Coming to this conference always drives home two truths that I struggle to accept, even though I re-experience them every year:
1. How vast this HR Technology industry is and how easy it is to enter as a new vendor with some innovative software
2. How persistent our problems are (lack of integration, non-existent SLAs, data exchange)
The humbling (and infuriating) aspects of this is that those two truths don’t cancel each other out. It’s exciting to see some well established vendors honored for product innovation such as Ceridian’s Dayforce, Cornerstone, Equifax and SumTotal. At the same time, I have so little hope that any of these products will solve the ever-persistent issues around the data integration and service.
This is the blind spot of our industry. We celebrate those who bring out new things to buy– fully knowing that none will resolve the interminable integration issues for employers. The only solutions visible are those that require either the purchase of a new system or the unquestioning allegiance to a unified platform that never completes its implementation. It feels as though we have a solutions-sizing problem. The products are either too small or laser-focused to actually make a difference to the employer experience– or they are too large to realistically afford or to ever complete implementation.
Could we find a middle ground? We are in the age of apps aren’t we? Could our industry agree on a platform as a service onto which the vendors can release digestible apps. Benefitfocus has been championing this in the benefits space for several years now. It makes sense, but how do we extend this beyond any single vendor? Wasn’t this the promise of HR-XML?