The annual HR Technology Conference and Expo is a lot what the “Speech From the Throne” must have been like during the middle ages when the reigning monarch would lay out the condition of the nation and decree the agenda going forward. Read into this opening however you choose. All politics aside, this is an important event and really does serve to illuminate the trends and trendsetters in the HR Technology industry.

This year I attended the event specifically to connect with partners, to strengthen alliances, and to meet new people.  And, while I didn’t have a lot of free time, I did get a chance to wander the expo floor, mingle in the press room for a bit, and towards the end of the show, just sit in the hall, observe and listen.

What happens in Vegas never really stays in Vegas.  Here are some of my takeaways from this year’s conference.

On the lighter side

1. Viva Las Vegas. Ok, I personally both fear and loath “The Vegas”. It’s not a place for those of us with little self control. But, it is the perfect venue for an industry conference. It’s designed to get in and out of easily. It’s relatively inexpensive and there are plenty of places to meet, greet, eat and be entertained.  The accessibility of the venue allowed me to cram in more meetings than I thought possible. Step into a lounge or a semi-quiet corner (there is no silence in Vegas) and you could get a private 30 minutes with that important someone.

2. Free Wi-Fi or rather Wi-Fi free. This is one of my only logistical gripes about the event. The availability of public Wi-Fi was a joke. I couldn’t get an email in or out over the free Wi-Fi brought to us by ADP (clearly not ADP’s fault) let alone try to demo Newton ( our applicant tracking software).  If I were ADP I would have been steaming mad that I sponsored free internet access and it ended up being a huge failure.  Given that just about every product at this year’s show is delivered over the internet, the organizers should have ensured that there was a big honkin’ pipe running to the conference.

3. You are What You Schwag.  I am still sort of amazed by conference schwag. I guess I don’t really believe that vendors are going to lure, or even start a conversation with their next customer by offering free Smarties and flashing key chains. If you do feel schwag is still necessary, why not raffle off an iPad or Kindle Fire? Give away something that won’t end up as a chew toy or as instant landfill. For more on the state of schwag, read William Tincup’s most recent contribution to Fist Full of Talent.

The meat.

4.Get Ready for the Suite wars. I read one analyst’s review of the conference this week in which he predicts that suite adoption is in the “very early innings”. I agree. However, this space is definitely going to get more interesting over the coming months and years.

I detected a sense of urgency amongst the traditional suite vendors as many are gearing up for a multi-front war.  The talent management vendors have gone on the offensive and are quickly encroaching on the more traditional HRIS vendors’ turf. Where they were once  partners, now many camps are leery and concerned that they may be sleeping with their enemies.  I predict competition for the same seats is going to get really heated as more vendors start extending their functionality in order to address the middle of the talent chain.

5. On Consolidation: the Writing is in the Cloud. There was quite a bit of talk and speculation last week about M&A activities in the HR Tech industry.  I believe this will continue to be driven by the aforementioned suite vendors and their fight to compete across the talent chain. It’s clear that several vendors have realized that they only have a few core modules that are in their suites that are complete features. And, they’ve realized that in their race to claim “we have that too” (I saw one group wearing shirts that said this) they’ve shipped some pretty “thin” modules.

More specifically, I predict that there will be strategic acquisitions made in the talent management space as most of the major suite vendors are pretty lean on both the very front (talent acquisition/recruiting) and late stages of the talent chains (secession planning).  Given the target customer size of many of the suites( mid to upper-mid market), I am guessing that the most demand will be for talent management (performance, review, retention) applications that come later in the talent chain. Plus, as companies like Successfactors close in on the middle of the talent chain and gear up for a full confrontation with the HRIS establishment, the suites will continue to look for opportunities at the beginning and end of the talent chain (ATS and Performance respectively).

Finally, I want to give a special shout out to our partner OneSource VHR, the exclusive reseller of Workday for the mid-market.  Thanks for letting me hang around your booth.  You make the Newton team feel like part of your team. We are grateful.

PS: OneSource VHR is hiring. Click here for a list of their openings.

Kris Dunn, Founder of Fistful of Talent, the popular and influential blog devoted to human capital, recently sat down with Newton Software Co-Founder, Joel Passen.   The interview uncovers the “HR Mafia”, Joel’s recovery and a recruiting methodology that Kris and Joel agree to agree on, “the funnel”.

