As you may have noticed, we are setting sail on a new, exciting journey at Cornerstone OnDemand. Last week, we announced the acquisition of Sonar6. Sonar6, based in Auckland, New Zealand, represents the first acquisition for Cornerstone and a huge opportunity that accelerates our strategy to deliver the best talent management solutions to companies of all sizes.

I’ve been a big fan of Sonar6, even dating back to 2008 when I wrote a blog post, We Are Doing Performance Management All Wrong. One of the many reasons why I’ve always admired Sonar6 is that they’ve taken a different approach to talent management. They recognized very early that their customers – mostly high growth, small-to-medium size businesses (SMB) — need something that is simple, easy-to-use and delightful for the user. They haven’t focused on the process but rather the outcome and have delivered the most innovative tools that enable employees to make more effective talent decisions.

Sonar6 is not just a great talent solution specifically for small businesses. It’s a great team and a very cool company. All you have to do is check out their videos to get a feel for their culture. I’ve had the pleasure to spend time with Mike Carden, Mark Hellier, Pete Weaver and the rest of the Sonar6 team. I am lucky and excited to get a chance to work with them.

I encourage you to read what others are saying about the acquisition including:

• ZDNet: Cornerstone and Sonar6 – A Really Good Deal
• Bersin: Cornerstone Acquires Sonar6: Talent Management for SMB
• Inside Talent Management: Cornerstone Acquires Sonar6
• IDC Link (Subscription Required): Cornerstone OnDemand to Acquire Sonar6 for $14 Million

My favorite quote about the acquisition is from Ed Newman who stated, “…this is a classic example of a company deciding to Zig while everyone else is Zagging”. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Note: The above photo was taken on the day our acquisition was announced in the Auckland harbor. The boat includes our Sonar6 and Cornerstone team ready to set sail on our journey.

Within one week, Jeremy Lin, has gone from a relative unknown to a global sensation. In the same week, he went from near unemployment to a sporting sensation now referred as “Linsanity“.

Interestingly, about 1 ½ years ago, the Hoops Analyst blog nearly predicted his imminent success. When analyzing his college performance, particularly 2-point field goal percentage and his RSB40 (a combined score of rebounds, steals and blocks per 40 minutes) he ranked among the elite. These numbers are important as they highlight the potential for future performance and “show NBA athleticism better than any other, because a high score in both shows dominance at the college level on both ends of the court.”

When circumstances change, in this case a promotion to the NBA, opportunity and situation play an important factor that is hard to measure. Additionally, one week is yet statistically significant and time will tell if his performance can be sustained over time. Nonetheless, those that analyzed his past performance shouldn’t be surprised by his rising star.

That begs the question – why aren’t most companies analyzing their employee data to find the rising stars. One could argue that Jeremy Lin’s heritage (Chinese) and experience (Harvard) didn’t necessary sound the bell in an industry where pedigree and success looks very different. Every company must have many Jeremy Lin’s running around their offices. The answer, though, is most won’t be found (and likely lost) until performance focuses on the outcome instead of the process.

The “future of work” seems to be a popular topic these days. Vinnie Mirchandani shared some “macro trends” recently discussing real-life use cases of toddlers and iPads, the growth of telepresence in the enterprise and using QR codes in retail. Yvette Cameron of Constellation Research shares more concrete examples of how HR can usher in a new era of work by embracing tools and technologies for collaboration and productivity.

So the question, “are we ready for the future of work today”? While case studies are beginning to emerge regarding the use of new social and collaborative technologies, I have been disappointed that most companies still have not fully embraced new work models. I sense collaboration and the use of technology is being leveraged proficiently amongst individuals and teams but lack corporate awareness and an overarching strategy that can benefit both organizations and  individuals alike.

Why have companies yet to fully embrace the new social world? In two words, its hard. You need risk-takers. CEO’s that are willing to immediately embrace the new technology in front of their employees. HR executives that have a vision for the future and can manage risk. IT departments that are willing overcome the legacy challenges and lose their rigidity.

Embracing new technologies can be dangerous as was recently exposed in a Techcrunch post and their use of Yammer. While some employees view the tool as highly valuable, others expressed frustration with its experience. Ultimately, the future of work must support the business strategy while maintain, evolving or even creating a culture of collaboration.

