Employee Engagement and Experience Driven by “Culture First”

This is no more a secret that engaged employees are more likely to perform better and improve organizational success. And as the companies move more towards agile organizational models, there will be more increase in the employee engagement rates.

Employee Engagement refers to an employee’s job satisfaction, loyalty, and inclination to spend discretionary effort toward organizational goals. Companies measure engagement through an annual employee survey or by a continuous feedback culture.

The important characteristic to remember when thinking about employee engagement is that, it is a real-time assessment of how employees are feeling about their organization and their work.

But this is not the only important one. We need to care about culture as well, for understanding what is happening within our organization. And engagement is a critical output of a strong culture.

For organizational culture, the definition centers on the concepts of values and assumptions which contribute to the development of norms, behaviors, and other cultural activities. Because employee engagement and organization’ culture both involve an individual’s relationship with their workplace, it is necessary to bring them always together.

But why the organizational culture is important here?

Check out the below INFOGRAPHICS on Organization Culture from Multigence. They are providing an efficient and scalable technology based solution that measures, evaluates and matches your organization culture with individual profiles of employees and candidates.

According to Multigence, organization must focus on fitting individuals into the corporate culture. Culture isn’t for your employees. It starts the moment a candidate first comes across your brand. And this immediate activate the drivers for your organization growth and success like below.

• Right hiring and promotion
• Proper alignments of skills, including the soft skills
• Taking the right talent decisions
• Fitting to the corporate branding

The culture of the organization is shaped by each single individual. Successful talent decisions will be driven by cultural fit.

And in the long term benefits, it also

• Reduce in recruitment cost and higher success rate of recruiting with right hiring match
• Increase in retention, employee satisfaction, performance indicators and productivity
• Build and choose better leaders and find the right successors

According to Bersin by Deloitte, organizational culture, engagement, and employee brand proposition remain top priorities in 2017; employee experience ranks as a major trend again in 2017. “Employee engagement has become the top issue on the minds of business leaders, directing us to an entirely new model of management”. And companies need a new approach—one that builds on the foundation of culture and engagement to focus on the employee experience holistically, considering all the contributors to worker satisfaction, engagement, wellness, and alignment.

And according to them, the below figure shows the factors that contribute to positive employee experience. So it pretty clear that today organizations must focus on the employee engagement to have the right employee experience on the foundation of culture.

Back in 2015, Graham Massay, the Business Head of The House, came up with an interesting article Culture First Engagement Second. Where he mentioned the risk is that engagement becomes a once-a-year, box-ticking exercise, designed to prove that everything’s OK rather than actually making sure that everything’s OK. By contrast, a strong values-led culture keeps your organization healthy and your employees inspired.

Focusing on culture rather than employee engagement doesn’t mean giving up on measurement. Culture is an outcome. And the business cannot afford to focus solely on engagement at the expense of culture.

So the next question comes to our mind.

Why organizations should focus on employee engagement based on culture first approach?

Multigence has tried to bring the benefits of employee engagement driven by culture or based on a foundation of culture, with the below INFOGRAPHICS.

Now if the organization is looking to apply for these benefits, they must focus on employee experience and the world of digitalization. There are many digital tools available in the market which delivers great employee experience. These tools can be categorized as:

• Productivity and Collaboration tools
• Engagement and Feedback tools
• Performance Management tools
• Well-Being tools
• Culture Fit tools
• Employee Services tools

If one can commit to managing these aspects of your employee experience along with employee engagement and culture, then they can be surely a few steps ahead of their peers. The important thing is to consistently care about the employee experience and culture. The role of technology makes a great impact here and one should plan accordingly.

In beginning of this year there is also came up an article Culture First. Digitalization Second. (In German), by the writer Daniel Fuerg, an entrepreneur and according to him.

“It is about a cultural change in our society, triggered by the possibilities of digital technologies and innovations. But the change is not digitalization. The change is what the new possibilities with us humans make. It is a cultural change, which was triggered by technological changes. Companies must thus respond to cultural change and at the same time equip themselves with technology.”

So it’s clear that before we should plan and start considering about engagement, experiences, we must also consider culture the individual culture and off course the organization culture.

So it’s make sense to focus on “Culture First” approach over company first or even county first.

About the Author:

Soumyasanto Sen — Professional Advisor, Consultant, Investor in HR Technologies having 12+ years of experiences focusing on Strategies, People Analytics, Cloud, UX, Security, Processes, Integration and Entrepreneurship in Workforce Transformation.

Blogger, Speaker and Evangelist in HR Technologies. Founder of HRTech Conscience.

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Global HR Innovation and Strategies 2017

For a long period, Innovation is at the top of CXO agendas, yet many executives continue to be challenged with the hit-or-miss pace and results of their programs. The challenge isn’t usually a lack of good ideas. Initiatives take too long, non-strategic projects get green-lighted at the expense of game changers, good ideas remain confined in the heads of employees.

What is missing? A system of enablers that work together to support innovation. When the right people, processes, and metrics come together, they can transform how innovation happens, stimulate employees’ creativity, and create long-term competitive advantage.

Innovation is not inherently unpredictable, and it does not require a heavy portion of providence to be successful. When companies take a systematic approach, they can pursue innovation in a way that reliably generates repeatable results.

Image: Management Guru

According to Management Guru, an innovation is the Buzz word that has defined the paradigm shift in the approach of management practices and thinking. This has helped organizations grow and sustain regardless of competitor and market pressure and challenges. Innovation management gives entrepreneurs the liberty to think out of the box and come up with new ideas leading to the development of new products, processes and services.

Change is unavoidable and change is the one that never changes. People like variety and it is the responsibility of business people to satisfy the customer wants and requirements. New approaches are required to avoid monotony and stereotyping. “Old wine in a new bottle” concept may come in handy when you feel that your product has reached the saturation point and about to decline in its life cycle.

Human Resources have not played a very strategic role in innovation so much. This needs to change. HR needs to support the culture change to enable innovation; and the upcoming generation isn’t going to settle for an ‘administrative-only’ role. Future of HR is definitely going to change for sure.

Many companies who are good at managing tangible, concrete, known assets, they try to manage humans the same way. These are changing a lot and if we get some opportunities to know how this is happening, I think there is no better place than Global HR Innovation and Strategies conference.

BCF Group is glad to announce that the applications for the Global HR Innovation and Strategies 2017 are now OPEN. This is an open invitation from BCF Group to be a part of this event in Barcelona, that will take place on the 22^nd and 23^rd of June.

At the event, you will have the opportunity to listen and to interact with top HR leaders and innovators.

