Oracle has continued to deliver enhanced product features with each release, and today the importance of these additional features cannot be understated.  Many clients are on 8.8/8.9 platforms and looking to build upon the existing platform to enable features such as Recruiting, Performance Management and Compensation.  Some are looking to gain cost savings and better business intelligence through solutions such as Expenses and eProcurement.  Others are just looking to 9.1 to help remove costly customizations needed to support their business.  Regardless of the motive, now is the time to take advantage of our PeopleSoft 9.1 Readiness Roadmap for $9.1K and define the roadmap for your organization to leverage all the new features/functions delivered with PeopleSoft 9.1.  Collaborative can support your organization in addressing any of the Human Resources, Talent Management, Financials and Supply Chain based modules and will work with you to:

• Definite Organizational priorities
• Identify 3rd Party integration points
• Determine Architectural Readiness
• Timeline, Staffing and Cost Estimates
• Identification of Implementation Challenges and Mitigation Recommendations
• Provide Best-Practices Implementation considerations

Our PeopleSoft 9.1 Readiness Roadmap offering represents a tremendous value for customers looking to better understand the value offered in the 9.1 solution and jumpstart their planning or business case efforts heading into 2010.  Our offering can be tailored to support your needs across one or more modules in the PeopleSoft suite.  We believe this is a truly innovative offering in the PeopleSoft space that delivers high quality and value at a very modest cost! 

For additional information on this service, or to speak with anyone from our sales team, please call us at 888-545-5387 or email us at inquiries@collaborativesolutions.com.

 
First, some quick facts about Workday, reported by CEO and Chief Customer Advocate, Dave Duffield:
• Current Number of Customers (coming into the conference):  104
• Workday Rising 2009 Attendees:  161 people from 65 customers; 75 from partners; 140 from prospects, deftly named “future customers”; 130 Workday employees
• Current Workday employee count:  390
• Dave’s goal:  “have the happiest customers on the planet”
• Dave’s conference objectives.  Attendees should leave feeling:
    o “My company made a fabulous choice”
    o “Workday is delivering exceptional service and trying to improve”
    o “Workday listens to our feedback”
    o “I can be part of a revolution!”

After speaking with several current customers and many prospects, it’s clearly evident that Dave’s short-term goals were achieved.  The customers left very eager to tackle new initiatives. I heard several customers very excited about new functionality with Absence and Projects, as examples.

 
I’ve been to several conferences thrown by several vendors. The executive teams across all of these vendors typically say the right things, but what struck me at Workday Rising 2009 was that there were actions to back up the words.  Dave, Aneel Bhusri, Mike Stankey, and the rest of the Workday executive team were not only approachable, but they all went out of their way to engage with customers and partners. Perhaps this type of behavior is why Workday’s customer satisfaction rankings increased from year-to-year across every single category.

 
Speaking of Mike Stankey, there were several articles and blogs published upon his hire last month. As Workday’s new President and COO, he’s the real deal. In conversations with Workday employees, they comment that he’s already made some moves and set new policies internally to prepare them for growth. And grow they will. While there’s no outwardly committed customer growth number, Workday is publicly suggesting growth targets approaching 75% to 100% per year.  It doesn’t take my old HP 12 calculator to figure out that the current number of customers will appear miniscule in just a few short years.

 
I wasn’t the only one at the conference with the feeling that Workday will start to explode (in a good way) in 2010. With SaaS becoming more mainstream, Workday’s pace of innovation, its position as the only core HCM system of record in the SaaS space, proven executive team (with new additions), jacked-up employees & partners, and fierce customer loyalty, I’ll gladly take bets against anyone who says they’re not ready to take a BIG step forward.

 
Hats off (or given our new “We Put the Work in Workday” campaign, perhaps I should say “Hard hats off”) to Workday for a very successful Rising 2009. To quote one Workday customer, “You had me at Octopus on a stick”.

 
During the initial European client server ERP generation implementations, I was working with a large UK utility company. Our data conversion had been proved, functionality was configured, and the users were excited about moving off the legacy mainframe. Back then the definition of a mainframe involved an IBM 370 and lots of green screens.

 
We suddenly hit a seemingly insurmountable road block. Despite the fact we had fully cataloged and developed the 50 or so “essential” hard copy reports and spent months designing and tailoring screen input and output, the users were struggling with the fact there was no button to print a screen of information. Long and impassioned discussions debated the need to print a page immediately (and no, pasting a screen image into a word doc would not do!).

