This morning at the Lumesse Journey 2011 User Conference in Austin, Texas both Lumesse CEO Matt Parker, and CTO Martyn Arbon shared their observations around talent management, business software, and more directly their sense of the future of talent management technology.
In both presentations, Parker's that described the journey that has led to the current incarnation of Lumesse, (the company formerly known as Stepstone Solutions); and Arbon's, which provided more insight into current state and near-term Lumesse product roadmaps; both gentlemen described the increasing 'consumerization' of business technology, and the need for technologists, particularly in the HCM space, to effectively create and deploy flexible, easy to use solutions that will more and more resemble the look and feel of consumer-based applications.
We have heard about this trend for some time now, certainly creators and developers of business applications have taken inspiration from popular and eminently usable consumer sites like Amazon.com and Ebay for years. But this approach has up to know been directed mainly about user interface improvements, attempts to streamline translational processes, and with the goal of improving HR organizational efficiency by driving more processes out to the employees and managers in the form of Employee Self-Service, (ESS) and Manager Self-Service, (MSS).
But the problem with ESS and MSS for many organizations is that many employees and managers really hated it. It forced employees and managers to use systems that they did not find all that friendly, following processes that were proscribed centrally and were not that flexible, and using systems that may have been in theory personalizable to some extent, but in practicality were often too difficult for the average employee and manager to use in anything other than their delivered, default configuration. ESS and MSS were kind of the like the old VCR machines in your parent's house, the time of day always blinking on 12:00.
So where this next generation of HCM solutions for core HR, for Recruiting, or for Talent Management process support has an opportunity to really become more transformational and leveraged more fully and effectively throughout organizations will likely be driven by how well suppliers of these technologies can adopt and adapt the latest 'consumerization' trends to the enterprise - apps, mobile support across platforms, and easily personalized.
As Martyn Arbon correctly noted in his talk this morning, no two people have the same exact set of applications loaded on their iPhones, even if said people perform the exact same role in the organization. Traditionally enterprises have deployed or made available to staff a general set of access controls and capabilities for systems and tools based on high-level, and fairly generic set of definitions.
If you were a staff recruiter, or a purchasing agent, or an office manager, then you received the same set of tools and systems as the other staff recruiters, purchasing agents, or office managers. It did not really matter if you worked in a different style, a different location (perhaps remotely), had more or less appetite and expertise in technology, etc. This 'role-based' access dominated, (and still dominates), most technology deployments. But what consumerization or 'appification' is doing is fundamentally changing employee's demands and expectations of what enterprise technology should and needs to support - the ability to tailor capability and functionality at a true personal level, i.e., just like their iPhones work.
The first wave of consumerization of business technology was mostly about user interface improvements and porting tools to the web, this next phase, at least for the companies that will be successful at it, is about delivering a much more personal, flexible, and truly individual experience.
The team at Lumesse spent a lot of time this morning showing that they have these ideas in the forefront of their strategy and thinking - which is certainly an encouraging sign for their customers.