Thomas Otter
Research Vice President
3 years at Gartner
19 years IT industry
Thomas Otter is a research vice president in Gartner Research. He covers human capital management (HCM) trends and technologies, including core HR, payroll, talent management and workforce analytics. As part of this research…Read Full Bio
by Thomas Otter | January 11, 2012 | 1 Comment
While taking a break from a flurry of inquiry calls about ERP upgrades vs SaaS replacements, I ambled over to facebook with Nespresso in hand. A few years ago I met Dave Duarte, who introduced me to the Ogilvy Digital Academy in South Africa. There is a lot of innovative stuff going on in the land of my youth, so I follow the SA scene on Facebook and on Twitter. South Africa has had a lot of innovative advertising over the years, and I’m pleased to see this has well and truly moved over into the social side of things. Today’s offering really hit home powerfully.
Have a look at this video.
A couple of things stood out for me.
1. Innovative idea and great execution. Genius. Braille on the burger bun.
2. Wimpy get the fact that People with Disabilities spend money just like other demographics. Designing solutions and marketing for that segment makes business sense. Part of this is about equal rights and access, but it isn’t charity. Humour works.
3. The power of the referral. See the stats at the end of the presentation.
As part of my academic research, I’m looking at how enterprise software companies approach accessibility. Wimpy puts them all to shame. Well done Wimpy.
Category: Social Software innovation south africa Tags: accessibility, social, wimpy
by Thomas Otter | January 4, 2012 | 1 Comment
I stumbled on this brilliant video today (hat tip to @williamtincup).
Click on the the link and then head back here.
This is one of the better examples of linking corporate and employee branding for recruitment I have seen.
- Low cost
- Innovative
- Targeted
- Measured (note the stats at the end).
It cleverly reinforces the corporate and the employee brand. I wrote a note several years ago now (client link here) where I stressed the need for organizations to get marketing and HR to work more closely together on recruitment branding. This is probably the best example I have seen of a company doing that. Ping me others that you have seen, please.
A clever play like this does put pressure on the rest of the recruitment process. Make sure you have good, solid administrative processes in place to process the applications effectively.
My colleague, Michael Maoz, has been critical of those that try to do Social CRM without getting the rest of their CRM in order. The same goes for recruitment. If you target your customer channel for recruiting, make sure you give them prompt, polite and top notch service, especially if you don’t end up hiring them. Applying for a job is a big step for most people, so treat that step with respect. If you mess someone around in the recruitment process, the chances of you keeping them as a customer are next to zero.
Continuing this theme, a Belgian cartoonist, Canary Pete has a lovely take on the next stage of the IKEA hiring process.
Category: HCM Social Software Tags: recruitment
by Thomas Otter | November 14, 2011 | Comments Off
Please define these terms and arrange in chronological order. You may augment the list.
- Launched
- Introduced
- Announced
- Previewed
- Pre-Announced
- Private Beta
- Beta
- Selective ramp up
- Ramp up
- Rolled out
- Limited Availability
- Shipping
- Limited General Availability
- General Availability
- Functionally complete
I go to a lot of software conferences, and read many press releases. In the last few weeks I have seen and heard all these terms, and a few more that I have forgotten to note. For all the talk of the move to Apple-like simplicity in enterprise software, trying to figure out when software is real or still in the imagination of its creators is becoming more and more difficult.
Category: Events Vendor Contracts finance software industry Tags: complexity, marketing
by Thomas Otter | October 26, 2011 | Comments Off
I’ve just read Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s Race against the Machine in one sitting when I have masses of other pressing stuff to do.
It is short, sharp, engaging and easy to read. Put down that Scandinavian crime novel, ignore your travel expense application issues and read this book instead. I’m perhaps reading too much into the title, but I can’t help wondering if it isn’t a hat tip to the rock band Rage Against the Machine. If it is, deeply nifty sub-editing coolness. If not, it is a lovely unintended consequence.
The book highlights the accelerating disruption that technology brings to the workplace and to the very definition of work. There is dark side to technology, and the authors have done a nuanced job in exploring this. It makes a worthwhile change from the technology=progress drum beat.
It was especially good to see a section on the growing gap between wage and productivity growth. To see disquiet about median wage stagnation from technology focused researchers is a very fine thing. There is more than a whiff of valorization in their argument.
