A guest post by Erik Berggren – Director of Customer Results, SuccessFactors.

You probably don’t need me to tell you that successful companies are ones who provide products people want. But what sometimes gets lost is that this is true not just for B2C firms, but for B2B firms as well. To get a sense of what I mean, just consider the story of my current office printer. Made by a well known PC manufacturer – it is so universally despised by my colleagues for being constantly broken (as it is right now) that it will soon be replaced by a machine from another company. The moral of the story? If the end users, your ultimate customers, don’t like your product, its ultimately not going to do very well.

Recently, SuccessFactors conducted a study on how high-tech companies manage their talent. Specifically, we took a look at the core competencies such firms use to evaluate people in their organizations. Perhaps not surprisingly, we found that one very key competency stood out amongst companies that both grew faster and provided a greater return to their owners than their competition. That competency? Customer focus.

“So what?,” you might be thinking. Isn’t it fairly obvious that customer driven product development and engineering makes sense? Sure it is, but the research shows the importance of making this an explicit area for managing people. It?s not something that can be merely talked about, it has to be acted upon ? and it?s that action that makes all the difference. By way of comparison, our research also showed that customer focus is NOT something that poor-performing high tech companies stress. That is what makes this so intriguing - we’ve proven both sides of the coin.

Want to know more? Based on the results from our broad-ranging research on competencies and how they drive financial performance, we decided to partner with Bersin and Associates to get a perspective of deep expertise from the broader HCM field. Josh Bersin has analyzed our research in depth and written a great report that puts the importance of managing competencies in perspective.

For questions about the research, feel free to leave a comment, or send an email to Erik at eberggren AT successfactors.com.

A guest post by Erik Berggren – Director of Customer Results, SuccessFactors.

You probably don’t need me to tell you that successful companies are ones who provide products people want. But what sometimes gets lost is that this is true not just for B2C firms, but for B2B firms as well. To get a sense of what I mean, just consider the story of my current office printer. Made by a well known PC manufacturer – it is so universally despised by my colleagues for being constantly broken (as it is right now) that it will soon be replaced by a machine from another company. The moral of the story? If the end users, your ultimate customers, don’t like your product, its ultimately not going to do very well.

Recently, SuccessFactors conducted a study on how high-tech companies manage their talent. Specifically, we took a look at the core competencies such firms use to evaluate people in their organizations. Perhaps not surprisingly, we found that one very key competency stood out amongst companies that both grew faster and provided a greater return to their owners than their competition. That competency? Customer focus.

“So what?,” you might be thinking. Isn’t it fairly obvious that customer driven product development and engineering makes sense? Sure it is, but the research shows the importance of making this an explicit area for managing people. It’s not something that can be merely talked about, it has to be acted upon – and it’s that action that makes all the difference. By way of comparison, our research also showed that customer focus is NOT something that poor-performing high tech companies stress. That is what makes this so intriguing – we’ve proven both sides of the coin.

Want to know more? Based on the results from our broad-ranging research on competencies and how they drive financial performance, we decided to partner with Bersin and Associates to get a perspective of deep expertise from the broader HCM field. Josh Bersin has analyzed our research in depth and written a great report that puts the importance of managing competencies in perspective.

For questions about the research, feel free to leave a comment, or send an email to Erik at eberggren AT successfactors.com.

Unlike last year, I didn’t have the privilege of attending the annual HR Technology Conference (AKA “HR Tech”) that took place this week in Chicago. In case you didn’t have the chance to go either, here is a roundup of posts from around the blogosphere:

• Here’s the link to the official site for the show
• Jim Holincheck reviews the opening keynote of the show
• Vendorprisey sums up the coverage for Workday’s coming out party
• Jason Corsello shares stories of day 1 from “dark and gloomy Chicago.”
• We announced a couple of interesting things  (one / two)

Surprisingly, not a whole lot of coverage (unless I’m a horribly bad Internet researcher) for the one of the industry’s highest profile conferences. Too bad. Perhaps when people get back from the show over the next day or two, more will appear. When I was there last year, I tried to put a bunch of stuff out there.

Though it’s always true with anything on this blog, i should note here in particular that this post represents my personal opinion on this matter, and not necessarily that of SuccessFactors.  – Max

Why public disclosure of vendor selections will make analysts and vendors more accountable to customers.

