Steve Goldberg's Analyst Perspectives

The HCM software market continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace. The innovations we’re seeing are exciting new features and capabilities, but many have more profound impacts: They provide organizations with more effective ways to serve their customers and enhance their experience. HR’s customers –employees, managers, retirees, candidates, leadership and external partners – can now access and take advantage of native mobile apps, virtual agents and chatbots (via text or voice) as well as robotic process automation (“RPA”) technology for predictable-task execution and algorithms that prescribe best actions. We are also seeing increasing evidence of the power and potential of virtual and augmented reality to create immersive experiences (for candidates and learners) and the internet of things is helping organizations achieve an even more connected, data-driven workforce. We at Ventana Research recently released our research agenda for 2018, which outlines the ways we plan to track and evaluate these advances and innovations in the coming year.

Two of the most impactful contributions of any HR department are driving employee engagement and employee productivity, outcomes that are highly correlated of course. These contributions are meaningful because, for an organization of any appreciable size, even fairly small upticks in employee productivity translate into significant financial benefit. The math is simple: Increase revenue per employee (for example, via technologies that enhance productivity) from $150,000 to $157,500 (just 5 percent) in a workforce of 5,000 employees and you capture $37.5 million in incremental revenue. The magnitude of this business impact is several times larger than shaving even 50 percent off the HR operating budget in an equivalent-sized organization.

I’m thrilled to announce to my HCM vendor and practitioner network as well as the ever-expanding Ventana Research community that I’m now directing Ventana’s HCM practice. I will be working closely with our CEO and Chief Research Officer Mark Smith, who is a fellow HCM enthusiast and thought leader.