Let's add an HRMS. And a moment of marketing wizardry.
How hard can it be?
Around 2010 SuccessFactors announced that they would build out core HRMS. It was a brilliant marketing play by Lars. Other talent management vendors followed in a bit of a panic. It marked the beginning of the end integrated talent management category.
How hard can it be to store a bunch of data about employees and pass it around.
Turns out it is really hard (From my Gartner perch I remember being rather tough on Kara Wilson and Dmitri Krakovsky at the time).
It requires massive major architectural revisions, and many of the design decisions that make perfect sense in a standalone talent management application are deadly for a core HRMS. One needs to think of effective dates, transactional reporting, workflow, audit logs, mass changes, authorizations, bi-directional integrations, extensibility require a rather different product and engineering mindset, a shed load of R&D budget, and essential are early adopters with immense patience. It also completely messes with your partner strategy, and the buying centre changes.
SuccessFactors first attempt stumbled, and building Employee Central took far more effort and time than the original plan before it succeeded, but succeed it eventually did. The other talent management vendors tried but failed.
The path from talent management to transactional system of record involves camels and eyes of needles.
more on SuccessFactors history here.
What I learnt from SuccessFactors: Part 1.
I first got to know SuccessFactors as a competitor while I worked at SAP, probably around 2004-5. SAP’s leadership at the time largely ignored how early SaaS vendors like Salesforce and SuccessFactors were making inroads into even large enterprise customers. SAP’s lack of focus on HCM was a major reason why I ended up moving to Gartner in 2008.
Moving swiftly on to 2024.
We are in the next wave of talent management vendors moving into core HR, and core HR vendors thinking they can do global payrolls. I read of successful modern talent management vendors announcing they are doing a core HRMS. I smile wryly and shudder slightly, and wish them lots of luck. They may succeed, but it will be hard. AI or not. Don’t get me started on global payroll.
A little while ago I saw that Lattice launched a core HRMS. My initial thoughts were here we go again.
This week, their CEO, Sarah Franklin, pulled off a genius marketing move. She announced that they could manage AI workers in their product.
Today, Lattice made history: We became the first company to give digital workers official employee records in Lattice. This marks a huge moment in the evolution of AI technology and of the workplace. It takes the idea of an “AI employee” from concept to reality – and marks the start of a new journey for Lattice, to lead organizations forward in the responsible hiring of digital workers.
Whether they can or not, or if this even makes business is, for now, irrelevant. It creates a controversial and disruptive vision that will likely require a response from the rest of the market.
This straight out of the Lars’ play book, and I mean that as a deep compliment.
Well played Lattice. I’m not sure if you can build a core HRMS, but you do know how to shift a narrative in your favour.
I have long post on the way on what I think the next generation core HR architecture will involve, but don’t hold your breath.
As I usually do, there is a song at the end. The new song from EELS. It is a goody.
Well this turned in a direction I didn’t expect. Lattice raised the ire of a good few people. Marketing is hard.
Building a core HR is not for the faint of heart. Growing and scaling a core HR is also a huge effort. I also love the idea of asking different questions about work, workers and jobs though - I'm here for that every day of the week.