Vote in HRchitect’s December Poll

Cast your vote in HRchitect’s December poll, ‘Who do you think will win the superbowl?’ and be entered to win one of three Starbucks gift cards!  Winners are announced in The HR Authority, HRchitect’s monthly newsletter.  If you would like to subscribe to receive The HR Authority, click here.

Thanks for voting!

Fifth Step in a Software Evaluation and Selection Project – Distribute RFPs and Score Responses

 

The blog on November 17 discussed the first step that should be undertaken whenever evaluating and selecting an HR system. Once you have defined project resources and initiated the project, the second step involves strategic planning and this was posted on November 24. Once the strategic planning phase takes place, it’s time to develop requirements. This third step was posted on December 4 about developing those requirements. The fourth step, Identify Vendors, was posted on December 18. Now it is time to Distribute RFPs (or RFIs) and then subsequently score the responses that you receive from the vendors.

 

All RFP responses from the vendors must be read and evaluated (typically taking 2-3 hours for each Core Project Team member to read and score each response).  For this reason your RFP listing should normally be kept to less than 8 vendors.  From the evaluation of the RFPs, a vendor short list should be developed since it is advisable only to request a maximum of 4 vendors to demonstrate their software. 

 

If you have a consultant retained, you should also consider having them read all RFP submissions and provide any additional information that they know about the vendor’s product or service.  This consultant can also identify areas of concern based on the responses.  Once all the RFPs have been scored (a scoring template should be developed for the RFP review sessions), the Core Project Team should revisit the decision drivers, develop a recommended “vendor short list” and confer with the Steering Committee and other key process owners (to assure buy-in and answer any questions).  The Core Project Team should then begin scheduling the demonstrations with the vendors based on project team and vendor availability.

 

 

Next up…Developing Demonstration Scripts as part of an evaluation

  

Solving a piece of the puzzle…

 

Matt Lafata, HRchitect

WebMingle 2009

 

No it’s not a new product but it will have a significant impact on the HR Technology world in 2009. You see, HRchitect started the HR Technology Happy Hour WebMingle earlier this month and had three very successful shows, setting the stage for what is to come in 2009.

 

First of all, what is the WebMingle you ask? As the leading HR Systems consulting firm, we created this new weekly web mingle, which I am sure will evolve and change over time, just like this industry, to provide some insight into the puzzling world of HR technology. We will discuss news from around the world that we find interesting, talk about upcoming events in our industry, and provide insightful interviews with people of our industry – who they are, what they do and why you should care.

 

We conducted our debut WebMingle on Friday, December 5 and our guest was Mark Willaman, President & Founder of Fisher Vista, LLC, the owners of several companies including HRmarketer.  On December 12, Adam Feigenbaum and Susan Vitale from iCIMS were the guests. And on December 19, the last show for 2008, Rick Fletcher, President and Founder of HRchitect, joined me as we recapped some of the interesting events that took place in this space in 2008 as well as some observations and predictions.

 

As the host of the show, I am fortunate to have such a great supporting cast. Tiffany Appleby, our Director of Marketing and Corporate Communication, plays the role of Program Director for the WebMingle and Karen Cunningham (Director of Sales) and Rick Fletcher (President) each provide invaluable input.  I’m sure other members of the HRchitect family will join in from time to time throughout 2009.

 

The show will resume on Friday, January 9 and be live every Friday at 1pm CST. The public is invited to call in during the show to ask questions of our guests or HRchitect. A schedule of upcoming guests will be available on the WebMingle page of our web site and will be updated after the first of the year. If you are interested in appearing on our show, please contact Tiffany directly.

 

2009 is going to be a great year for our industry and the WebMingle is going to be one of the ways in which HRchitect keeps you updated on happenings that matter.

 

We hope to have you join us in 2009!

 

Matt Lafata, HRchitect

Congratulations to our Learning Management Systems Beauty Pageant Winner – GeoLearning!

 

On Friday, December 19, HRchitect held the third installation in our Beauty Pageant webinar series, this time focusing on Learning Management Systems. Participants included leading vendors in the LMS world – Cornerstone OnDemand, GeoLearning, OutStart, Plateau Systems, and SumTotal Systems.

 

 

At the end of the webinar, GeoLearning was crowned the winner with Cornerstone OnDemand the runner-up. The presentations were fantastic and HRchitect would like to thank the vendors for participating and the attendees for judging the contestants.