 
Fast forward to Ray’s keynote, describing the ever-changing, web 2.0, millennial-friendly work environment of today (“Move fast and break things” as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg famously says). Gone is the need for users to take data out of the system in a plethora of reports for it to be useful. Users are becoming the true data owners and drivers of a systems operation and application.

 
Increasingly, laptop and mobile technologies are untethering systems from IT-policed and -controlled environments.  At Workday Rising we saw how Workday’s manager and employee self-service UI and dynamic reporting enable live data in the system to be an integrated, on-demand, part of the work environment rather than a delayed reflection of it.

 
Inevitably the occasional need to produce proforma presentations of data will arise, but these occasions are becoming fewer. Hence our approach is to include just a couple of custom reports per implementation. Gone is the need to do a last-minute screen print for a meeting when you can show the live data.
The irony of course is that Workday actually has the ability to produce a PDF “print” or Excel sheet for most pages, but that’s part of a much wider discussion on integration of HR data into the enterprise…

In my role at Collaborative Solutions, I’m involved in the recruiting process with virtually every candidate – more often than not from start to finish. While others at Collaborative can drill down on each candidate’s skill set and value prop to our firm, I find myself in a selling mode during these conversations and meetings. I find it’s incredibly important to sell our candidates on how we’re different from other firms. In the Workday space, which is our fastest growing practice, candidates have options other than Collaborative. But do other organizations share the same passion? Do they really care about their employees’ well being and development? Do they have a consultant base that’s fanatical about absorbing Workday knowledge and sharing it with the ecosystem (and believe me – with updates every 3 – 4 months, Workday consulting is a constant quest for knowledge!)?

I personally recall the summer of 1997 while working for a “Big-4” (or was it Big-8 or Big-6 at the time?) consultancy. Yes, they had sent me a fruit basket upon signing, but there was very little passion through the recruiting process. In hindsight, the recruiting process mirrored my experience as an employee: Do your job, do it right, and maybe, just maybe you get another fruit basket or, if you’re lucky a dinner at Morton’s. I remember being a bit disenchanted, sitting in my hotel room and viewing the PeopleSoft website (admittedly, through a very slow dial-up).  PeopleSoft was promoting their “we wear a lot of hats” theme where all the employees wore the hats made famous by Dr. Suess in the “Cat in the Hat” (which by the way is still an awesome book to read at night with my kids). The PeopleSoft culture virtually poured out of my computer screen. During the recruiting process, all my conversations with their employees illustrated their passion. If not for their collective ability to sell me on their vision, I may not have made the move.

Whether it’s your website, your Facebook fan page, your Twitterific posts, or your new marketing campaign, it’s crucial that you never forget to sell your company to your candidates. But be careful, you can’t fake passion. If you’re hiring smart people, they’ll see right through it.

1.) Be Process, Not Product focused – Talent Management should be supported by the technology applications on the market.  Generally speaking, any viable product should support a clients business processes via configuration changes.  Products should not be utilized for any other reason (partnership, previous experience, etc) unless they align with To-Be business processes and strategies.

2.) Minimize Integration – Talent Management has an extensive amount of integration that is required across modules to fully leverage the benefits of a TM System. It is most efficient, unless there is a compelling legal or business reason, to utilize one (or two) vendors who has already built and will support this integration between modules.

3.) Organizational Change Management – The importance of a solid Change Management plan that begins very early on in the program cannot be underestimated.  The user adoption of the product and feedback from the user community during design, pilot and implementation phases is critical to the overall success of this type of product.  After all, you will be impacting every employee in the organization in some way.

4.) Enable efficiencies, not just processes – To drive user adoption and a meaningful adoption of the tool set, users need to understand how this supports their career growth and overall how it benefits them.  It can’t simply be another tool where they are mandated to do an activity semi-annually.  Talent Management is about driving value for the employees and hence the client, it shouldn’t simply just be viewed as saving costs by pushing a process out to the employee.

5.) Configure and Customize – Don’t be afraid to configure and even customize the system. There is no system on the market that can meet all business needs without some level of configuration and even potentially some customization.  However, level set expectations in advance and request solid business justifications for extensive configuration or customization to help minimize the short/long term system impacts. Configuration should always be preferred over Customization.

6.) Vendor Viability and Stability – Currently in the Talent Management marketplace, there is a fair amount of instability via acquisitions, startups, etc.  Discuss the longer term objectives with your vendors and understand their roadmap.  Nothing is guaranteed of course, but some vendors take a 100% organic approach and others tend to buy and piecemeal a solution together.  Finding the right fit for the firms’ appetite is critical.

