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.

He spoke a lot about the shortcomings of the traditional software platforms and said a lot of things I really believe. First, that the transactional nature of ERP systems is sort of limiting when it comes to stuff like HCM. Those systems are simply not made for use by the average person, or for the way people who do jobs work. That, of course, is a fundamental requirement of any good HCM application.

Second, that a web-services architecture is the future. Period. Current applications were built for the 90’s. They were built for companies rather than for collaboration. They were grown to be rich and complex. The were (and are) hard to install, upgrade and change. They are difficult to adapt to the changing business world, to collaboration with new partners. They were built for the back office and HCM systems need to be built for everyone. It’s an opportunity for HR to become a strategic partner by supporting simple, easy to learn software with no user manuals, that are highly intuitive and adaptive to a changing business world.

Dave’s new company is set to launch its first product in spring of 2006. While it kept being referred to as an ERP application, the first products on the platform will be HCM focused. It’s definately getting interesting.