Gartner’s Jim Holincheck poses an interesting question. He wonders:

The reality is that industry analyst firms are also customers. We need technology to run our business. It does not make sense for us to build it all ourselves. So, like our clients, we use packaged applications. How transparent should we be about what vendors and products we use?

It’s interesting because Gartner, like most analyst firms, has very specific rules and regulations about when and how vendors can use Gartner’s name in marketing materials. That is to say – basically, never.

It’s not that I don’t understand the dilemma. Surely, in any competitive market, most vendors will be left unhappy when a 3rd party firm (whose value resides in their presumed objectivity) chooses one over all the rest. It can be construed as an implicit endorsement. How can Gartner (and others – like Forrester, Bersin, etc.) be considered objective once they have made a purchase decision for themselves?

But I’m honestly not sure there is a real conflict here. As a professional services firm, Gartner represents a very specific type of company. And, there are other factors that differentiate them as well – like size (medium), industry (technology) and geographic distribution (global). Those factors account for some of the most important considerations in the choice of a vendor for just about anything.

Therefore, the only realistic conclusion is that analyst firms choose vendors that are right for them; for their situation, specifications and needs. Its not logical to assume that the same situation, specifications and needs are shared by every company that might be influenced by a Gartner report. To put it another way, companies that follow in Gartner’s footsteps purely on the thinking that “whatever is right for Gartner is right for me” are probably making an ill-informed decision.

In that way, it can be argued that analyst firms are doing a disservice to their clients by hiding their own choices. By allowing customers the illusion that those choices are the only correct ones, they miss an opportunity to say “here’s why we picked vendor X, but your company is different in this way and so the choice of vendor X may not be right for you.”

Funny enough, Jim makes an innocent but telling misstep at the end of his post. Having apparently posted to his blog from his mobile device, the post is appended with the line: “Sent via Cingular Xpress Mail with Blackberry.” Clearly we all now know that Gartner (or at least Jim) is a customer of both Cingular and Blackberry. They have opened the proverbial kimono. Gartner’s choice of wireless vendor and wireless email service are now public information: Gartner chooses Cingular and Blackberry.

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Blogs are supposed to be informational resources, right? Not just a bunch of idiots mouthing off at each other. Well, in that vein, I give you a roundup of all the web events I can find that have to do with HR. I’m always trying to see what’s going on out there, and I figure other people must be, too.

Mostly I’m focusing on the obvious sources, so feel free to submit your events and I will update this post as they come in. I hope to do this monthly if it gets a good response. Feel free to chime in and let us know which ones you’re planning to attend

Onward – Listing after the jump.

January 11th
Creating A Corporate University That Succeeds @ HR.com
The Elements of Employer Brand Building @ Human Capital Institute
Getting Started with Performance Management @ WPSmag.com

January 12th
Effective Use of Tools to help you with your PR and Marketing @ HR.com

January 17th
HCM Technology State of the Union: What we learned in 2005 that will affect your decisions in 2006 @ HR.com

January 18th

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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Aberdeen and HCI released a new report today called "the HR Executives Agenda" based on interviews with 98 executives who are members of HCI’s online community. Get it here and/or read the press release.

Some juicy nuggets:

• 59% said improving their HCM technology is a key response to the business challenges they face. Of those HCM technologies, online performance management systems are the leading planned expenditure.

• In considering technology, HR execs say they are most concerned with the best functionality first and foremost – but they prefer either an integrated suite of applications or "best of breed" software that can be integrated.

• Interesting to me is that executives said the method by which HCM software is delivered (in-house, stand-alone, part of ERP, 3rd party hosted or completely outsourced) is only somewhat important but 46% of companies called "best in class" plan to increase their use of ASP solutions.

   

  UPDATE: Another Review of the Report at Destination CRM 

Also from CFO Magazine (part of the cover story) comes a list of Human Capital Management technology vendors.

Categories covered: Recruitment Management, Learning Management, Performance and Compensation Systems and Workforce Management Systems.

There is an absolutely fantastic article (which is also the cover story) over on CFO.com about workforce performance management / human capital management / talent management or whatever you want to call it (more on this topic of naming in a future post (also see this post)). It has some interesting points including how WPM falls neatly in the domain of CFOs who are responsible for both people and information – the core assets owned by that function. Another key point: that the intagible called employee engagement can be harnessed and driven through WPM solutions.

Disclaimer: our client Kimberly-Clark is featured prominently in this article and we’re mentioned as part of their effort.

Click for a quote after the jump.
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