The next wave of HR Software innovation has arrived. Without rushing too far ahead, here is a recap of the amazing disruption that has occurred in the HR Software Market over the past 5 years.
There has been a dramatic shift in the pricing model of HR Cloud SaaS. There is a huge shift from on premise licencing to Annualised. Oracle has made this shift and is now one of the biggest generators of revenue in the Cloud Software space.
Public price. No longer can software companies hide behind complexity. Consumers want to know how much they are going to have to spend before they look at a product. They want to be able to try before they buy. This is now a mandatory requirement.
Configuration. Gone are the days of software companies clawing customisation $ away from customers. Historically, businesses have been at the mercy of Software vendors. Even simple changes had been expensive and complex to perform. With pure-play HR Software systems, end-user configuration is straight forward. Customers can save tens of thousands of dollars over the life of the product.
IT footprint. IT departments have now become connectors. They are specialising in integration. ERP systems still have their place. Thought there are much more selection options available for ECO system based plug and play integrations. For example, an Accounting Cloud Software system can plug into a HR System and a Payroll system, using different providers, all facilitated by API integration. Companies like Centrify and OneLogin are providing high secure connectors between these products at very affordable prices, there are even free options. OneLogin for example, provides a Free Version for active directory integration. Software providers provide all of the infrastructure and security. Some of the best HR Software providers are even at the level of utlising IDE solutions, allowing customers to Code directly into their APP. Like Salesforce.com and Netsuite. Integration will Google, Office365 and DropBox can be facilitated with these out of the box SaaS Eco System adaptors.
There are quite a few Free HR Software and e-Recruitment Software systems available that service Small Businesses. These systems will cater for out of the box requirements but will lack the sophistication required for higher level HR Software Requirements. They also can be a little intrusive, with selling services and products their main revenue stream. Horses for courses.
With so much data now being captured in HR Software and the opportunity for HR Professionals to be able to make significant decisions based on this using this data effectively, the next frontier of HR Cloud Software Engineering is based on machine learning and artificial intelligence to allow for quick decisions to be made and trends to be identified. This does not mean that HR will become robotic. Quite the contrary, HR Software Automation will allow HR to become more productive and allow these professionals to connect with their workforces in more meaningful ways. Key decision make data convergence points will allow for data sets to be matched, based on outcome rules, then presented to People Leaders in ways that allow them to make more effective decisions about hiring and retention.
Most entrants into the HR Software Market appear to focus mostly on having an attractive interface, but lack the technologic design to offer true scale and meaningful future proof. Most of these types of systems are backed by PE or VC firms and sell well, but the churn that results from their poor architectural design is significant.