What do you think is the biggest challenge preventing the future of work?

Photo courtesy of karlaporter.com

After digesting just about every blog post, discussion thread, and email predicting what will happen with SAP and SuccessFactors now that they are one, I’ve noticed a prevailing theme – the Talent Management market has changed overnight, and some are even predicting the death of independent Talent Management vendors.

While I believe the Talent Management market has significantly shifted over the past few weeks, including Salesforce.com’s ambitious entry into the HCM market with the acquisition of Rypple, stealing from the words of Mark Twain, I maintain that the death of Talent Management is greatly exaggerated.

Let me offer why I think this is actually the beginning of Talent Management.

Market Leaders Are Just Starting to Be Defined

If you haven’t noticed, the Talent Management market is very different from what it was just a few years ago. In the past two years alone, there have been over 50 acquisitions (yes…I’ve been counting) in the broader talent management market. The market has consolidated quickly, with vendors rushing to claim they have the only talent management suite, mostly by acquiring the “pillar” that was missing in their offerings. One could argue that most of these acquisitions have yet to prove successful and have never reached the desired stage of product “integration.”

The result, by most industry analyst forecasts, is a Talent Management market that is approximately $4.5 billion and growing nearly 10% per year. A billion-dollar market with double-digit growth is typically the sign of a healthy market, not one on the verge of extinction. Considering the leading vendors current market share, the largest vendor owns approximately 7% market share. There is no clear breakaway leader; rather, clusters of leadership have started to form, particularly at the top.  SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors is less a statement that they want to become a leader in talent management and more that they can’t get left behind in cloud computing.

We are starting to witness separation in the market where size, scale, and financial viability are essential for long-term survival. Market share will ultimately be determined by three factors: 1) strong ORGANIC growth, 2) continued innovation in existing and new products, and, most important, 3) happy customers.

What We Can Learn from the History of Enterprise Software

Back in 2005, Oracle acquired Siebel and many were predicting Oracle’s forthcoming world domination in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Although Siebel was not pure SaaS, they had built a strong market position. Right down the road, Salesforce.com, with a pure SaaS model, was beginning to really accelerate their growth.

Since the acquisition, Oracle has continued to grow their market share in CRM but I don’t have to tell you that Salesforce.com has become the predominant vendor in CRM. By some industry analyst estimates, today Oracle and SAP only make up 20% market share in the CRM market. What happened in CRM? The market bifurcated (actually the CRM buyers bifurcated) where CRM by ERP became the preference among IT buyers while line of business, who preferred flexibility and control, preferred a SaaS “best of breed” solution (Salesforce.com). The Business Intelligence (BI) market witnessed similar consolidation a few years ago. Today, Oracle and SAP make up approximately 39% market share in BI, but many best of breed vendors, including MicroStrategy and QlikTech, continue to thrive.

The same is likely to occur in Talent Management. As ERP vendors begin to “bolt on” talent management, in a mix of cloud and on-premise models, IT is likely to return as the primary decision maker. I have yet to run into any HR professional who wants to hand the keys of the car back to IT.

What Happens to Talent Management from Here?

We will start to see a bifurcation of Talent Management – one where ERP vendors combine (I won’t dare say “integrate”) core HR systems with acquired cloud talent management solutions. In this scenario, a focus on business innovation and outcomes becomes secondary to hard-wiring technology assets together. Flexibility goes out the window and IT will quickly control the destiny of talent management initiatives purely based on what the technology can and can’t do.

Conversely, cloud talent management vendors will continue to thrive by focusing on business issues, continued innovation, and a single, unified talent management solution. Access to data become more important than attempting to consolidate data into a single bespoke solution. Multi-tenant SaaS – one platform, one version — is table stakes. In this scenario, understanding the technology underpinnings will be critical but business process flexibility (AKA configuration) will be a key factor that determines success or failure.

Obviously, I am biased; but even recent Bersin research would suggest companies don’t want to buy talent management from their core HR vendor. Why? Core HR systems have become fragile. Customers have taken the mindset that if they aren’t broke, don’t fix them. That is why only a small fraction of Oracle customers are running the latest Peoplesoft or Oracle versions (or have even considered switching out their legacy technology). On the other hand, customers have come to expect rapid updates (quarterly in some instances), new capabilities, and constant flexibility from pure-SaaS solutions.

