Jim Holincheck

First, let’s go through the statistics.  Taleo stated it had 900 attendees at the conference (including 80 Vurv customers).  It also indicated it now has 3,600 total customers (including 1,600 Taleo Business Edition customers).  Taleo also reached a milestone recently with the 100 millionth candidate applying for a job through Taleo.   Michael Gregoire, Taleo’s CEO, kicked off the conference with his keynote discussing their vision for Talent Management.  It has three pillars, Monarch — the code name for its next release of its recruiting solution, Performance Management (which for them includes career development and succession management), and Compensation Management.  Monarch has a number of enhancements (the list below is not a full list), many of which leverage the Taleo Performance user experience including:

• MyTaleo (a portal-style user interface with personalization capabilities)
• Talent Scorecard (drag and drop dashboard widgets)
• Modal Usage (navigate in multiple ways through a particular screen — includes Table of Contents to navigate a requisition and Quick Filters to more easily narrow a long list of candidates)
• At-a-Glance Summaries (extends the Taleo Talent Card metaphor to recruiting)
• Outlook Integration (Taleo Inbox is extended to support Recruiters’ ability to capture candidates)

In Performance Management, Taleo has been quietly adding new functionality (for example, a “n-box” capability will be out shortly for succession management) as well as adding customers (they have licensed Taleo Performance to 12 customers).  In addition, it announced Taleo Business Edition (BE) Performance (available in November 2008) which is targeted at the SMB market (below 3,000 employees) and integrated with the existing Taleo BE Recruiting solution.

Another major announcement was Taleo’s equity investment in (with an exclusive option to buy) Worldwide Compensation (WWC).  WWC is a relatively new entrant to the compensation management software space, but started by building a global library of compensation and benefit regulations and practices (which WorldAtWork makes available to its members).  Once it had learned more about the requirements for global compensation, it built a software solution.

The vision also includes development planning.  Taleo does not plan to offer its own LMS, but plans to integrate with existing LMS.  What it wants to do is provide value around the LMS by offering solutions that focus more informal and experiential learning.

Thomas (via web conference) and I spent a lot of time with Taleo today going through Taleo Performance and WWC for the Magic Quadrant for Employee Performance Management (EPM) Software research.  I am not going to comment on our findings at this point (Gartner clients should feel free to set up an inquiry if interested) because we still have a lot of work to do including getting feedback from some of the early customers.

Speaking of early customers for Taleo Performance, Taleo had a panel of early adopters talk about their experience implementing the EPM solution as part of a broader talent management strategy.  The group, TeleTech (David Gilbert), Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (Larry Mohl), and Freeport-McMoRan (Kyle Peavler), discussed the drivers for change in their organizations, the challenges they overcame, and the benefits they achieved.  It was interesting to hear them talk about the importance of usability in their decision to choose Taleo and how it was key for getting buy-in from various stakeholders.

How important should usability be as a selection criterion?  I have found the usability is a little bit like beauty.  It is in the eye of the beholder.  It depends quite a bit on what you are used to and what you want to accomplish.  It is different from organization to organization and from stakeholder group to stakeholder group (what HR and IT think is easy to use may not be the same for employees and managers for example).  What do you think?  Is usability overrated or underrated?