I’d been meaning to write this for a while, but Jason’s post prompted me to stop surfing the interwebs and jot it down.

Data has three sources.

1. It is interfaced or integrated in from somewhere else.

2. It is derived from other data. For example net pay is derived from gross pay via some sort of tax calculation.

3. Someone types it in

I use a metaphor to describe this in an HR context. It is 1790. You want to build a factory. The first thing you do is seek out a consistent stream of strong flowing water. And that is where you build your factory.

flickr cc attribution license. thanks to LaoWai Kevin.

Too many HR systems, especially talent management systems are deployed without any real thought about how the data will get into these systems. The value has to exceed the effort of maintaining the data otherwise they end up empty. So when you deploy that system to track employee goals, look at yourself in the mirror and ask the question. How will the data get into this system?  Think carefully about transaction data, but think even more carefully about organization data.

if you don’t have a plan, that system will gradually fall into disrepair.

flickr cc attribution license thanks to Andre Mercier. (many excellent pictures, so hard to choose one.)

(photo via cc attribution licence. ms4jah thanks.

Most of my working career encouraged me to chant the mantra, “we are integrated.”  I have spent the last year or so thinking about integration in a more objective light. Integration for me has undergone a de-reification process.

I was doing a presentation about HR technology recently, and I was talking about the impressive growth of niche vendors in various HCM areas, such as recruitment, learning, performance management and succession planning. One of the IT folks in the audience was getting a bit agitated, this was chaffing against his integration faith.

My new view is integration is like weather. The statement, we have weather today, is accurate but not particularly useful. This is similar to the statement our system is integrated.

What is integrated with what? What is the purpose of the integration? What value does the integration bring? What overhead does the integration create?

Once you know what is integrated, you can rationally assess the value of integration. Integration can be of significant value, it can help break silos, reduce data capture and improve data quality.

But integration can be an excuse not to move quickly, it can hinder innovation and create overhead, it can be a reason not to do something new.

Sometimes retyping stuff is okay. Tracking 50 top executives in a succession planning application doesn’t require real time integration with 20 separate global HR systems. In this case, typing is probably the correct integration approach. If you are doing performance appraisals for 300,000 employees then you had better have a plan on how to handle organization unit changes. This will involve a sophisticated integration framework with your system of record. Both of these are forms of integration.

When evaluating software view integration rationally, don’t put it on a pedestal, but don’t dismiss it. Understand clearly what is being integrated, and what the value of that integration is. Integration doesn’t trump functionality. Without the right functionality, integration is not worth much.

But also beware of those that say integration is easy to do.

Photo from the excellent cc stream of pupski.thanks.

I’ve not posted much recently, I’d been meaning to post on HR tech, but several other blogs have done an excellent job of summarising the event(See Brian, Larry,Jim, Bill, Jason, HRmarketer and Zach for starters).

I have been thinking a lot about integration recently. I’m back from HR Tech, and Jim and I are in the middle of the employee performance management magic quadrant process. I’m hearing a whole lot about integrated talent management at the moment. The list of ‘unique’ integrated solutions is now rather long. Someone listening in from another planet would think that word unique means we do the same stuff the other guys are talking about.

HCM vendors of all varieties are talking about how they have integrated the stuff together that they own. My succession talks to my performance, my performance talks to my development, my development talks to my learning and so on.  Yes this is all good stuff.

I’ve spent some time this week talking with several multinationals here in Europe. They are also asking lots of questions about integration.

The integration they are worried about is a different one.

They are concerned how to connect their talent management applications to the rest of their applications. They are worried about building parallel universes. Silo 2.0.

HR IT leaders are beginning to realize that they need to learn a whole lot about data governance, data semantics and masterdata management. Chucking a CSV file over the firewall and hoping for the best isn’t really going to cut it. Managing and syncing core HR organisation data is what will keep HR IT awake.

It is good to see vendors getting their own applications talking to each other, but I sense they have been neglecting the real customer challenge. HCM applications should work closely with the rest of the business applications out there.

Vendors that focus and take responsibility for integration beyond applications they build. Now that would be unique.