your CEO so deliver this insight and there is no doubt you ll be sitting at the table. 9
The New Model for Talent Management 10
At Avature, we know that no one formula for talent management works for all companies and no one formula always works. This knowledge drives our product development philosophy of delivering highly configurable, scalable and agile software. With this, HR leaders can remove the shackles of the rigid systems of the past, and provide them with the tools to create innovative and engaging talent management programs of the future. With Avature DNA, our enterprise Talent Management and Core HR solution, HR leaders are given the technology to engage their employee community, the data to understand what drives them, and the insight to make better decisions. Developed on an engaging social layer (DNA Social), and combined with the highly configurable process engine, our platform enables the development of a wide variety of talent management programs centred on internal mobility and workforce optimisation. Strategic analytics contribute new and interesting data sets for Big Data and easily enable HR to build a rich picture of their global workforce. Avature DNA includes solutions for Onboarding, Performance Management, Internal Mobility, Succession Planning, Compensation, Time Off Management, Employee Self-Service, and Enterprise Social Networks (DNA Social). 11
Contact Us to Learn More For more information about Avature, please contact your Avature representative or visit www.avature.net