One of the emerging trends that presented itself through this year’s #hrwins process results from the convergence of several other, already established, trends. As Cloud Computing has been accelerating toward the eclipse of OnPremise software in overall market share, Application development has been described more and more as becoming almost an art form or form of craftmanship – there will always be engineers in the process, but with data complexity on the back-end, the interface to the user is getting to be more creative and design intensive. At the same time, CIOs are beginning to contemplate a “mobile first” strategy for their Enterprise applications. This gives you a glimpse to how the CIO expects users to interact with data across the Enterprise. All the while, Social Networks and Media have introduced informal use-case standards rapidly. It is now a realistic expectation for many Enterprise class HR Tech solutions to require little or no training.
These forces will converge to result in Enterprise Class HR Technology that is as easy to learn and use as FaceBook, as engaging as FlipBoard, and as mobile as the tools you use in your smart phone today. There is a continuing opportunity for HR Technology to help HR Become the Business of Getting Work Done as these applications could embed themselves in the day-to-day across the enterprise.
This trend is not a prediction. This will evolve with an overwhelming number of new products and vendors over the next 24 months. There are too many variables associated with the converging trends to see the future clearly, but what I think is clear is this:
The cumbersome, clunky interfaces we have all gotten so tired of in the HR Tech world are disappearing… There is a new breed of application coming quickly at this market and we’re seeing the transition phase right now. This new breed of easy to use, easy to implement Enterprise Class Technology may be the biggest threat for the current HR Enterprise class Platform players who are all cobbling together various systems that they’ve acquired, or developed separately, over time.
The future of HR Technology, from a user perspective, is pretty bright.