Patrick Thibodeau: The pandemic has up ended HR's
priorities. And this couldn't be a better time to
be working as a reporter covering HR tech. That's
what I do. My name is Patrick Thibodeau. I'm a
reporter at TechTarget. And one of the things that
I'm reporting on this week is SuccessFactors'
annual conference. I'm going to have a story and
link above and link below, easy to find. So I hope
you've clicked on it. With me today is Trevor
White. He's an analyst at Nucleus Research and an
expert at HR tech. And we're going to talk about
some of the pressures that a company like
SuccessFactors is facing. So, Trevor, thanks for
being on the show today.
Trevor White: Thanks for having me, Pat.
Patrick Thibodeau: Considering the
pandemic-related changes in the workforce,
especially the high turnover rates and the shift
to hybrid and remote work, what are SuccessFactors
customers likely to be expecting from this
company?
Trevor White: Great question, Pat, I think there's
going to be three main things, the first two are
going to be around talent. So looking externally,
what kind of passing passive recruiting Can I
bring in? How am I managing my talent flow? How
can I integrate the various ATS point systems into
my overall HR experience, to really make sure that
it's a seamless experience for the customer and
for the organization? Additionally, how can I
leverage the talent that I already have within my
organization to try and fill some of those gaps
without having to look for new folks, that can be
everything from internal marketplaces, to trying
to upskill employees, to certify them on skills
that they might have outside of their organization
experience already. And then the third is going to
really be around managing the hybrid experience.
So scheduling things like hot desking, making sure
that the remote experience for things like
onboarding is just as seamless and as encouraging
a corporate culture that we would have seen with
more traditional in person work experience.
Patrick Thibodeau: Great answers. But let me just
ask you one follow up in terms of leveraging
talent. Why is that very important in this high
turnover?
Trevor White: Part of the problem is being able to
fill jobs right now it's taking a long time to do
and, frankly, folks are struggling. So if I can
take the talent that I already have within my
organization, and get them to fill in gaps, at
least on the short term, I can fill in a lot of
those issues without having to, for instance,
bring in external consultants or frankly, just let
projects die. All right,
Patrick Thibodeau: great. Another question. HR
departments seem a lot more interested in
experimentation, especially if there's automation
involved. The VC investment has been fun most
accounts to the rough this year. What does this
mean for SuccessFactors? Does this investment and
VC tech create new challenges for this firm?
Trevor White: Yes, I think the first thing that's
going to do is make acquisitions more expensive,
right? As valuations go up, it's going to cost
more for folks like SuccessFactors, some of the
other big players to buy into new features and new
areas in the market. I think the other thing we're
seeing is a lot more point solutions, particularly
around for recruiting and coaching. So again, two
things that we talked about in our first question.
And whereas in the rest of the SAS market, we've
seen a move away from point solutions. There's
been a real expansion within HCM, I think part of
that has to do with the free flowing VC money,
folks are more willing to invest in things like
coaching and things like recruiting and tracking
that feed into your ATS system. And with that,
we're seeing a lot more expansion. And for larger
vendors that's requiring them to really update
their systems to make sure that they can integrate
everything.
Patrick Thibodeau: This is for SuccessFactors. And
for that matter, all the major HR vendors to speed
up their pace of development.
Trevor White: Oh, absolutely. Because again, even
if they're not doing the r&d themselves, even if
they're going out and acquiring products, they're
still having to make sure that it's being
integrated into the system, that there isn't a big
gap when moving data or moving candidates through
the life cycle. Folks don't tolerate that anymore.
Gone are the days of having a bunch of disparate
systems that you're pulling data from to a central
place. They want that all automated and that
requires work on the larger vendors parts.