7.) Differentiate your firm – Don’t instill a process or decide on a product “just because” another similar firm to yours is doing the same thing.  Utilize this process to identify ways that your company can differentiate their skills, career paths for incoming employees, and growth from other companies in the marketplace.

8.) There are no hard and set rules – Talent Management products, processes and companies utilizing them do not have to all have the same approach.  Each business will have different needs and priorities that will guide their implementation requirements and phases. To help your company, align all requirements, decisions, directional changes, etc. to one or more of the agreed upon Strategic Goals or Business Objectives.  Everything that is executed on a roadmap should tie back to these goals and objectives.

Thoughts and Comments always welcome!

Let’s be frank…… You don’t always get what you pay for. Clients can be just as easily swayed into believing that they are being the most cost effective going with the lowest bid while on the flip side can also believe they are getting the best of the best if they pay on the high end. As I write this entry, I can think of recent examples of both situations where firms were trying to “get in the door”. Of course the most common method is to low ball the initial bid and identify “scope creep” during the project to facilitate a higher revenue generating project for the firm. What interesting is that no one benefits in any of this. The firm wins in the short term (sometimes) but most often loses in building a long term partnership with their client and potential future revenue. The client of course loses as what they have to pay is now more than originally budgeted. Why go through that?

Clients need to look toward their consulting firms to help support their goals and long term objectives. Working together to properly scope and estimate a project provides that foundation for a long term relationship. When working with a vendor, it will soon become apparent who the “trusted advisors” are as they will be more flexible in identifying the critical needs and associated costs to support your firms’ goals. If a firm comes in substantially less than competing firms with the same information, cause for concern should be raised. As well, if your firms estimate and your consulting firms estimate are dramatically different, the two parties should be open and honest in identifying the deltas. There may be misunderstandings on one or both sides which could easily justify the deltas.

At the end of the day, can costs be used as a determining factor? Sure. Should it be in the top three? No. Just to be clear, I’m not trying to wipe cost concerns off the radar, I’m just clarifying that the success or failure of your project is not going to be determined by how much you paid, it will be determined by the Experience, Roles and alignment of personalities and teams amongst the project team. That’s not to say you should always go with the most expensive. There is no direct relationship between experience and cost here. Identify the cost, but more importantly identify and understand the consultants associated with that cost. As over used as it seems, the “Team” is still the most important factor in supporting your projects success.

Let me know your thoughts!

Stay Tuned…. More to come!

Continuing the Vendor Selection topic, we now turn our attention to the project team.
Experience and the Personalities of the proposed team are almost of equal importance. The team has to have the requisite professional knowledge and skills, this is obvious, but at the same time successful project teams are created when this professional knowledge is coupled with complimentary personalities.

One of the key areas here is that vendors shouldn’t be proposing just the next person in line on the bench they should be building the right team for each client. Talk to your vendors, understand their staffing methodology, understanding how they went about assembling the proposed team. Unfortunately anyone can go to a recruiting website and find “available” consultants, but do these folks have the full package required to be successful? Can you assemble a viable team in this manner?

More often than not, the answer is NO in these respects. So in working with your vendor, we’ve identified some areas that have made us successful in building the right teams for our clients.

When evaluating the technical skills of the team, everyone needs to be cognizant that each client has different needs and requirements. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is our team more functional or more technical?
• Are we going to send our team to training or expect the consulting vendor to facilitate this?
  How does our organization accept change?
• Do we have the requisite experience to lead an upgrade or implementation or do we need the vendor to facilitate this?
• Is there a functional area we are underutilizing or don’t have the requisite SME to support it?

Finally, make sure to speak with the proposed project team. Get to know them and try and make an assessment of how the fit into your organization.

• Do they have similar personalities?
• Can they communicate tough messages?
• Can they obtain buy in from less flexible client staff?

The answer to these questions will help you better understand the technical scope of what you may be relying on your consulting vendor for. Getting the right team enables vendors to build trust within the teams, work more effectively and enables clients to have a smoother, more successful project.

Stay Tuned…. More to come!

Over the course of the next few weeks, we will try and break down each one of the key areas from both the client and the service provider perspective. So lets jump in and get started.

First and foremost don’t get caught up in the marketing!