In any case, we are witnessing exciting times in Talent Management, mostly for customers that want to achieve new unchartered results.

Image courtesy of http://revdrkid.wordpress.com/

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the first annual HR Tech Europe conference in Amsterdam. I found the conversations enlightening and a stark contrast from those with HR leaders in North America. Three key themes resonated throughout the three days…

1. While everyone likes to lump all European countries into a single bucket, “Europe”, each region and country has very unique localized needs. During his fantastic keynote, my good friend Thomas Otter poked fun at Europe’s uniqueness, pulling a definition out of Urban Dictionary referring to Europe as, “Yurop…an ancient continent, rumoured to have been sunk, just like Atlantis. It used to be a magical, super-fun land, full of fairies and butterflies, trolls and other magical creatures.” To truly understand Europe means you must understand the local needs, privacy rules, and regulations particular to the respective country.
2. IT, particularly HRIT, plays a completely different role for European companies (in part, due to the demands on localization). Data models are extremely critical as the cost impacts — both positive and negative — can be significant. An additional observation is that the merits of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model are still under debate in Europe. While many progressive companies such as Barclays, Nokia, and Virgin Media, are embracing SaaS and recognizing the benefits, the paradigm shift is still evolving. This is not unique and IT shifts in North America, where SaaS has become the preferred delivery model for business applications, often have a lagging effect to take hold in Europe (typically between 18-24 months). Interestingly, like North America, in Europe the business is recognizing the value of SaaS in advance of IT.
3. Talent management and talent mobility is completely different across Europe. While North American companies tend to take a “tops down” approach based on hierarchy and status, many European companies tend to take a “bottoms up” approach. In North America, talent pipelines are often built based on open positions, flight risk and critical roles and gaps are filled by looking down through the organization. Conversely, companies in highly regulated countries such as France, Germany and others, identify high performers and then look for where they can be mobilized across the organization. American companies can learn a lot from their European peers regarding talent mobility.

As globalization accelerates, and companies increasingly look across the globe to build their talent management strategies, understanding Europe is essential, even if you are not there today.

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/dhjiz/532666419/in/photostream

Thomas Friedman, notable author of The World is Flat, published a great op-ed in The New York Times yesterday describing the vast difference between Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

“…to paraphrase the Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati, Wall Street, which was originally designed to finance “creative destruction” (the creation of new industries and products to replace old ones), fell into the habit in the last decade of financing too much “destructive creation” (inventing leveraged financial products with no more societal value than betting on whether Lindy’s sold more cheesecake than strudel). When those products blew up, they almost took the whole economy with them.”

Conversely, Silicon Valley is witnessing another rebirth of entrepreneurialism. As the article notes, “…the emergence of the cloud…is speeding up everything — innovation, product cycles and competition.” In fact, many of the hottest technology startups have CEOs under the age of 30.

At the same time, non-profit organizations like Teach for America are witnessing a spike in job applications, receiving over 48,000 applications in 2010. I recently heard Teach for America has become the #1 preferred destination for newly minted MBAs.

I encourage everyone to read “One Country, Two Revolutions“. As much as everyone wants to blame Wall Street right now for our macroeconomic issues, we should all be excited that an entirely new workforce is being created right in front of our eyes.

I recently read an article suggesting 92% of Fortune 500 companies are either testing or deploying iPads. According to Good Technology, though, 2 industries — Financial Services and High Technology — account for nearly 50% of the Top 100 iPad accounts. Interestingly, Retail, the industry I think could benefit the most from tablets, only accounts for 4.4%.

Eric Lai at ZDNet has started to compile a list of iPad deployments. What is fascinating is the rapid adoption in Education – both K-12 and Higher Education.

Are we beginning to reach a tipping point for tablets, or more specifically iPads, in the enterprise? Not even close. iPad usage in the enterprise today is mostly reserved for key executives and employees using their own tablets (mostly to access corporate email). While mobility and the use of iPads is all the rage today in HR and elsewhere, it should be viewed with the appropriate level of rationale of what and how it can be leveraged now and in the future. It isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.