I caught up with Joel this afternoon and asked him about the interview. “Kris Dunn is one of these guys in the industry that flat out knows his stuff. He’s been in the trenches.   To have him say that ‘he respects our game’ is flattering and encouraging to say the least.”


Read more about the origins of “the funnel”, “the truth teller” and how Newton’s applicant tracking software is built to work the way the best internal recruiting work.  Oh yeah… and about the rumor of this HR Mafia…..

I think it’s time someone put the bullet in email. I am going to use this post to load the chamber. And once I’ve done that, I’m going to get development working on a project they’re gonna think is crazy.

I’d like to explain myself…

I would guess that, like a lot of people, 95% of my snail mail goes straight into the recycle bin. I’ve actually considered asking my apartment building to put a recycle bin next to the mail box; it would save me a few steps that I can use later for my triathlon training.

I seem to get only two important pieces of snail mail: save the date notices and my car insurance.  In the last 14 days I have received one non-spam piece of snail mail. Snail mail is the de facto the vehicle by which people I don’t know or trust attempt to communicate with me. I will call it a muddy communication mechanism.

Email isn’t much different really. In most cases, I am just saved the time of walking down the fire escape to the recycle bin. Yet amazingly every software application on the planet goes to great lengths to integrate with email. In fact, the single greatest technical ulcer-causer of any software application is Outlook integration. Bar none.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that email integration isn’t necessary at the current moment. I’m just wondering if email’s dual-dominance of both the trusted and muddy communication channels is anachronistic. Why are messages from people and applications I know and trust being dumped into an unorganized file with untrusted messages?

The other day I thought, “Does this still make sense?” (Actually, I was on the treadmill.  After which I ran back to the office, designed a screenshot, sent it to our co-founder, Joel, and texted him telling him to check his email. His reply was, “go home.”)

If you’re like me, you inbox is more like a “what do I do first?” box. I have comments from developers, designers, people trying to sell me things, messages from bike fitters, and most importantly, messages from my girlfriend (which always get answered immediately I might add).

Many of these messages are coming from systems that are trying to boost my productivity: hire people, manage finances, complete projects and track bugs. In essence, my productivity applications are taking their trusted communications (messages I definitely want to read) and dumping them into a message mud bog, then trying to clean them up after I deal with them.  What’s black and white and forwarded all over?

For example, Newton’s bookkeeper, Frances, asks me on any given day,

“Hey, Steve do you know what’s happening with this account? I have one file for 9 thousand users and another for 8 thousand users.”
“I don’t know, let me email Jonathan.”
“Jonathan, what’s up with Huge Company, how many users do they have?”
“They called me the other day. They just upgraded to 9 thousand users.”
“Frances, 9,000. Sorry about that.”

Sounds like we need some Outlook integration!

Email should die. It’s like using a donkey to tow a Tesla.

How did I come to this conclusion?

Well, from a disclosure standpoint I have to admit that integrating with Outlook is really hard and pretty darn scary, and even though at Newton we’re probably going capitulate in some areas, I really don’t want to. Developers of software can control the reliability of their own environment, but once you start relying on someone else’s system you start touching all sorts of things you can’t control.  That’s why every time someone says “integrates with outlook” they never use the words “easily” or “never breaks” or “no plug-in required” in the same sentence. Here’s a simple guide to probably the most integrated outlook application on the planet:  http://tinyurl.com/cf6dae (This is the apparently shorter, “cheatsheet version”).

But, more important to me than the technical hurdles is this nagging belief that email might be the problem, not the solution.

Actually, I’m not even sure it’s the problem. I might just think that there’s a better path to productivity than dumping important messages into an uncontrolled, unorganized inbox and then forwarding them around like crazy, all the while trying to clean, reabsorb and reorganize them back into the system that created them.

Why doesn’t Facebook need Outlook integration? Or Twitter? Is it only because they are consumer applications? Or is it because they are communicating with you by way of channels you already trust?

I think it’s the latter.

I am left to wonder if we should rethink how our business applications communicate with the people they serve. The mail paradigm is not just old, it is centuries old. I can think of some software companies already leveraging clean communication channels, Yammer is an interesting one. I think I I’ll try to build another.  Who knew that Shakespeare didn’t like email?:  “Mud is not the fountain that gave drink to thee.”