Don’t miss the chance to get inspired from experienced HR speakers, who worked in some of the most successful companies and even founded their owns. Topics that will be discussed are of current interest that in the future will have impact on the companies, such as Millennials, Mobility, HR Digitalization, Gamification, Mobbing, HR role in the Boardroom and in the relation with the employees.

At the conference, you will also have the opportunity to interact will HR people and make new contacts, with which you can share experience.

The list of speakers you can find on our website or check the Poster: https://bcfgroup.eu/?iwevent=global-hr-innovation-and-strategies-conference-2017

Do you have friends or colleagues who would like to attend the HR Conference? Forward this invitation them. For more details, feel free to contact Alice Levi: alice.levi@bcfgroup.eu.

When: 22^nd – 23^rd of June, 2017

Where: 08039 Edif. Este, Moll de Barcelona, World Trade Centre, Barcelona, Spain

HR Tech Conscience is glad to be a Media Partner with BCF Group for this conference. Looking forward to it. Hope to see you there!

Enhance Engagement and Retention with People Analytics

An organization that provides top wages and benefits loses a great employee to a competitor for no apparent reason. We can’t stop employees from leaving unless we have a plan to make them stay.

“Retention is the single most important thing for growth” – Alex Shultz (VP Growth, Facebook)

What is the biggest and most intractable restraint to growth faced by companies doing business today? For many organizations, it’s the lack of appropriate talent. The reason: As more organizations have expanded their operations, the need for talent has skyrocketed. But there isn’t enough skilled labor to fill the demand. As a result, one risks losing the talent to other organizations. And with so many companies drawing on a limited talent pool, the competition is fierce.

Glassdoor’s statistical analysis reveals top three factors that matter most for employee retention.

• Company culture
• Employee salary
• Stagnating for long periods of time in the same job

By examining the survey responses of more than 100,000 employees in numerous organizations, Gallup also discovered common themes among the reasons employees chose to remain with a company or to leave it. The reasons employees chose to stay with a company included the following:

• I feel my job is important to the company.
• My supervisor cares about me and gives me regular feedback.
• I know my job expectations.
• My opinions count.
• I have opportunity to do my best work every day.
• My career development is encouraged.

All the above reasons are part of what is often known is “engagement”. Organizations, or teams with high levels of employee engagement score high in most if not all of these. Higher engagement levels not only significantly affect employee retention, productivity and loyalty, but are also a key link to customer satisfaction, company reputation and overall stakeholder value.

OWEN Analytics, who is are providing AI-based people solutions have developed a robust and comprehensive methodology to measure and enhance retention. They run quick pulse surveys that are a combination of “ME” questions (My opinions count), and “WE” questions (I would like to appreciate the following individuals for helping me in my day-to-day work). Open feedback questions are interspersed as well to understand sentiment and key issues.

This helps understand engagement drivers not only from an individual employee perspective, but also from a team dynamics perspective. After all, our engagement with the organization is actually our engagement with the people in the organization – hence understanding those relationships is critical in better understanding attrition. This is the science of ONA (Organization Network Analysis). The example below illustrates how ONA can be used to understand team dynamics in a pharmaceutical sales organization.

Clearly, the more cohesive teams have better performance and lower attrition.

Now that we have looked at engagement comprehensively, we need to look at what other factors drive employee turnover, as shown below:

As per Deloitte, moving beyond the analysis of employee engagement and retention, analytics and AI have come together, giving companies a much more detailed view of management and operational issues to improve operational performance.

Exploring People Analytics

People Analytics, a discipline that started as a small technical group that analyzed engagement and retention, has now gone mainstream as per Deloitte. Organizations are redesigning their technical analytics groups to build out digitally powered enterprise analytics solutions.

OWEN Analytics specializes in helping organizations improve retention using AI driven techniques. As per OWEN, “Machine learning predictions can be sufficiently accurate and thus very effective in enabling targeted interventions for retaining high risk employees. However, using such techniques requires significant expertise in developing predictive models and experience in interpreting the outputs.

HR leaders and aspiring analysts needn’t be disheartened though. One can start with some very simple analyses using nothing more than basic Excel and develop reasonably good retention strategies” Read their blog here: Manage attrition using simple analytics.

OWEN uses a systematic retention approach to understand, predict and drive necessary actions.

Predictive models are developed using various Machine Learning algorithms (e.g. Decision Trees, Random Forests, Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machines and Artificial Neural Networks) and best fit algorithm based on the accuracy and business context selected to predict flight risk.

Once the predictions are drivers are available, simple action planning templates to develop and track interventions are used to retain high potential employees.

Retention Challenge

The retention challenge is the result of increasing job mobility in the global knowledge economy where workers average six employers over the course of a career, coupled with the baby boomer retirement “brain drain” and a smaller generation of workers entering their prime working age during this time. It is occurring in all types of organizations across all management levels. This study empirically investigates whether the impact of an organization’s strategic orientation toward knowledge management, the learning culture it supports, and specific human resource practices impact knowledge worker retention and organization performance.

The Eight Elements of the High-Retention Organization as per SAS Institute

• Clear Sense of Direction and Purpose
• Caring Management
• Flexible Benefits and Schedule Adapted to the Needs of the Individual
• Open Communication
• A Charged Work Environment
• Performance Management
• Recognition and Reward
• Training and Development

As per Asia – Pacific Journal of Research, preventing turnover is a wise step to implement because it saves money, time, and effort. The company should spend a considerable effort and time to prevent turnover. It is better for an organization to keep experienced and productive employees than to hire new ones. It should invest in its employees through training programs, creating a good hiring process, and engrain them with strong organizational vision. To effectively solve turnover problems, every company needs to address the causes of the turnover. The causes of turnover might not be the same for every company. Below are the most common and affecting factors for preventing turnover.

It’s no more a secret that People Analytics plays a vital role for organizations in dealing with challenges of employee engagement and retention.

About the Authors:

Soumyasanto Sen — Blogger, Speaker and Evangelist in HR Technologies. Engaging with OWEN Analytics.

Professional Advisor, Consultant, Investor in HR Tech. Having 12+ years of experience focusing on Strategies, People Analytics, Cloud, UX, Security, Integration and Entrepreneurship in Digital HR Transformation.

Tej Mehta — Founder & CEO of OWEN Analytics.

Entrepreneur, advisor, student of social sciences. Founded i-Cube as an intersection of analytics and social sciences. Previously, as Vice President with Seabury Group, led strategy and operational transformation programs across several clients in the airline and aerospace industries. Aeronautical engineer, MBA from University of Southern California.

