Jim Holincheck

it is always a pleasure to attend the annual HR Technology Conference in Chicago (my home town).  This is the first time in three years I have been able to attend the whole conference (it has conflicted with Gartner Symposium the last two years).  Here are some quick impressions from the conference:

• Interest in Talent Management is Still Very High — Sessions focused on Talent Management (including my Ask the Expert session) were packed.  Customers want to learn from the experiences from other customers.  I had the opportunity to attend sessions from Connie Linardakis at Zions Bancorp, Mike Cairns at Aon, and Nick Schaffzin at MetLife.  Connie and Mike discussed their respective talent management journeys (still a work in progress for both organizations).  It is clear that for most organizations.  It is a journey that may take many years to complete to encompass the full scope of talent management.  Nick did a great presentation on workforce analytics.  It was great to see a good sized crowd attend this presentation on the last day of the conference.  In my view, workforce planning and analysis is the most important emerging area in HCM and Nick did a wonderful job describing the highs and lows of its journey as well as making the important connection between workforce analytics and talent management (workforce analytics should drive decisions around talent management interventions).
• Differentiation in Talent Management Solutions is Difficult to Ascertain — There are still functional differences in solutions out there (especially across the broad suite), but the messaging from vendors has become very similar.  Feedback I received from attendees was that finding true innovation on the Expo floor was difficult.  I think it exists, but much of it is coming from specialist vendors that offer innovative candidate sourcing, assessment, workforce planning and analysis (and other) solutions.
• Twitter Has Changed the Conference Experience — I have not been blogging as much because I have been spending more time using Twitter.  Twitter has made the conference going experience much more collaborative.  It makes it possible to follow sessions that you cannot attend.  It also allows you to share your thoughts in real time with other attendees.  This was forcefully demonstrated to me during the Recruiting technology Panel led by Gerry Crispin.  Many of the HR bloggers such as Steve Boese, Kris Dunn, Lance Haun, and Laurie Ruettimann were also attending and tweeting during this panel.  It was almost like having a conversation.  The panel which included Michael McNeal from Intuit, Rodney Moses from Research in Motion (best known for the Blackberry), Libby Sartain formerly head of HR at Yahoo! and Southwest Airlines, and Frank Wittenhauer from Deloitte.  One of the things that stood out to me in their discussion was the importance of workforce planning in being proactive candidate sourcing (vendors take note).

Thanks to Bill Kutik who is the driving force for setting the agenda for the conference and ensuring the high quality of presentations.  Also, it was a pleasure to participate in the Industry Analyst Panel again.  It was probably one of the best in terms of showing different points of view about where the HCM market is and where it is going.

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