 

 

I would also like to extend my personal thanks to Tiffany Appleby, HRchitect’s Director of Marketing and Corporate Communications, for her incredible work in making sure these pageants run smoothly. Tiffany does a fantastic job coordinating the vendor practices and presentations as well as being the production manager during these events and I can’t say enough great things about her.

 

Past winners included iCIMS in the Talent Acquisitions Systems pageant on November 14 with Authoria the runner-up. Cornerstone OnDemand won the Talent Management Systems pageant on November 21 with Plateau Systems the runner-up.

 

The Beauty Pageants will commence again in January 2009 as follows:

 

January 9 – 11am CST – Mid-market ATS  

January 23 – 11am CST – Onboarding  

February 6 – 11am CST – EPM (Employee Performance Management)  

February 20 – 11am CST – Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS)

 

March 6 – 11am CST – Time & Attendance 

March 27 – 11am CST – Workforce Planning

April 10 – 11am CST – Compensation Management

April 17 – 11am CST – Succession Planning

May 8 – 11am CST – Mid-market HRIS

May 22 – 11am CST – Talent Acquisition Systems

 

In case you have missed any of our Beauty Pageants, you can view them here. The Beauty Pageants have become the buzz of the industry because of the way they provide exposure to a handful of leading vendors in a 90-minute fun and informative format. Watch this blog and our web site for updates on all of our upcoming Beauty Pageants and register today so you won’t be left puzzled by HR Technology!

 

Matt Lafata, HRchitect

Fourth Step in a Software Evaluation and Selection Project – Identify Vendors

 

The blog on November 17 discussed the first step that should be undertaken whenever evaluating and selecting an HR system. Once you have defined project resources and initiated the project, the second step involves strategic planning and this was posted on November 24. Once the strategic planning phase takes place, it’s time to develop requirements. This third step was posted on December 4. Now it is time to Identify Vendors.

 

The talent acquisition and talent management systems software industry is a complex grouping of diverse organizations.  Many of the vendors have targeted recruitment components (i.e. partial solutions), industry specializations (such as healthcare), technology constraints (i.e. only offering ASP applications or delivering self-hosted applications only for particular technology platforms) as well as limitations as to a client’s employee size.  The project team should research and compile a listing of talent acquisition and talent management system vendors that will meet both the strategic and preliminary budgetary needs of your company.  The vendor listing can be researched through various reference avenues including:  HRchitect’s extensive internal files (contact HRchitect for a “top 20” vendor list with contacts), the International Association for Human Resource Information Management (IHRIM), the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the Employment Management Association (SHRM/EMA), the Electronic Recruiting Exchange (ERE), software system surveys, contacts with other professional organizations and input from your peers in the recruiting profession. (HRchitect has unparalleled first hand knowledge of the leading talent acqusition and talent management system vendors and is strongly acquainted with the respective strengths/weaknesses of each solution, including the company culture and viability.  HRchitect regularly visits the corporate headquarters of each leading vendor; meeting with senior management and attending training classes as new versions are released.)  We also recommend that you consider evaluating your incumbent talent management vendors as well as including your core HRMS or ERP vendor on the vendor list, if appropriate.

 

Optionally, a verbal (or e-mail format) simplified Request for Information (RFI) can be created to confirm the vendor qualifications. Once the vendor list is established, the project team will contact vendors to complete the RFP.   The project team should also develop a vendor response-tracking matrix to track all communications with the vendors and the elapsed response times.

 

Next up…Distributing the RFP and Scoring Responses as part of an evaluation

  

Solving a piece of the puzzle…

 

Matt Lafata, HRchitect

New Clients, New Projects and Those That Have Successfully Completed in November

 

As you know from reading this blog, HRchitect is the leader in HR systems strategic consulting. As the premier Human Capital Management (HCM) and Talent Management systems consulting firm, our services include the selection, implementation, and integration of Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS), Talent Management Suites (TMS), Performance Management, Succession Management, Compensation Management, Learning Management, Competency Management, Talent Acquisition Systems, and Time & Attendance software.

 

To that extent, we have completed over 600 projects since HRchitect was founded in April 1997 and are happy to call more than 1 in 5 of the Fortune 100 companies our clients.

 

Once a month we will post a blog about some of the new clients we have picked up in the previous month, some of the new projects we have started for past or existing clients and also touch on some of the projects that were completed in that month.