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Transform with the Best – Online Conference on Digital Transformation

Digital transformation refers to the changes associated with the application of digital technology in all aspects of human society. Digital transformation may be thought as the third stage of embracing digital technologies: digital competence → digital usage → digital transformation, with usage and transformative ability informing digital literacy. The transformation stage means that digital usages inherently enable new types of innovation and creativity in a particular domain, rather than simply enhance and support the traditional methods.

The use of technology to radically improve performance or reach of enterprises — is a hot topic for companies across the globe. Executives in all industries are using digital advances such as analytics, mobility, social media and smart embedded devices as well as improving their use of traditional technologies such as ERP to change customer relationships, internal processes and value propositions. Other executives, seeing how fast digital technology disrupted media industries in the past decade, know they need to pay attention to changes in their industries now.

Technology innovation is changing the game for businesses, industries, and markets. At the heart of this digital transformation is a host of new technologies that are disrupting the old ways of doing business – with partners, suppliers, and customers.

Digital transformation is the process of shifting your organisation from a legacy approach to new ways of working and thinking using digital, social, mobile and emerging technologies. It involves a change in leadership, different thinking, the encouragement of innovation and new business models, incorporating digitization of assets and an increased use of technology to improve the experience of your organisation’s employees, customers, suppliers, partners and stakeholders.

It could be a wonderful opportunity for us if leaders around the world share their case studies and digital transformation strategies on how large corporations can stay competitive in today’s digital world.

With The Best is organizing an online conference Transform with the Best where high profiled Chief Innovation Officers, CTO’s, CIO’s of top-tier companies, and head of Corporate Accelerators will be sharing their visions on how to keep a company competitive in the rapidly and ever-evolving digital world we are operating in today while offering 1-to-1 speaking sessions, all this from the comfort of your own home.

Who are the Speakers?

More to come…

How it is delivered?

You will be supplied with a set of tools to interact with Digital Transformation experts:

• a chatroom to ask live questions during the conferences;
• Q&A forum during the whole event during which both experts and attendees can share knowledge and information;
• optional 20 minute one-to-one live mentoring sessions with your chosen expert;
• link to the speakers’ SlideShare presentations;
• 2 months of guaranteed access to the conferences, SlideShare links and Q&A forum.

Useful Information:

Date: Wednesday 5th, April 2017 10am to 6pm (EDT) – New York Time

Venue: Online

Theme: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Contact: charlin@bemyapp.com

Twitter: @WithTheBest

Official Hashtag:  #TRANSFORMWTB

HRTech Conscience is one of the Partners of Transform with the Best Conference.

It is not a one step process neither there are some cookbook associated with it, it’s a continuous process to improve yourself, to know your options, to help each other’s in achieving the desired heights.

Come let’s join and see how the world is transforming.

Evolving Trends in Talent Management Transformation

There are differences in how Talent is defined across industries and organizations. Some companies prefer to adopt their own determinations rather than accepting general definitions. Let’s focus on a general definition for both Talent and Talent Management:

”Talent consists of those individuals who can make a difference to organizational performance either through their immediate contribution or, in the longer-term, by demonstrating the highest level of potential.”

Basic and simple meaning of Talent could be:

• Ability, aptitude, bent, capacity, endowment, faculty, flair, forte, genius etc.
• Unusual ability to do something well that can be normally developed by training.
• Person or people (‘Talent Pool’) with exceptional capabilities.

Whereas: ”Talent Management is a set of business practices that refer to attracting highly skilled individuals, integrating new talents, and developing and retaining existing talents to meet current and future business objectives.“

Actually it manages the planning, possession, development, retention and growth of Talent Pool who are of particular value to an organization, because of their leadership capabilities, prospective for the future, or even because they are satisfying business critical roles and which could actually lead to organizational sustainability, efficiency and excellence in order to achieve business goals.

The term of Talent Management was first casted by McKinsey & Company following a study and gradually it became a very useful term as it describes an organization’s commitment to hire, manage and retain talented employees. It embraces all of the work processes and practices related to retaining and developing an exclusive workforce.

The process of attracting and retaining effective employees results in increasing competition among the companies because of its strategic importance and also known as “The War for Talent.” Talent Management which is sometimes also called as Human Capital Management is now an essential management practice; before it was exclusively attached to recruitment process while now covers a wider area. Talent Management implies that companies are strategic and conscious in how they source, attract, select, train, develop, retain, promote, and move employees through the organization.

On the other side definition of talented employees can involve all kinds of components, from their educational qualifications and skills, previous experience, strengths and additional training they have undertaken, to their abilities, potential and motives, qualities and personalities. Most companies practice Talent Management in a way which includes recruitment of individuals, career planning, training and development, performance management and various compensation and reward options for the top performers. It generally depends on the business strategy, commitment to employees and other factors. What are the core components of Talent Management?

Talent Engagement and transformation are top priorities for the leaders nowadays and the major challenge is the ability to attract and retain top talent while making sure the existing talents are fully engaged to deliver extraordinary results. For this reason Talent Engagement is considered to be a crucial factor.

End-to-end Talent Management encompasses five main pillars: Recruitment and Onboarding, Performance Management, Compensation Planning and Rewards, Career and Succession Planning, and last but not least, Learning and Development. Previously there were four pillars to be considered under Talent Management but gradually Career and Succession Planning has been added to make them five.

Leaders must have absolute clarity in purpose and focus to avoid business disruption as change without strategy is just a substitution of business development. Therefore, leadership is considered to be one of the most important component of the Talent Management.

Onboarding and Recruiting

An exclusive definition of Onboarding from Bersin by Deloitte states:

“The process of hiring, orienting and immersing employees into their new role and into the organization’s culture.”

Onboarding increases productivity, improves employee engagement, provides consistent and relevant information about the organization to all the new employees and gives understanding of employee expectations and hence helps building relationships.

Recruiting aims to successfully attract and hire key talent for current and future organizational needs through competency based advertising and interviewing efforts. Hiring talented individuals is crucial to the organization’s success. But in order to hire the most talented people, one must first search and recruit them and it could be a challenging task. It is so true that an imperfectly designed recruitment process can miss capable job candidates especially those who work for the competitors.

Performance Management

If we follow the definition it states Performance Management as ongoing, constant process of communicating and simplifying job responsibilities, priorities, performance expectations and development planning that optimizes an individual’s performance and aligns with organizational strategic goals. Performance Management is a crucial segment of maintaining the best talents. It enables companies to identify top performers and high potentials as well as assists to understand the pitfall of under-performance. It helps companies to make better strategic decisions on increasing excellence, retention efforts and to encourage talents.