One of the biggest frustrations in my past life as a “customer advocate” (not consultant) was the complexity involved to buy and deploy talent management solutions. During the past few years, the demand for “integrated talent management suites” has accelerated. Unfortunately, the talent management vendors haven’t met the challenge. They continue to sell discrete “modules” and customers are feeling the pain and frustration of being unable to drive true value out of talent management initiatives either because it is uneconomical to buy the 25 “modules” needed or the value of buying 1 or 2 “modules” doesn’t deliver real long-term value. Additionally, feature enhancements that were supposed to come as product updates (isn’t that part of SaaS value equation?) are now sold separately and many vendors are now attempting to put a price tag on every single R&D investment.

In essence, the talent management value equation is broken for both customers and vendors. We at Cornerstone OnDemand think there is a better way for customers. Last week, at the 2011 HR Technology Conference, we announced the availability of our new cloud offerings: the Performance Cloud, Learning Cloud, Extended Enterprise Cloud and Recruiting Cloud (coming soon). While on the surface it may seem like another vendor jumping onto the “cloud” bandwagon, it is actually a fundamental shift in what we do. We are creating tighter solution offerings, for a single price, with the ultimate goal to make it easier to buy, faster to deploy and quicker to recognize true value in talent management. We are bringing the fundamentals back to SaaS. This new approach will also ensure we are ultra-focused on building tightly unified talent solution and adding more value into the respective clouds without “nickel and diming” for new capabilities.

Lisa Rowan from IDC stated it perfectly, “Each talent process, such as assessing an employee for promotion or providing training to improve performance, does not tie to one single module. Talent management is a series of interrelated processes, and selling features and functions in tighter bundled solutions can help buyers and suppliers move to a more strategic view.” Buying talent management is not the same as buying parts for a car. It’s about buying the car so you can get to the ultimate destination.

With all of the hype around “cloud” today, I would encourage you to truly understand how your vendor is describing their version (or vision) of “cloud”. As Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff recently proclaimed, “beware of the false cloud“. At Cornerstone, cloud is not a new marketing term. Cloud is not a technology or infrastructure. Cloud is a business model.

Let me preface by saying I’m a SaaS bigot. My SaaS bigotry stems from nearly every vendor that has rushed to plastered a “look at me, I am now SaaS” on their front door (metaphorically speaking of course). Borrowing a phrase from my friend Anshu Sharma of Salesforce.com, “…you can’t put a car on a ferry and call it a ship”.

The term SaaS itself has taken on its life of its own and continues to be a topic of confusion for today’s HR audience. I always encourage folks to read Naomi’s definition of SaaS or as she calls it “Bloom InFullSaaS“. Yes…she is much smarter than you and I so let me offer my “cliff notes” version (and the simple criteria we follow at Cornerstone OnDemand):

• Multi-tenant (or as I refer to as 1 product, 1 version) – ALL products are running on the same code base, leveraging the exact same infrastructure stack with ALL customers running the SAME version AT ALL TIMES.
• Seamless upgrades – New enhancements are automatically available (in the Cornerstone case, on a quarterly basis). Nothing is required of the customer to install, deploy or take advantage of the updates.
• Fully configured – Any modifications or changes are managed through configuration and not via changes to the actual code (also known as customization)
• Fully managed – The vendor manages all aspects of the infrastructure including backup, disaster recovery, etc.
• Self-provisioning – Simply stated, the customer can deploy and change the system without dependency on the vendor to make changes (to be clear, most customer still require some level of service from the vendor to accelerate deployment and leverage best practices)

All of this stuff is great and all but there are also significant benefits to both the customer and vendor which I will be sharing in a later post. In the meantime, I encourage you to dig under the covers to understand when a vendor sales executive says, “…ahh, yes we are SaaS”, you know if they are a car on a ferry or a ship!

Today, Authoria announce the merger with Peopleclick to create Peopleclick Authoria.  Bedford Funding, the private equity firm that owns Authoria is spending $100 million to acquire and merge the companies.  I’d love to say I had my crystal ball out when we recorded the Bill Kutik Radio Show a few weeks ago and predicted further market consolidation but this wasn’t one of the acquisitions I would have predicted.  Nonetheless, I do believe it is an early indication of what we can expect in 2010 – market consolidation.