 

In November, some of the clients we picked up include the following (it was another busy month!):

 

Clear Edge Power

dNovus

JBT Technology

Marchex

Rudolph Technologies

Space Coast Credit Union

Sterling Computers

Technical Staffing Solutions

Bite Communications

Fedsys

Gunn Allen Financial

Inserso

Interactive Intelligence

Radiant Systems

Stewart Group

Sterling Computers

Summit Marketing

United Way of King County

WRSystems

 

Also in November, we completed projects for the following clients:

 

Avanade Europe

Ciber

Barclays Global Investors (BGI)

 

As well as initiating additional projects for these current and past clients:

 

Boy Scouts of America

Dresser

Monsanto

Raytheon

 

Thank you to all of our new and past clients for trusting us with your HR technology projects!

 

Solving a piece of the puzzle…

 

Matt Lafata, HRchitect

An HRchitect Beauty Pageant – Learning Management Systems on Friday, December 19. Register Today and Don’t Miss it!

 

We’ve had two very successful beauty pageants so far and they have quickly become the buzz of the industry. On November 14, 2008, iCIMS was crowned the winner of the Talent Acquisition Systems pageant and on November 21, 2008, Cornerstone OnDemand was crowned the winner of the Talent Management Systems pageant.

 

This week’s beauty pageant will feature leading vendors from the Learning Management Systems world and as of this writing, Cornerstone OnDemand, GeoLearning, Plateau Systems, and SumTotal Systems have agreed to participate. Several other invites are out as well but we know how hard it can be to get up in front of a live audience so some of them may be shy.

 

The 90-minute webinar agenda will look like this:

 

Intro by HRchitect

Overview of the marketplace by HRchitect

Short vendor presentations (vendor order will be determine at random)

Q&A of vendors from the audience

Crowning of Ms. Learning Management Systems 2008

Wrap-up

 

The session will be moderated by Matt Lafata, our VP of Sales & Marketing. HRchitect developed a format to help guide each vendor with an outline of what should be covered during each portion of the pageant.  Since we have billed this as a beauty pageant, we tried to come up with pageant categories for vendors to loosely follow. Of course each vendor is free to follow their own format as this is simply a guideline:

 

Evening gown – To start off each portion, we are asking the vendor to come out in their best ‘outfit’ – corporate overview, history, specific identity, financial viability, marquee clients, leadership team, etc. This will be the grand entrance.

 

Swimsuit – Here the vendors will show some skin in this portion – usability, configurability, etc.

 

Talent – This portion will cover functionality, technology/integration, global ability, etc.

 

Interview – This will be the Q & A section from the audience. 

 

These beauty pageants are designed to give the audience a quick overview of the leading vendors and we are looking for creativity in presentations.

 

Here is the schedule of upcoming beauty pageants along with instructions for registering:

December 19 – 11am CST – LMS (Learning Management Systems)

January 9 – 11am CST – Mid-market ATS  

January 23 – 11am CST – Onboarding  

February 6 – 11am CST – EPM (Employee Performance Management)  

February 20 – 11am CST – Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS)

 

Watch this blog and our web site for updates on all of our upcoming beauty pageants and register today so you won’t be left puzzled by HR Technology!

 

Matt Lafata, HRchitect

 

First HRchitect Happy Hour WebMingle a Huge Success

 

We conducted our debut WebMingle on Friday, December 5 and early results indicate it was very well received. Our guest was Mark Willaman, President & Founder of Fisher Vista, LLC, the owners of several companies including HRmarketer.

More on that later but first, let me remind everybody what the WebMingle concept is all about. As the leading HR Systems consulting firm, HRchitect created this new weekly web mingle, which I am sure will evolve and change over time, just like this industry, to provide some insight into the puzzling world of HR technology, discuss news from around the world that we find interesting, talk about upcoming events in our industry, and provide insightful interviews with people of our industry – who they are, what they do and why you should care.

As the host of the show, I am fortunate to have such a great supporting cast. Tiffany Appleby, our Director, plays the role of Program Director for the WebMingle and Karen Cunningham (Director of Sales) and Rick Fletcher (President) each provide invaluable input. Tiffany missed this week’s WebMingle as she was at a marketing conference and Karen did a great job filling in at the controls.

The 45-minute WebMingle included an excellent Q&A session with Mark Willaman, as I mentioned above. For those of you who are not familiar with HRmarketer, they are the number one marketing and media relations firm for companies selling to human resource departments. Customers of HRmarketer represent a wide variety of HR software and services suppliers including recruitment and staffing, compensation and benefits, rewards and recognition, talent management, training & development, HRIS and many more. HRchitect utilizes their services and has been very happy with them. Visit HRmarketer.com for more information.

Mark himself has nearly twenty years of proven success in the human resource and healthcare industries and is also a published author and speaker on various marketing topics and we were very happy and privileged to have Mark on our show.