Compensation Planning and Rewards

A way to remunerate individuals for important achievements, contributions to the goals of an organization and improving skills and competencies in their jobs is called as Compensation. There is a popular old saying – compensation isn’t the reason employees stay, but it can be the reason they leave. If companies want to keep their best employees onboard, they need an elegant approach to use Compensation as a strategic tool, while staying in line with company’s payroll standards, policies and guidelines.

Career and Succession Planning

Succession Management is a process of recognizing and developing employees with the possibility to fill key or critical organizational positions. Succession Management actually means having the right people in the right jobs at the right time. In other words, it is an organized process aimed to identify and grow individuals for future openings.

Career and Succession Planning actually empowers organizations as they plan for the future. The proper way of Career and Succession Planning increases opportunities by allowing organizations to identify and develop the top talent. In addition to preparing new talents to move into key positions, it can effortlessly identify and rectify gaps in Succession Planning as well. It enhances employees engagement by generating proper career paths for them, along with supporting individual development plans.

Learning and Development

Learning Management Systems have been used for a long time to administrate training courses and programs. Experts say that corporate learning is now coming out beyond firm course delivery to a more natural and integrated experience. The companies are embracing new ways of an employee development and reviewing new learning technologies. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), Self-Paced Online Courses, Distributed Open Collaborative Courses are evolving as the future of new learning options and becoming a very popular way of learning. Companies are also focusing on integration of these options into their learning management portfolios.

All these processes are actually providing big opportunities and advantages to the organizations and guide them to the success. Some of the advantages of effective Talent Management are:

• Improves organization’s effectiveness and productivity.
• Helps in achieving business goals with high quality performance.
• Improves organization’s culture and work environment.
• Increases employees satisfaction.
• Retains the best talents and decreases turnover.

Talent Management is an important aspect of broader Human Capital Management (HCM) initiatives and Human Resources departments play a significant role there.

While many current HR processes still moving around traditional practices of recruiting, onboarding, training and development, the Talent Management should generate real value by focusing on a company’s most valuable resource: the potential of its Talent Pool. This dedication provides a distinctive competitive advantage over talents and organization’s business model.

After embracing new talent management applications, most organizations realize the need of integration. Apart from process integration technology investments are often made to streamline processes and improve data accuracy. But the full potential of integration cannot be realized when companies have multiple systems of record with disconnected data streams and conflicting processes.

A study shows that HR has a long way to go when it comes to integration. The majority of organizations surveyed report poor to moderate integration of their Talent Management applications.

It is very important to know the future business trends, and new vision for the Human Resource Strategy to handle Talent Management solutions.

How Trends Are Changing?

The HR functions are at a conjugation point and it has been believe that in the coming years there will be a significant transformation. As the current functions are not connected or flexible to business requirements and have no consolidated vision of talent capabilities there is a need of evolution. There are, of course, some key trends that will effect this transformation. Talent Management is one of them for sure. Across the developed and emerging markets there will be a shortage of skilled and appropriate talent. Businesses cannot deliver their best as they are lacking the right talent. Hence the future HR functions would create significant value for the business, given current and future trends.

Skills gaps are increasing and HR would continuously make sure that their organizations have the right talent. HR would need to quickly tap skills when they’re needed. HR has to transform and adapt towards a global world, supporting new talent sourcing strategies to match talent, and acquiring new management methods, such as encouraging mobile workforces across geographical barriers.

HR should adopt risk management strategies covering everything from protecting confidential information and data, to risks associated with hiring or turnover. Technology, including social, gamification, cloud, mobile, big data and apps, is transforming how people take away their daily work and how HR supports them in that attempt.

Instead of depending on solutions dictated from the top level; organizations should be encouraged with skilled workers who harness social media to create solutions in conjunction with each other, thereby radically disrupting organizational structures, and hierarchy and job titles. As the world becomes increasingly unpredictable, organizations that can adapt to changing business conditions will outperform the market. And HR departments have to reshape themselves so that the HR functions become the critical driver of agility.

HR needs to provide the new thinking and deep insight to attract, organize, motivate and develop the right people for the business. It requires to build the high-performing HR functions to support business goals.

As companies hire talent from around the globe and enter new markets with increasing speed, managing corporate and cultural change will become a critical competence. Already many researches showed, executives expect their company’s HR functions to develop tools and methodologies that support line managers in communicating to employees.

Talent Management tools won’t resolve recruitment, employee retention and other issues by themselves. Companies need to develop a clear plan to navigate Talent Management pitfalls. Social media, cloud, mobile and analytics are changing Talent Management software and the way companies use it.

According to Josh Bersin, with so many vendors in the market and the ERP providers offering talent management software, it’s common for companies to buy software first, and only then figure out how to use it. Today more than 40% of the companies buying HR software are focused on “making it easy to use” and integrating heterogeneous systems, not “solving particular talent problems.”

Companies still want integrated HR systems, but what they don’t want is a complex, integrated ERP software that makes everyone’s life more complicated. In fact, they want life to be simple. More than 40% of the companies according to Human Capital Trends Study are embarking on projects to “simplify the work environment.” 47% of those who are buying new HR software systems cited “ease of use” and “integrated user experience” as one of their top two buying criteria.

So, as per Bersin by Deloitte, in HR, start to think about employees as “people” – and this is why more and more companies tend to rename their HR organizations as “People Operations” or “People Management.” Sure we have to do HR administration, but ultimately our job is to make sure “people” are engaged, trained, in the right jobs, aligned, and supported.

If we start to think about employees as “people” or consumers, then we’ll think about “Talent Management” in a new way. It’s not just a way to integrate HR processes, it’s a series of strategies, programs, investments, and promises that make everyone’s life, work, and career better.

This is where work is going – we now work in a world of independent free agents, each of them is like a voluntary “consumer” who may choose to stay or leave. The concepts and principles of Talent Management are not going away. But as an area of focus, we in HR have to think more broadly. “Talent Management” is now “People Management” and it has to take on a much broader perspective and holistic approach.

So, the Talent Management needs to transform to People Management. With more engaging people, simplifying the environment, making the work easier. People management focuses on empowering and improving performance everywhere with continuous learning and continuous feedback processes. The focus is definitely on creating highly engaged workforce and productive work environment. While talent scarcity is still a problem, engagement, empowerment, and environment are now the real challenges that companies are facing. So, this transformation is necessary to overcome all sort of challenges in this area. As the Talent Management industry is changing with social, mobile, analytics and cloud-based technologies, we also need to make sure that the Digital Transformation strategy matches to these changes.

