The Future of HR "Platforms"

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If you haven’t been reading Marc Andreessen’s blog start now.  It is a great read.  In his most recent post, “The three kinds of platforms you meet on the Internet”, Marc defines what it means to be an Internet platform today.  Specifically..

“…a “platform” is a system that can be programmed and therefore customized by outside developers — users — and in that way, adapted to countless needs and niches that the platform’s original developers could not have possibly contemplated, much less had time to accommodate.”

Sure, nearly every HR and talent management vendor can, and will, claim they are “programmable”.  The real questions though is, are they programmable in today’s standards?  As Marc also writes…

So, if you’re thinking about computing on the Internet, whenever anyone uses the word “platform”, ask: “Can it be programmed?” Specifically, with software code provided by the user? If not, it’s not a platform, and you can safely ignore whoever’s talking — which means you can safely ignore 80%+ of the people in the world today who are using the term “platform” and don’t know what it means.

HR technology vendors have always talked about “integration” versus “programmability”.  The main question, though, is when will they evolve?  

Marc talks about 3 levels of Internet platforms: “Access API”, “Plug-in API”, and “Runtime Environment”.  The big difference in layman terms…

Access API – Where the vendor exposes an API (application programming interface) or, integration point, in the form of a web service.

Plug-in API – As Marc describes, “…historically [plug-in APIs have] been used in end-user applications to let developers build new functions that can be injected, or “plug in”, to the core system and its user interface.  Two great examples of plug-in API applications would be Microsoft Outlook (smart client) or Facebook (web).

Real-time Environment – Whereas third party code actually runs within the platform.

In HR technology, we have a long way to go.  Based on Marc’s description, we are only at Level 1 and most vendors are still struggling just to be “API-accessible”.  Both SAP (Netweaver) and Oracle (Fusion) have a great opportunity right now to become that real-time environment.  Can they execute  on the opportunity though?

Exposing an APIs is great but opening APIs for all to consume is the leap that needs to occur.  Think about all the college developers right now writing mashups for Facebook.  What if we could harness the collective resources within the HR community to build more rich, interoperable applications?

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  • Christopher

    I share a lot of your enthusiasm for trying to get HR systems to look, feel, and (most importantly) act like a lot of the platforms that have come to define the Web 2.0 environment. Facebook - which some people consider Web 2.5 is one good example of what can be done when you open up APIs for public consumption (Google Maps is getting it right, and some of Yahoo’s Apps too). With the vast numbers of users online, at least a few of them are bound to have 1) the coding skills and 2)the need for whatever mashup they’re creating to make it happen.

    Where I start to scratch my head and wonder, though, is how successful this would be in a relatively closed system like an HR function. I can only think of one or two people in my entire 500+ person HR dept that could code anything. I’m curious to know if you have encountered any examples of this already happening in HR depts anywhere?

    I suspect, as you point out, that the majority of the Facebook mashups (and others) do come from college students who have much more free time on their hands than HR staff in a company setting.
    I think it would be really interesting to find out more about the profile of the people doing cool API mashups – are they mostly college students? of those who aren’t, are any of them not programmers by profession? etc.

  • Alex Chudnovsky

    What about Best Practices in HR?

    Of course there are things that can be programmed through API and etc… Eventually it will get to Level II and III.

    Human Capital Management is about the flexibility and the direction an organization can take. Oracle and SAP have been trying to turn the HCM OnDemand corner for a number of years!

  • http://www.hrmdirect.com/hrm2/blog/ Colin Kingsbury

    While I agree with your broad point, I think Marc is begging the question. A platform is defined by what you can do with it, not how you do it. An embedded scripting language like Apex certainly holds the -potential- to do some more interesting things than, say, flat-file FTP processes, but there is no grand unified theory that makes this generally true. The more these things become sloganized, the less substance I see involved in actual decisions.

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  • John

    I agree most HR applications today are at Marc’s Level 1. However, to move to the Level 3 platform will require a lot of issues to be addressed, such as integration and component assembly, and HR vendors have not shown much interest in the past to move out of their comfort zone. The Salesforce.com example Marc mentions in his blog encourages developers to build custom components within the host application and that helps solve the integration problem, but other than the Workday product (that gets close to Level 3) most new HR implementations seam to focus on Level 2 and call “plug in” applications using web services and APIs. Unfortunately, HRMS customers do not have much choice but to accept multiple Level 2 products and live with the integration problems.

  • http://mcarthursrant.blogspot.com/ Scott McArthur

    This is a very important discussion and opportunity for vendors to help HR get it right.

    Until now there are in n reality (in the UK at least) very few good examples of an HR platform improving “meaning” in the workplace.

    During and post implementation HR often becomes focused on process and numbers and as such forgets to focus on the people in the orgnaisation.

    The Social Software link has the potential to add real value to HR Directors and I for one can’t wait to see things really improve for the function and for that matter for the technologists.

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