As somebody who has been involved in marketing for many years, I was particularly interested to hear Mark’s position on many different areas and he provided a great deal of insight. He was certainly preaching to the choir with me in regards to many of the topics he touched on and I hope people enjoyed hearing what he had to say. One particular piece of information that I have also been a huge proponent of was when Mark re-iterated that a slow or bad economy is no time to cut marketing efforts. These efforts should stay the same or increase as others are going to panic and cut budgets and those that stay the course are more likely to weather the storm. In any event, lots of great information and I encourage you to listen to the interview at your convenience.  To listen to the WebMingle archive, click here. 

Our next WebMingle will take place on December 12, at 1pm when Adam Feigenbaum, Director of Sales for iCIMS will be our guest. With more than 600 clients worldwide, iCIMS is one of the largest and fastest-growing vendors in the talent management systems space. iCIMS was also the winner of the HRchitect Beauty Pageant on Talent Acquisition Systems that took place on November 14 and we look forward to welcoming them to the WebMingle.

We hope to have you join us!

Matt Lafata, HRchitect

Third Step in an HR Software Evaluation and Selection Project – Develop Requirements

The blog on November 17 discussed the first step that should be undertaken whenever evaluating and selecting an HR system. Once you have defined project resources and initiated the project, the second step involves strategic planning and this was posted on November 24. Once the strategic planning phase takes place, it’s time to develop requirements.

 

To better evaluate potential vendors, system requirements must be established.  They will typically be documented in the format of a RFP, which will later be sent to targeted vendors via e-mail.  The RFP should emphasize processing necessities for your company, which will be over-and-above standard functionality (standard functionality will also be reviewed during the vendor product demos). 

 

Through staff interviews, previous documentation analysis and current processing review, the project team will develop a detailed process flow and requirements definition including a “check list” of required system functionality, and this data should be incorporated into the RFP.  (Responses from vendors usually increase if the RFP is kept as simple and straight forward as possible.)   Once the RFP is drafted, the Extended Project Team (consider having some of the process owners involved) should ascertain and assign a priority to the “check listed” features and participate in editing the final document.  

 

To begin the requirements definition process, the Core Project Team should facilitate site visits, focus groups and surveys as required across representative talent management system users (for instance, if it is a Talent Acquisition System, then Staffing, HR, hiring managers – and you should also consider benchmarking your employees and candidates for current TAS satisfaction.)  Staffing processes can be mapped in Visio and presented back to the project team and representative SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) for review and validation.  Specific sites and properties to be sampled, and method of sampling (visit, survey, phone interview), should be determined during the Project Initiation phase.  An interview schedule should be established to allow all required resources to be adequately notified, to insure availability.  The Project Leader should insure proper communication is established and maintained with all participants, identifying the purpose of their involvement, and required preparation. 

 

Optionally, current process metrics can be determined, and used to establish relative costs, benefits, and impact of any proposed improvements.  (This will greatly help you establish your business case in a latter step of the software evaluation.) Process improvements (and the related implementation effort and metrics improvement) may also be identified during the interview and subsequent analysis of the interview notes by the Core Project Team.  Opportunities for improvement may be identified from: legacy talent management systems dependency; manual processes; non-standardization; best or better practice alignment.  All recommended improvements should be evaluated by the Core Project Team and Steering Committee to determine potential impact and degree of user adoption.  Final recommendations for process change may be determined by your company’s talent management system vendor selection, and the ability for that system to provide acceptable enablement. The current and the approved “to be” processes will form requirements for the RFP.

 

If your company is not required by Procurement to develop an RFP or your timeline does not allow appropriate time for these tasks (i.e. creating the RFP, waiting 2-3 weeks for vendor responses, having enough team resources to review and score each RFP response), you may wish to consider other “creative” approaches to compare the vendor offerings with your processes and requirements.

 

Next up…Identifying Vendors as part of an evaluation

 

 

Solving a piece of the puzzle…

Matt Lafata, HRchitect

Don’t forget to join HRchitect for the debut of the HR Technology Happy Hour WebMingle(TM)

 

This Friday, December 5th, HRchitect’s very own Matt Lafata will host the debut of the HR Technology Happy Hour WebMingle(TM).  You might be thinking, what is a WebMingle?  Click here to find out more.  Our first guest will be Mark Willaman, President and Founder of Fisher Vista, LLC, owners of HRmarketer.

Join the WebMingle at 1PM Central Live and you will have the opportunity to call in to ask questions of Mark and Matt. 

Hope to see you there!
Tiffany Appleby, HRchitect