About the Author:

Soumyasanto Sen — Blogger, Speaker and Evangelist in HRTech who try to think Out of the Box! Engaging with Companies, Startups & Entrepreneurs in driving Transformation.

Professionally Consultant, Manager, Advisor, Investor in HR Tech. Focusing on Strategies, Analytics, Cloud, UX, Security, Integration and Entrepreneurship in Digital HR Transformation.

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Maturity of HR Analytics Demands Right Foundation

Currently, there are lot of discussions, articles, and engagements on Analytics for HR. More precise, the People or Workforce analytics when you are considering talent or workforce.

People and Workforce Analytics are a set of analytics to learn and answer the talent management related questions. It could be on workforce planning, talent sourcing, talent acquisition, performance management, talent retention. Or even on employee wellness, culture fit, and engagement. Making the data-driven decision from the business insights is the key purpose of any analytics.

Most of the organizations are still using the fundamental or basic analytics. They are reports based or using descriptive approach. But the workforce, related challenges are on the high increase. And we need a quantitative or a matured approach for handling these. It is necessary to understand the business insight and competitive advantage from the maturity of their HR Analytics.

Maturity Levels for HR Analytics

Before any beginning, it is important to know the possible maturity levels of the Analytics. As it does not only provide the opportunity to create a roadmap for the future. But also to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and possibilities for the growth.

The Descriptive Approach uses operational reporting based on business needs. More focus is on data exploration, data accuracy, and metrics analysis. Advanced reporting is also used for benchmarking, manual decision making and to generate dashboards.

Today, there is already some impressive engagement with Predictive Analytics in many organizations. The predictive approach uses statistical analysis, forecasting, correlations, and development of the predictive models. It helps in making predictions and for taking smarter decisions like in talent management for the organizations. For this, one needs to explore talent data for predictive models and statistical approach. And also needs to get ready with the proper business questions and specific reasons. Otherwise, they are neither actionable nor add any value to the organizations.

Predictive Analytics is also used to remove the human biases from one organization for taking an important decision. It has more resemblance with marketing behaviors while HR reporting mirrors finance.

The major purpose of an analytics is to have business decisions based on the data. Support in decision making and to help in making proper actions. Prescriptive Approach assists in this with optimization, strategic foresight, and real-time analysis. Prescriptive analytics not only anticipates what will happen and when it will happen. But also tell why it will happen.

Cognitive Approach is just the next level to perspective but both of them overlap to some extent. Actually, there is a bit overlapping among predictive, perspective and cognitive approaches.

The cognitive approach helps also in decision automation and applies cognitive computing. With reasoning, machine learning, natural language processing, and intelligence. According to Wikipedia, cognitive computing combines artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms. In an approach which attempts to reproduce the behavior of the human brain.

One of the most important part of this maturity curve is the foundation, in fact, most of the time spent here during any analytics project. The basic building blocks for matured and advanced approaches. One must have the basic understanding and preparation for any HR Analytics approaches. And it is advisable to have a proper planning to achieve the best.

Investments are only worth full with good returns, and for that, we need to study, understand and prepare with the basics.

And for this reason, it is also important to understand the foundation, to get started with People Analytics or HR Analytics. It is important to take it on from the beginning, as it is necessary for the long-term benefits and add significant value to the organizations. So let’s explore it.

Foundation for HR Analytics

There are certain aspects and factors which are necessary to get explored before starting any analytics projects. Organizations should have the insights or answers, for all these aspects and open questions related to them, to get the start in a proper way.

• Data Preparation: The process of collecting, cleaning, validating and consolidating data into a single repository. The most important factor to get started with Analytics. And it is also necessary to collect the right and relevant data sources to help the workforce and the business. Right data at right time could make things easier for the business and for the organization. Another important aspect could be to gather non-HR data. Like net profits, cost effectiveness, sales revenue, and other important metrics from the organization. To add more relevance in the data preparation.
• Cultural Readiness: Organizations need to specify the need to adopt the disruptions and it must be able to fit into the company culture. Leaders, managers, and key influencers should share the vision. And ensure readiness to drive the initiative throughout the organization. Without this readiness, it is not easy to understand the real value, and will not add any significant impact to the business.
• Platform Adoption: Most of the HRIS solutions come up with their own analytics options. But they are valuable confine with their functional perspective only. If they are not relevant for the business insights and decision making, there is no meaning to invest in them. So, there is always an option to build the own analytics solution. Based on some available analytics platforms from the market. Another alternative option is to get a partner with an experienced vendor or having the right expert with the right platform.
• Business Insights: It is necessary to know the business challenges and metrics which are critical for the organization and work for the workforce as well. Based on the issues which are seeking to address, proper data sources need to get defined. Identifying the critical business question from the business partners is necessary. It is also important to clarify the need of Analytics to have a better competitive advantage.
• Data Integration: Integration always being an important factor for any changes whether on systems or people or data. Proper data integration is necessary among all different systems, businesses, and technologies. Significant for the data sources. Data security, privacy, and protection are also becoming critical challenges for any organizations. Any analytics project must be compatible with laws, rules, policies, and localizations. A close bonding is necessary among IT, HR and Business in this case.
• Governance: Data quality is the biggest challenge for most of the organizations, especially when working with data based on people. Data is the most important aspects of the foundation. And it is important to prepare them to gain valuable business insights. Data governance plays a vital role in all these so that the data can be trusted and managed. Governance is also needed in terms of management, support, and sponsorship of the company.

By gathering, analyzing and exploring all relevant data one can not only answer the critical business questions. But also can take necessary actions from the interpretations of the data and context.

During analyzing the data one should look at the bigger picture rather than handle small challenges. It would be good if one can focus on making the best decisions for a workforce and the business as a whole. In most cases, an HR Analytics Leader is needed. The one who leads the analytics projects, involved in all decision-making processes and focus on quantifying the impact of talent investments on a business. And also improves some of the core processes within the organization with People Analytics.

One should also know the aspects which are necessary for the foundation of the analytics. It may vary among the organizations, with respective leaders, stakeholders, and Human Resources units. And thus in most of the cases, there is a need for some brainstorming before preparing for any foundation.

Design thinking process could be a game changer for any organization here.