Brynjolfsson and McAfee make excellent use of statistics, and this work is no exception. They use numbers to illuminate, and they do it well. The Bill Gates in a bar story is a lovely explanation of mean and median. They explain, but don’t condescend.
As with much of US business academia, the book is centred on the US economy, with fleeting mentions of the rest of world. I didn’t spot the dreaded phrase “Corporate America”, but it may have been lurking there. In particular the solution section was too US focused. Moaning about H-1B visas etc… However suggestions 17,18, 19 are spot on.
17. Reduce the large implicit and explicit subsidies to financial services. This sector attracts
a disproportionate number of the best and the brightest minds and technologies, in part
because the government effectively guarantees “too big to fail” institutions.
18. Reform the patent system. Not only does it take years to issue good patents due to the
backlog and shortage of qualified examiners, but too many low-quality patents are
issued, clogging our courts. As a result, patent trolls are chilling innovation rather than
encouraging it.
19. Shorten, rather than lengthen, copyright periods and increase the flexibility of fair use.
Copyright covers too much digital content. Rather than encouraging innovation, as
specified in the Constitution, excessive restrictions like the Sonny Bono Copyright Term
Extension Act inhibit mixing and matching of content and using it creatively in new ways.
There are strong echoes of Larry Lessig in the IP section (as an aside I’d like to get the authors’ views of Lessig’s recent work on political corruption).
More broadly though I’d like to see business school academia and IT research engaging more with the rich research tapestry of sociology and political philosophy, how about more Jessop and Harvey, and Herbert Marcusse needs a serious dust off. I fancy I heard the very faint clang of Weber’s iron cage in this work. I’d suggest that Maslow and maybe Hayek can take a rest for a while.
This book is excellent, but would have been seminal if it had built upon the work of that chap from Trier.
Category: books history innovation software industry Tags: book review
by Thomas Otter | September 26, 2011 | Comments Off
I don’t often publish blog posts that point to my research, but I thought I’d make an exception today.
My colleague Alexa Bona and I recently published a note on contracting behaviors and strategies for SaaS HCM. SaaS and Human Capital Management: Avoid Risky and Expensive Deals (client access).
As SaaS HCM deals come up for renewal, and procurement gets involved, it is now crystal clear that most HR departments have been contracting for HCM software without IT procurement involvement. One of our findings is that most of the time, HR departments are rather poor negotiators. Software vendors have had a field day, and not just on pricing. Most of the time HR just signs the boiler plate, and the boiler plate is typically one-sided, like All Blacks v Japan one-sided.
Here is a quote from the note.
SaaS vendors in HCM have successfully spun the myth that they are kinder and fairer than megavendors when it comes to contract negotiations and terms and conditions. This is a fairy tale. The vast majority of SaaS vendors are as avaricious as any ERP vendor, and their contracts are often nearly as complex, with changing product names, gerrymandering scope and vague platitudes, instead of solid SLAs
IT Procurement departments need to step up too. A 9 month procurement cycle for software that takes 3 months to implement isn’t on. IT procurement departments have a lot to learn about SaaS. The negotiating techniques that may work with huge ERP deals don’t work for smaller SaaS deals and renewals.
image via nesjumpman under collective commons.
I enjoyed working on this note. Hopefully it will help HR leaders pause before signing that once in a lifetime special offer SaaS deal.
Category: HCM SaaS Uncategorized software industry Tags: contracts, HCM, SaaS
by Thomas Otter | September 22, 2011 | Comments Off
Demos with realistic data are really good. They bring software to life, so yes, it is right and good to have believable entries in your career history or customer records rather than bits of Latin, or worse celebrities.
But please don’t cut and paste real people’s data from Linkedin or other social networks and use it in your demo. You are trampling over their privacy and copyright, and you are probably in breach of the Linkedin or Facebook T&Cs too. If you use photos, get permission, even from your employees.
Be careful when you demo social software integration too. People linked with you to be friends, or connections, not demo fodder.
Tread softly, for you tread on my data.
Apologies to W.B. Yeats.
Category: Law Social Software Tags: facebook, linkedin, social
by Thomas Otter | September 8, 2011 | 8 Comments
In early October I’ll be heading over the pond to HR Tech.