Buy Reality, Don’t buy Perception. Many vendors carry with them a better marketing pitch or perception of what they are than what is true in reality. A substantial amount of vendors flaunt their “Partnership” status, but how do they demonstrate this? Did they just write a check to become a partner (this is the vast majority unfortunately) or have they worked with the provider to build solutions or guide product enhancements? Remember, it’s inexpensive to print fancy business cards, create an eye pleasing PowerPoint or even better yet, purchase a premade website for $80 (check out www.templatemonster.com and you’ll see what I mean). There are 1001 different service providers out there with similar cookie cutter website who have no real true content.
Clients need to focus on the content when evaluating vendors. Clients need to see how their objectives are going to be met. After you’ve spent your budget allotment and you have a system that only meets 50% of your businesses needs is the CIO going to care that they have nice business cards or PowerPoint’s? Key questions to ask yourself:

• Did your vendor address all your proposal questions?
• Did your vendor provide reasonable recommendations or approaches that align with your goals?
• Was the content impactful and meaningful to your firm or just more marketing?
• Has your vendor demonstrated previous successes?
• Is your vendor knoweledgeable on current trends in your particular market space?
• Is your vendor able to provide references?

Now, I’ll be the first person to acknowledge, references aren’t what we were all taught they are supposed to be. Is someone really going to give you the name and phone number of a person who is going to speak negatively about them? The fact that they can provide the references substantiates them to some level, and you should talk to the references, but remember they don’t hold the entire key to the kingdom.

Stay Tuned…. More to come!

As businesses continue to look for was to cut costs and squeeze every ounce of value out of their IT dollars, the interest and attention around SaaS solutions continues to grow.  As both a partner and a customer with Workday, Salesforce and Taleo, we also continue to see the value this model provides.  The following article is more proof positive on the topic.

Software as a Service Market Will Expand Rather than Contract Despite the Economic Crisis, IDC Finds

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. — Recent IDC surveys and customer interviews support the finding that the harsh economic climate will actually accelerate the growth prospects for the software as a service (SaaS) model as vendors position offerings as right-sized, zero-CAPEX alternatives to on-premise applications. Buyers will opt for easy-to-use subscription services which meter current use, not future capacity, and vendors and partners will look for new products and recurring revenue streams. As such, IDC has increased its SaaS growth projection for 2009 from 36% growth to 42% growth over 2008.

“With a broad slowdown across IT sectors, businesses are increasingly bearish about their short-term ability to invest, whether for stability, growth, or cost savings down the road,” said Robert Mahowald, director, On-Demand and SaaS research at IDC. “But SaaS services have benefited by the perception that they are tactical fixes which allow for relatively easy expansion during hard times, and several key vendors finished the year very strong, reporting stable financials and inroads into new customer-sets.”

Additional findings from the IDC study include:

• By the end of 2009, 76% of U.S. organizations will use at least one SaaS-delivered application for business use.
• The percentage of U.S. firms which plan to spend at least 25% of their IT budgets on SaaS applications will increase from 23% in 2008 to nearly 45% in 2010.
• This market’s growth prospects will accelerate the shift to SaaS for the whole value chain as the promise of a recurring revenue stream, and the opportunity to tap OPEX and project-related dollars, will benefit the whole SaaS ecosystem.
• While demand for SaaS is strongest in North America, new contracts from customers in Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) also look particularly positive, and IDC expects that by year-end 2009, nearly 35% of worldwide revenue will be earned outside of the U.S.
• On the downside, IDC interviews with SaaS providers highlighted several issues, such as cash-flow shortfalls related to slow-paying current clients, liquidity challenges stemming from tight credit at lenders, and — on the horizon — limited resources to scale up with expanded infrastructure to support new customers and new service offerings.

Today, “being green” has transcended this old meaning and now reflects a commitment to doing those things that will help our preserve our environment.  Its not just a concept we embrace, but our customers embrace as well.  Particularly in this time where our economy is not at its best, “being green” has also become a way many customers can, frankly, save some green.  Technology has enabled organizations to see savings in many areas, such as reducing paper waste through electronic workflows and processing more data with more efficient computer solutions.  There are now many cool ways in which technology is helping us be green.  In fact, one of the benefits we’ve been offering our employees is a subscription to Earth Class Mail, which allows customers to review mail online and recycle the physical mail they don’t want (junk mail, catalogs, etc.).  For consultants out on the road, this is a great way to stay on top of your mail when you are away from home and at the same time show you are “being green”.

This blog wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t pay due respect to a famous saying “its not easy being green”.  I think that statement has always been true.  Today, however, if someone told us we were “being green”, I would thank them for the compliment.