The Good News

On paper, the merger makes sense.  It now puts Peopleclick Authoria as the #3 vendor in terms of market share (with Taleo #1 and SuccessFactors #2).  It also brings together one of the deepest talent acquisition vendors (Peopleclick) with one of the most robust talent management vendors (Authoria).  Although Authoria can claim talent acquisition capabilities today (via the acquisition of Hire.com), they are primarily limited to salaried recruiting only.  With Peopleclick, they now add hourly and contingent recruiting, onboarding, EEO/compliance solutions, candidate relationship management (CRM), and vendor management capabilities.  Peopleclick also give Authoria global presence which they really didn’t have previously.   As I recently noted, Peopleclick was newly recognized on the Gartner e-Recruitment Magic Quadrant, a significant accomplishment for the company.

From a pure financial perspective, assuming Peopleclick is a profitable, $60m revenue company, the $100m investment appears to be money well-spent.  Considering Taleo paid $128 million, or a 2.8x multiple of revenue, for Vurv 2 years ago (yes…I understand the market was much different 2 years ago), a 1.6x multiple for Peopleclick makes great financial sense. 

Lastly, Charles Jones, Managing Partner for Bedford Funding, and now Chairman and CEO of the combined company, has a strong track record for acquiring and merging companies.  If you really think about it, Peopleclick Authoria is the merger of 9 companies (6 with Peopleclick and 3 with Authoria) with a total investment over $130 million in venture investment.

The Bad News

The merger of Peopleclick and Authoria appears to be primarily a financially-driven merger.  Private equity firms like Bedford Funding focus on finding undervalued companies, putting in place some operational and financial discipline, and reselling those companies or assets at a premium.

Although they are now have arguably some of the deepest best of breed solutions for talent acquisition and talent management, the two products couldn’t be more different.   Most of Authoria’s products have recently been re-platforming their solution with a J2EE-based architecture (Authoria Communications has yet to be migrated to the new platform).  Authoria 10x, the new platform, has a streamlined and intuitive user experience. 

Conversely, Peopleclick is built on a .NET architecture and the discrete products have gone through varied levels of “modernization”.   Peopleclick’s usability, although intuitive, are process-driven and require significant user interaction.  Over the past few years, Peopleclick has some useful innovations including contact management, onboarding, interview scheduling and social network integration.  The core recruiting management engine though is still dependent on the deliberate complex that still overwhelms most recruiter or user.  What all of this means for either company’s customers is that Peopleclick products and Authoria products look different, act different, deploy different and demand a completely different user experience.  It also mean the distinct architectures will have integration challenges and longer-term cost implications.

No doubt the companies have very complimentary functionality and Peopleclick Authoria will get into many short-lists due to their “RFP-ready” capabilities (“RFP-ready” meaning they can now checkbox the capabilities listed in most generic RFPs out there).  The question, though, is will the depth of capabilities meet the needs of today’s buyer that demands a simplified and unified experience across all talent processes.  The combined Peopleclick Authoria is a technology stew.  Although both product lines are designed with multi-tenancy in mind, I would consider both vendors to be more hosted providers than true SaaS vendors.  Peopleclick Authoria will need to support many product lines, and many versions of those product lines, deployed uniquely across many customers.  Peopleclick Authoria will be challenged to economically support new innovation and deep customer support for all combined products!  The company has yet to share how they intent to integrate the product lines but considering it has taken Authoria 3+ years to re-platform their solutions, it would be a safe bet to assume the products will remain independent on their separate technology stacks and integration will be at the surface only.  While many other vendors will be focused on deepening the unification of their modules, building capability to support emerging “blended” talent management capability such as talent mobility and planning, and innovating in new areas such as social collaboration, Peopleclick Authoria will be focused on the often painful process of blending two companies and the unique complexities of their underlying technology. 

Authoria is getting a great customer base and an annuity stream that I’m sure became very attractive to Bedford (and as was similar with Sumtotal’s private equity buyers).  But with the talent management market continuing to be a replacement market and talent management buyers become increasingly demanding and cost-conscious, it will be no small task to successful managing the combined Peopleclick Authoria.

Will Peopleclick Authoria be good for customers?  Please share your thoughts and comments.