This is like the gathering in the Highlander. And Bill Kutik is the Christopher Lambert character with the beard and vast broadsword. Bill as been around in HR technology since the Lyons tea room payroll, and he is constant as the northern star, of whose true-fix’d and resting quality, there is no fellow in the firmament.
Actually its the best opportunity to check out the latest in HR technology in one place. I get to lurk this year, but my colleague Jim has a starring role, doing the final keynote.
I’m not planning on taking a lot of formal meetings. Lots of vendors have been asking for meetings, but we can do these anytime during the year, just set up a call via vendor briefings. I plan to walk the floor, catch some customer sessions and avoid injuries.
I’m interested in sophisticated workforce analytics, innovative use of social software beyond recruitment, mobile otherthandoingthestandardapponthephone, workforce management systems and tales from the nitty gritty of global HR systems deployment. I also want to discuss how New Zealand will cope with yet another Rugby World Cup defeat with the Sonar6 folks.
Assuming the flights work, I’ll make it to Naomi Bloom’s soiree too.
Seriously, if you are evaluating HR technology, this event is well worth attending, eventhough it is in Vegas, that blasted heath. I’ll only be there for the first two days, but I’m really looking forward to it.
Category: Events HCM Tags: HRTech
by Thomas Otter | August 3, 2011 | Comments Off
Those of you that read my personal blog will know that I spent the first day of my vacation at the Hockenheimring, doing an advanced driving course and track day. I got to drive a very fancy chariot, an M3 E92. It has 420 horsepower. It was an experience, but I have no plans to give up my day job and take on Sebastian Vettel.
Back to the M3.
It has a very fancy double clutch gearbox with Drivelogic. It is an automatic and a manual. It changes gear in milliseconds, depending on the aggression setting on the Drivelogic.
It has electronic damper suspension. (EDC)
It has Dynamic Stability Control (DSC)
It has variable servotronic steering support
And lots of other clever stuff
In the hands of a total amateur, these three letter acronyms stop you from fishtailing into the wall. The default mode for all these settings is on. In order to override them, you need to know to hold down button A for 10 seconds and then press button B. It then warns you that you have switched off the clever computer and it emails your friends and family your last will and testament.
Now Facebook is in trouble with another German Organization, the Hamburg Datenschutzbeauftrager, according to the Deutsche Welle. English Article here. The Data Protection Commissioner, Johanes Casper, had this to say.
A legal assessment by our office came to the conclusion that [Facebook's] face recognition violates European and German law because Facebook is providing its users with contradictory and misleading information,” he added.
“A normal user doesn’t know how to delete the biometric data. And besides, we have demanded that biometric data be stored with the subject’s express consent. At first [any company] has to ask if the user wants their data stored or not. Facebook just gives them the possibly to opt-out. If you don’t opt-out, you’re not consenting.”
Facebook has a long history of confounding us all with their privacy settings, and it looks like the folks in Hamburg have had enough. Face recognition is the privacy equivalent of 420 horsepower without traction control.
I think I will need to do what the M3 can teach ERP vendors post, but that will need to wait till I’m back at work.
Category: IT Governance Social Software Uncategorized innovation internet Tags: BMW, facebook, privacy
by Thomas Otter | June 14, 2011 | 7 Comments
LinkedIn has over 100 million users, and a market cap today of over 7 Billion USD. If the market is prepared to give LinkedIn that sort of valuation for what is essentially data that should be in your HRMS, then it tells me that your people data is a lot more valuable than you probably imagine it is. Time to think about employee master data quality….
Category: HCM HR Social Software software industry Tags: HRMS, linkedin
by Thomas Otter | June 7, 2011 | Comments Off
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
While I’m somewhat uneasy about the impact of the iPad and Kindle on books and literature generally because of the intellectual property control that it gives the device maker, I’m rather impressed with the implications that it has for poetry (thanks Lia for the link).
Watch this video from the Guardian about Elliot’s Wasteland. It is simply delightful. Congratulations to Faber for doing this. It is doing things with poems that weren’t possible before.
For the enterprise software vendors reading this, doing the stuff you do on the desktop or the laptop on the iPad doesn’t really impress anyone, it merely illuminates the gap between yesterday and tomorrow. Do something that you couldn’t do before. Surprise and delight. Innovate rather than replicate.
Category: Applications ERP books innovation software design Tags: ERP, iPad, poetry