Aspects necessary for the foundation of HR Analytics which should not be ignored at any cost:

• Creativity: The creative route has a difference from an analytical route. But it is necessary to take a creative approach to gather relevant information, prepare data, developing the model, interpret the insights and even taking the right decision. One needs to be creative as well, to find the best result and taking actions.
• Knowledge:  Knowledge is the king and no doubt it is a must for the foundation for analytics as well. Whether it is related to the business processes, people, technology, data, statistics or any skills. Knowledge is necessary everywhere. It is also advisable to update the knowledge as well in certain time periods.
• Expertise: A proper team should be built and it must include diverse individuals from both business and technical side based on the needs. Business Leaders, Business Analyst, Program Managers and other business people could be there on one side. On another side may have Data Analysts, Data Architect, and Data Scientist. Especially in a case of complex analytics projects. Need to involve those experts, who have strong experience in analytics area.
• Methodologies: An iterative process is needed as the foundational methodology. Starting from business understanding, analytic approaches, data preparation, modeling, evaluation, and deployment. Feedback is also necessary for a well strategic plan here. The methodology should be independent from the technology. As it is providing many tools, applications, and platforms to perform analytics. And it should also provide a framework for processing methods and processes to get the best results. A value driven approach with agile methodology could be used to having higher success rates in analytics projects.

Once we are ready with the foundation for Analytics, we have already started engaging to HR Analytics or People Analytics. But the journey has just begun. There are tremendous opportunities for exploration based on the matured approaches for any organization. Every organization has its own maturity level. And it’s depending on them to decide their future of analytics, based on their further commitment.

About the Author:

Soumyasanto Sen — Blogger, Speaker and Evangelist in HRTech who try to think Out of the Box! Engaging with Companies, Startups & Entrepreneurs in driving Transformation.

Professionally Consultant, Manager, Advisor, Investor in HR Tech. Focusing on Strategies, Analytics, Cloud, UX, Security, Integration and Entrepreneurship in Digital HR Transformation.

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Published earlier in Analytics in HR: Why Mature HR Analytics demands the right Foundation

Make Difference with Startup Transformation

Well, understanding a difference between a startup and other business entity is important these days as most of the startups are getting lot of external supports from the regional government, startups hubs, accelerators, business incubators and other investors & mentors. Why there is so much engagement and focus on Startups?

Startups – Growth and Success

“An entrepreneurial venture which is considered as new, fast-growing business, with scalable business model and that target specific markets by offering an innovative product, process or service”  – a typical definition of a startup.

But we should be aware that a newly founded one does not in itself make a company a startup unless it is capable to grow fast and that is the most important aspect for a startup. There are some typical terms like Unicorn is a startup company valued at over $1 billion. A Decacorn is used for those companies over $10 billion, while Hectocorn for companies valued over $100 billion (An Unicorn Map of US from CBInsights).

The growth is not at all easy without a proper startup ecosystem, which consists of individual entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, mentors, institutions and organizations, business incubators and business accelerators. Startups usually need to form partnerships with other firms to enable their business model to operate for sure.

A startup hub usually provides such platform for connections and collaboration and usually operates on regional basis. Recent startup hubs Europe‘s overview for startup ecosystem across Europe is shown below.

Take a look around some world’s best startup hubs to know more.

There are a lot of efforts and contributions from business incubators and business accelerators for the startups. Many entrepreneurs or startup founders often turn to a startup accelerator or startup incubator for helping other startups.

Accelerators programs usually start with an application process, but most of them are typically very selective and usually have a set of timeframe in which individual startup spend, anywhere from a few weeks to a few months working with a group of mentors and experts to build out their business. Startups are also given a small seed investment, and access to a large mentoring network in exchange for a small amount of equity.

Startup incubators begin with startups that may be earlier in the process and they do not operate on a set schedule. Some independent incubators also can be sponsored by VC firms, government entities, and major organizations.

Difference on Business Accelerators and Incubators shown above is taken from Help for ACCA and CIMA Studies.

Startups – Slowdown and Failure

We cannot ignore the facts and statistics on the startups, which is an important part of the economy and startup scale-ups definitely effect on the economy, society and innovation in the world. But, while 40-50 percent of startups are dying within first five years of their inception, it could be a wrong conclusion to make about the economy on the basis of the number of these startups. And yes, because of this there has been already a slowdown in economic growth as well, once such clear indication is from US where is the highest number of startup ecosystems.

Statistics also says that 80-90 % fails are ‘in genera’. In other word nine out of ten startups are failing on consistently.

There are numerous articles publishing regularly on the failure of startups, lessons learn from failures. Even one can get through many of the startup failure stories, after all failure is the path to success. Learn from your own the failure is definitely sounds rigid but learn from other’s failure is not so easy for sure. If we try to collate all the failures reasons, stories and analysis from post mortem, we can definitely capture some major and common concrete challenges, as shown below.

There are lots of post mortem done on startup failures, one can see from Quartz and CB Insights to analyse more.

If one start considering the failure percentage, they could realize that, it’s overflowing and it is indeed necessary to find some real valuable solutions or barrier to bring down this failure in the future. But the story is still going on the different path…

In spite of so many potential entrepreneurs involved in startups, so much outside encouragement, efforts and helps, startups keep on failing. Business accelerators, incubators, grinds, the whole startup ecosystem is behind the supports, doing incredible efforts for their success; trying to help the startups, building them, nourishing them, mentoring team, teaching them but the results remain the same for last few years.

Why? We keep asking this for long time now. If we need to consider startups as a significant part of economy, this is the time we need to rethink.

Startups – Transformation

If we take a close look into the post mortems, reasons does not looks too complex; so what is stopping us currently? There are a lot of efforts from the startup ecosystem on education & learning, mentoring, networking, funding (one of the major constraints), investing, supporting in all major respects.

But there are limited or no such efforts in place to work together with those 90% startups, who are making magnificent effort in their journey but because of some trivial mistakes, (major reasons mentioned before) they get failed. Why not transforming those startups completely so that they keep on succeeding in their remaining journey?

For sure there is a necessity to have something or somebody who can helps transforming these startups not only through education, mentoring, networking and funding but also follow up with their experiences, working closely together with these startups in their businesses to face the challenges and crack them.

In this era of transformation where all the organizations are in the process of transforming their processes, business, people; there is also a need for a transformation for the startups, working together for getting the right strategic vision, focusing on customers, products, markets and other challenges. Also being able to anticipate what are the customer expectations and what is the best way to achieve it. For a complete successful journey, these startups need advisory in every aspect, in every part of their experiences.

Idea of introducing Startup Transformers during this stage could be a solution to some extend; for avoiding such circumstances which can lead to a failure. A startup transformer helps a startup to transform completely into a successful business unit; work closely with them, collaborate for them with partners, customers and other peers, helping them by resolving challenges and gradually reform them in achieving the success.

Typical activities of a startup transformer could be varied, but majorly need to be centralized on overcoming the challenges and there should be also a strong focus to provide a platform for networking, community, events and collaboration. Below shown such activities of a startup transformer.

