This was, by far, the worst session I sat in on at the show – and I’m not just saying that becuase Authoria* was the co-presenter.  The title of the session had to do with Pay for Performance ("Delivering Pay for Performance Success"),  but the session itself was just a recounting of the issues the company faced along with some of the details involved in rolling out their HCM product and process. Very little was said about Pay for Performance and the specifics of making that particular aspect a reality.

The presenters should answer the questions posed in the session title. We’re not just showing up to hear you tell a story (or give a pitch). We want advice or information we can use. Next time we do one of these sessions I’m going to make it my responsibility to make sure we deliver what we promise.

*Authoria is a direct competitor of SuccessFactors. Authoria was also the winner of the Performance Management Shootout that took place at HR Tech – beating out SuccessFactors, Recruitmax and Workstream.

It’s early in Chicago. 8am. But it’s even earlier for me (I’m on California time). Excuse whatever follows.

I sat in this morning on a conversation with Dave Duffield, founder of PeopleSoft. There was some time spent on the history of PeopleSoft and the impact it was able to have on the industry. Dave attributed that impact, in part, to the technologies they were able to use. At the time that meant a client-server architecture and a Windows GUI. Innovating through new technologies supported a sea change in the HR industry then, and he expects to be able to do that again with his new company Workday.

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In case you thought our website was, ahem, in need of some work, you should know we agreed with you. We’re really proud to announce the release of the new successfactors.com. Curious to know what you guys think of the new site. Check it out and let me know.

Oh, and it’s got a blog link on every page, too. Movin’ on up!

Some interesting discussion today with booth visitors in the healthcare space. It’s a very unique environment, especially when you are talking about M.D’s. Because of their code of ethics, Doctors are very hesitant to really review each other. But, as the healthcare industry becomes more of a performance based environment, managing the performance of Doctors will become more and more important.

Through the use of enabling technologies that anonymize feedback – Doctors are now, for the first time, able to give and receive feedback, and administrators are able to see where their medical organization stands.  It’s a revolution I tell you.

I’m sitting in the “Industry’s First Integrated Performance Management & Compensation Shootout" at HR Tech. There are hundreds of people here. My CEO just walked in in an Elvis costume. This should be interesting. I’m going to try to bring you the results as they come in so you can feel like you were there.

The M.C. here takes great pains before things start to explain that the 4 companies presenting were chosen out of a hat. I believe him, but it is nevertheless remarkable that the 3 other companies on the stage are the ones we most often run into in the field.

Before Lars spoke, he explained the Elvis getup. “We can all agree, Elvis was an excellent performer and extremely well compensated.”

If anyone attended this thing, too – leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Results after the jump.
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Check it out. We’re soft-launching worstreview.com tomorrow. Tell us stories about your worst performance review (given or gotten). Win cool prizes. Fun, fun, fun. There’s still a little work to do, so don’t judge us too harshly.

Let me know what you think.

So this is interesting. Sitting in on a session with the title of the above, one would think that it would be delivered by an impartial individual from someplace like Gartner or the like. Alas, not. It was delivered by Mark Albrecht, a clearly knowledgable chap from Salary.com. But this seems to me to be a significant conflict. As Salary.com is now a competitor in the performance management space, its the equivalent of having a representative of Coke giving a speech on selecting a cola.

With that said, Mark worked very hard to be impartial and did a good job of it. He had some real wisdom to offer including his myths of selecting performance management software.

Here is an article Mark wrote last year that speaks to some of those myths and discusses Textron’s effort to evaluate and pay for performance.

I spent today at HR Tech in Chicago. Generally some very favorable impressions. It’s a small world we operate in, I tell you. You see the same faces over and over, but there’s definately a sense that what’s happening in this space is really exciting.

In any event, I sat in on a couple of sessions today. The first was one with Levi Strauss and Accenture  entitled "How HR Helps Drive Business Performance At Levi Strauss."  For the most part, the session was about outsourcing – how Levi’s and Accenture worked together to achieve impressive results. And, indeed the results were impressive.  But there were a couple of bits of wisdom I thought I would pass on.

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I’m on my way to the HR Technology show in Chicago, and I’m doing a little reading on the plane. This new Gartner report called "Exploit the Next Generation of Workforce Analytics to Manage Human Capital" from Jim Holincheck on workforce analytics is intense, but inspiring.  The gist of it goes like this: valuing investments in human capital has always been a difficult challenge (and will continue to be). Most companies don’t even try to measure it. But executives increasingly need a way to value human capital in the context of their businesses.  Next generation workforce performance analytics will enable HR data to be juxtaposed with business data to help managers make better decisions.

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Well, this isn’t right. Without disclosing our 2004 revenue number, suffice it to say that SuccessFactors rightfully deserves to be called one of the "Top 25 on-demand providers" as determined by this IDC report. Phil Wainewright knows his stuff though. He very appropriately mentions that the report is "skewed by the omission of some potentially significant names."

I know you mean us, Phil. 

It leaves me curious about IDC’s methodology…