Instead of only analyzing the failures; instead of only learning from the other successful startups; instead of only following successful business guidance and mentorship; it is also necessary to start working together with these startups in their journey to make them completely successful. And this can only be achieved when one can start engaging with them not only in their initial stages but in their entire journey, preparing them to avoid the mistakes, work together to overcome challenges, choose a right path for these startups and transform them to be a successful business unit.

A lot of collaboration is needed with different relevant partners, advisors, customers; a lot of efforts need to be put in understanding market & strategy, right business model with scalability, knowing competitors, to develop ideal product and services; making better relationship with customers, better managing team and funds.

Another important factor where some strong efforts need to be in place, is the lack of innovations; the benefits of being innovative in the journey of a startup, it’s growth and scalability of its business is solely depend on the original business model not on a cloned one. It is also crucial for us to keep innovation alive as it is essential for fostering economic growth.

Idea does not work by itself; the reality is only possible whenever one take some initiative from that.

Startup Transformation is no more an idea yet, HRTech Conscience, a venture project on Disrupt HR (majorly engage and focus with HR Technologies) has taken a step forward by applying these concepts and idea for meaningful and valuable results. Currently collaborating with several startups, partners and customers from a diversified portfolio and already become the first Startup Transformer. There could be a success or a failure, but gaining a great experience from this journey of unknown disrupt transformation is definitely valuable for the future. Let’s help changing the world into a new direction with contribution from all of us!

About the Author:

Soumyasanto Sen — Blogger, Speaker and Evangelist in HR Technology who try to think Out of the Box!

Professional Consultant, Manager, Advisor, Investor in HR Tech. Focusing on Strategies, Mobility, Cloud, Analytics, UX, Security, Data Protection, Developments and Integration in HR Technology & Digital HR.

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Source: Make difference with Startup Transformation – HRTechCon

Digital Strategy in HR World

The world is moving on with digital transformation irrespective of industries, countries and service lines. Organizations want to adopt the technologies in faster paces, especially by “Digital Megatrends”: mobility, analytics, cloud computing and social media.

This digital evolution is also reshaping the role of Human Resources. It involves deepening and broadening collaboration between HR and other business units to improve the performance and analysis of talent management, and a greater focus on driving business results through the strategic use of technology. It’s important for executives to get engaged in long-term strategic planning for business needs and even leveraging their organizations to drive profits.

According to the surveys from Oxford Economics and Tower Watson in Digital HR Transformation:

So to compete successfully in the new digital economy, HR should:

■ Use technology effectively to execute on business imperatives and extend collaboration with other departments, incorporating mobile, analytics, social media and the cloud to ease the transition to a strategic role.

■ Consider the competitive risk of not leveraging technology to contribute to business strategy. Organizations in developed economies are not adopting technology as quickly as their counterparts in fast-growing economies and may risk being left behind in the global competition for talent.

■ Embrace the transition to strategic thinking and driving business results.

(Taken from Oxford Economics and Tower Watson)

Digital transformation is to enable people to think and to transform and here is HR Digital Strategy plays an exponent role in driving the Organization’s Business Transformation. Digital Strategy is the most valuable and powerful asset in the Digital Transformation environment or any future transformation to come.

Digital Transformation is about the capacity of the organization and therefore the people’s minds to not only adapt to change, but to drive change, to drive innovation. The real value to HR in the Digital Transformation is to enable the whole organization to think creatively. Enable the organization into a deep dive into its need, its values, purpose & mission. And this is the foundation for the real successful business strategy into the Digital Era.

HR digital strategy or HR technology strategy should actually support the overall strategic objectives of HR and the organization. And HR must take ownership of the digital strategy and ensure that it aligns with the HR strategy which should be in alignment with the business strategy. Moreover, it should emphasize more than just efficiency and effectiveness as a driver for the adoption of technology, and choose solutions to allow for future growth and flexibility, while focusing on deploying solutions that meet the current and future needs of the organization.

Drivers which can lead Digital Strategy for HR are: (Below Tips/Drivers are from Talent Culture)

According to Talent Culture, developing an HR digital strategy begins with taking a deeper look at business priorities and validating how current systems are and are not supporting the organization’s goals. This helps create a path toward synchronizing the organization’s priorities with the HR digital strategy. A successful HR digital strategy should be aligned to the needs of the business, agile, focused on strategic enablement rather than just efficiency and effectiveness, and should be owned by HR in partnership with IT.

And it’s Strategy, not Technology which drives the Digital Transformation according to MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte.

About the Author:

Soumyasanto Sen — Blogger, Speaker and Evangelist in HR Technology who try to think Out of the Box!

Professional Consultant, Manager, Advisor, Investor in HR Tech. Focusing on Strategies, Mobility, Cloud, Analytics, UX, Security, Data Protection, Developments and Integration in HR Technology & Digital HR.

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Source: Digital Strategy in HR World – HRTechCon

Learning from SAP SuccessConnect: Driving the Shift to Digital HR

In this transformation era, most of companies want to lead with better financial results and with more customer engagement, satisfaction and experiences. Every organization wants to have success before their peers. The transformation is already taking place, mainly starting with Human Resources within the Organizations and Digital HR plays a vital role whether in standardizing and streamlining processes or in helping organizations to transform their HR practices and employee experiences.

SuccessConnect 2016 Vienna has definitely provided the opportunity where one can spend time with people who are successfully navigating through these changes. Learn why they began and how they are proceeding through the journey, including value and results they are achieving.

For those who are not aware of SAP SuccessConnect events, the premier event for human resources (HR) professionals. World’s leading HR executives, business professionals, industry experts, and thought leaders gather who are shaping the way companies are transforming businesses in the digital economy.

Definitely recommended if you want to know how, why and where you need to start the journey to Digital Transformation. Here are some of the recents and upcoming ones.

Let’s now share our experiences recently from Vienna, the latest SuccessConnect event. What is important at this time is to know over the experiences, knowledge and challenges in the transformation with Digital HR from the organizations who are already leading their journey.

There are lot of feedback and knowledge sharing from these leading organizations at SuccessConnect. Keynote address with SAP SuccessFactors President Mike Ettling, “Simply Human Show” has provided such experiences of the journey from UCB, Swiss Re and Erste Group Bank.

Franck Cohen, President, SAP Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Mike Ettling, President, SAP SuccessFactors discussed over leadership and diversity. Highly motivated thoughts and styles from two leaders from SAP.

There are other interesting Keynotes, one with Niki Lauda is one of the best Formula 1 drivers and one of the most fascinating personalities in sports and other with Stefan Ries, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE and CHRO and off course Women in Leadership Luncheon, a really good initiative from SAP for sure.

The one with Thomas Otter and Dave Ragones, both group vice presidents of Product Management at SAP SuccessFactors, is definitely under the surveillance from SAP Partners, Vendors and Customers as a whole. They discussed the future directions and trends shaping the SAP SuccessFactors suite of products, over the new product innovation and newly added functionalities. Which are surely the driving points of the transformation for better customer experiences and results.

There are huge numbers of breakout sessions from SAP, partners and customers, sharing their experiences and capabilities. Not easy to attend all of these but the below ones are definitely interesting especially when one is looking for a proper answer, roadmap and guidance for your transformation journey.

From Partners and Customers:

38167: Lufthansa: Side-by-Side Model with SAP SuccessFactors Solutions

38254: Power and Value of Developing an Actionable HR Strategy and Road Map When Transitioning HR

39184: Transforming Global HR – Is There Any Other Way to Work!

38953: How to Support Company Growth and Organizational Change with SAP SuccessFactors Solutions

38149: Kontron: Full Implementation of SAP SuccessFactors Solutions Based on SAP Rapid Deployment Solutions

From SAP:

40390: Introduction and Road Map for SAP SuccessFactors Extensibility

38121: SAP Success Factors Employee Central: Core HR Road Map

38173: Enabling HR Shared Services in Your Organization: SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Service Center

38077: Overview of SAP SuccessFactors Learning and Road Map

38164: Introduction and Roadmap for SAP SuccessFactors Intelligent Services

We personally enjoyed the below session where SAP come over the road maps and options for Payroll in cloud and on-premise.

38128: SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll: Where We Are, Where We’re Going, and How to Get There

Slides are taken as pictures from SAP during SuccessConnect 2016, Vienna

SAP clearly indicated that choices and solutions for Global Payroll are totally depend on the customer’s perspective of their current situation. SAP is offering with 4 options currently where the preferences are clearly indicating to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll or Managed Payroll. There are a lot of debates going on for these last two options and it is good to know that SAP makes clear indication that those customers who are happy with their current SAP HCM Payroll solution (so far the best option) are not need to move to cloud in hurry.

Slides are taken as pictures from SAP during SuccessConnect 2016, Vienna

Transition of Payroll to cloud totally reciprocal to the customer’s satisfaction with their current situation. SAP has also provided two different choices to Payroll delivery for Employee Central,  currently the best choice for Core HR on cloud from SAP.

Slides are taken as pictures from SAP during SuccessConnect 2016, Vienna

So now it’s upon to the organizations who need to decide their own choices from their current situation and their own future roadmap. Further reading on this is recommended from Phil Wainewright, Diginomica.

SAP’s Mike Ettling on the cloud ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.

There are off course lot of other interesting sessions and there are a lot to discuss and share but we surely need dedicated contents for them. But it is always good to be a part of the most debatable topic, which we have share.

Another interesting best recent announcement from SAP is SAP SuccessFactors Process Library,  the process library for SAP SuccessFactors solutions provides a unique and specific body of knowledge created and maintained by SAP. The process library supports the transformation of HR based on the leading cloud solution for HR and enables customers to drive standardization and fast adoption.

SuccessConnect from SAP is a great place for valuable networking as it is dedicatedly provides the opportunity in driving Digital HR for a Digital Transformation journey.

Meeting Experts, Global colleagues,  Ex-Colleagues, Friends, Social Media Connections and lots of Partners/Vendors at the same place and during the same time is not at all a bad option for sure, specially when the area (Human Resources) of all innovation, thoughts and experiences are the same.

Meeting experts specially SAP Mentors is very common and expected in event like SAP TechEd but SuccessConnect is neither a bad option especially if you are looking for mentors/experts on SAP HCM and SAP SuccessFactors solutions. It is a big plus for any attendee for sure.

Some of the SAP Community folks and Mentors on SAP HCM ERP and SuccessFactors in Vienna

Now if we come to vendors and partners there is a big list of sponsors in SuccessConnect. It’s great to get collaborate with many of them, grabbing their experiences with other customers, partners and knowing future solutions from SAP which could be a  a great step to know why, how and where to start the journey to Transformation.

Very impressed with NGA HR, who are one of the leaders in Payroll Services and HR Outsourcing. Actually so far they are mainly known for the Payroll and Outsourcing services. But it’s good to know over their Digital HR services as well where they are also leading HR Technology Consulting, HR Transformation Consulting and AMS services.

In this year, SAP has announced over SAP APP Center for customers, there are already more than 1200+ apps in the HANA Cloud Platform from SAP. NGA HR also announced about XtendHR, the future-proofed HR apps. The apps – built on the HR HANA Cloud Platform – help organizations to deploy, roll out, configure and manage SuccessFactors Employee Central faster, safer, better and cheaper. Will be available to anyone easily in this mobile world, where people spend most of their time in APPs onlys.

Similarly Accenture HCM Software is also doing a pretty good in boosting productivity on the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP on-premise HCM platforms with their own solutions. Similar engagement is also supported by EPIUSE with their own solutions.

All of these three vendors are the premium partners from SAP and there are lot of expectations from the organizations and customers from them who are leading in helping customers in their transformation journey.

Apart from big names it was also interesting to know about some new and potential partners who are doing a fantastic progress with their innovative thoughts and engagement. We are really impressed with Ingentis, iProCon, TalentTeam, iXerv , WalkMe, Launch … and many more, and some of them are even founded and leaded by SAP Mentors and SAP Alumni.

We are also happy to share our collaboration idea with many of the partners especially on disruption on HR and driving Digital HR for transformation. We were especially engaging with lot of potential startups who are really promising with their innovative solution on HR Technologies. We will be happy to get engage with more and more startups, partners and helping organizations and customers in their transformation journey as well.

Please see our DisruptHR section on our website, you can find some of them, still many to get engage.

Overall it is a very successful and impressive conference we attended recently so far. There are a lot of potential for most of the organizations as the journey has just began.

We are thankful to SAP and all the sponsors/partners and hope to continue our journey in this Digital Transformation era as well.

About the Author:

Soumyasanto Sen — Blogger, Speaker and Evangelist in HR Technology who try to think Out of the Box!

Professional Consultant, Manager, Advisor, Investor in HR Tech. Focusing on Strategies, Mobility, Cloud, Analytics, UX, Security, Data Protection, Developments and Integration in HR Technology & Digital HR.

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Source: Learning from SAP SuccessConnect: Driving the shift to Digital HR – HRTechCon