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IBM held its 20th annual IBM Connect conference (previously known as Lotusphere) as part of its IBM Social Business efforts at the end of January. The conference focuses on business and social collaboration technology, which our business technology innovation research found to be the second-ranked priority for business innovation. At the conference IBM made a series of significant announcements, including a new version of its social collaboration suite, IBM Connections, and the ability to use the software on a cloud computing platform.
In the mid ’90s Lotus Notes and Domino led the market with the first
true business collaboration and communications software. Today, after decades of fierce competition with Microsoft and its Office and SharePoint offerings, IBM is innovating (in a much more serious way than I have seen from Microsoft) to gain growth in the new market for business and social collaboration software. It is a good time for IBM to aggressively expand into the market, as our research finds only 25 percent of organizations are satisfied with their social collaborative capabilities. These have been dominated by shared folders and documents (86%), videoconferencing and instant messaging (66%), yet those applications are only a small piece of what social collaboration is about.
IBM has been adding business collaboration features over recent years with new capabilities that include activity streams, broadcasting, instant messaging, videoconferencing and wikis. All are part of IBM Connections 4.5, along with content and document management. With IBM Docs people can collaborate on a range of documents, including spreadsheets, presentations and word processing. IBM has advanced the user experience and integrated its collaborative and social software into a unified user experience. IBM is also making the software available on Apple, Android and BlackBerry smartphones and tablets. Our research finds Apple to be the first-ranked priority for smartphones (50%) and tablets (66%), followed by Android on smartphones (27%) and tablets (19%). Though BlackBerry (which just announced the change in its corporate name from Research in Motion) is a distance third for smartphones, it still has a loyal following that also uses IBM software. Our research finds Microsoft at the bottom of business and IT buyers’ priority lists. IBM is also expanding its social collaboration support for mobile technology to operate in an offline mode which is essential and has also addressed the need to secure sensitive communications and content.
IBM also maintains a strong installed base with Notes and Domino. IBM Notes and Domino Social Edition 9 is expected to be available in March and brings an innovative approach to blend social collaboration within electronic mail that many will really like IBM innovative approach. Businesses that do not use Notes, which make up the majority of the industry, can examine IBM Connections.
IBM is also moving fast to ensure that its offering is available in cloud computing. IBM SmartCloud for Social Business will make it easier for organizations to get started and use the software without the need for servers, storage and other internal IT resources. This is an important step to bring its offering to a larger audience that may not have the IT resources or budget to support new business collaboration efforts. The software helps streamline the cultural transition to using social collaborative software. IBM has introduced adoption services with a range of models, processes and education. This investment is critical to get organizations to step into the new world of social collaboration and increase the confidence level of organizations in this approach; today only 17 percent are very confident and just 38 percent are confident.
IBM has completed its acquisition of Kenexa, and at IBM Connect seemed to indicate it has settled on some specific areas of focus that blend learning and recruiting with social collaboration. It has taken steps since my analysis at the time of the acquisition to address 
many of my concerns. In addition, IBM introduced its new Employee Experience Suite, which is designed to provide an interface to business priorities and work like an employee portal. IBM also touted its new social learning offering, which when delivered will leverage its existing software and what the company purchased with Kenexa. I would like to have seen more on how to leverage Kenexa OutStart mobile learning. The potential in social learning is significant, and IBM’s product offerings put the company on a short list of providers who offer integrated social learning today. More broadly, IBM’s efforts to bring social collaboration to human capital management come at a time when our research into HCM shows that knowledge sharing, collaborating and learning are key priorities in organizations today. IBM will need to invest further to bring into IBM Connections more from Kenexa of what is needed in talent management in recruiting, performance and compensation. IBM has a great opportunity to expand its position with Kenexa recruiting customers that use both its software and its services and get them to use more IBM social collaboration and workforce analytics software.
IBM spoke at the conference about its Smarter Workforce Analytics Suite, designed to address workforce analytics and predictive hiring analytics, but I did not see this software leveraging 
the company’s business intelligence or workforce analytics solutions. The tandem of this software foundation, the IBM Research and global business services organizations, and the analytic services of the Kenexa organization has the potential to advance the necessary process of moving off of spreadsheets to a dedicated business intelligence tool to meet the needs for workforce analytics and planning. We have found in our research a significant move by businesses to improve workforce analytics in 2013, with 61 percent of organizations indicating they have plans in this area. Also most HR organizations are still working on advancing beyond the use of spreadsheets and reports indicating a lower level of maturity than what IBM might expect. This could be an opportunity for IBM if they fully utilize the core technology of its business analytics software and that I wrote about last year.
I was impressed with IBM’s advancements in social collaboration at Connect 2013 
and its commitment to usability, which our research found to be the highest priority (64%) in choosing technology, followed by reliability, since technology in use across an organization must be able to scale and perform. Organizations that have not considered IBM for social collaboration should examine the new version of Connections, since it offers a powerful set of unified capabilities that encompasses mobile technology. The top benefit to such software according to 72 percent of organizations in our research is better communications and knowledge sharing, and Connections has the power to deliver that. However, IBM should also embed its social collaboration features in other business applications, as that is still a preferred method of accessing collaboration according to 43 percent of organizations. One area that I expected to see more highlighted was its integration with IBM business analytics software which is one of the top use cases for using social collaboration in the enterprise and that IBM has integrated already.
IBM is taking a significant step forward to bring Smarter Workforce into a highly competitive market for human capital management. This is confirmed in my colleagues (Stephan Millard) research agenda for human capital management, that the pace of innovation in 2013 will be significant. IBM new offerings and approach are ones to watch but make sure you are able to get something for use today in your business and not have to wait for the future. IBM is a vendor to watch for its ability to help organizations of all sizes with social collaboration and human capital management.
Regards,
Mark Smith
CEO & Chief Research Officer
Managing payroll has long been viewed as an administrative task, time-consuming and focused on ensuring that everyone is paid correctly and on time. In fact, in the American Payroll Association’s most recent annual study, the main metrics tracked for payroll performance are payroll cost per employee, payroll processing accuracy rate and dollar value of overpayments – all of which focus only on cost or accuracy. So payroll management is rarely viewed as having any strategic value to the business and typically is assigned a low priority in finance, HR and payroll departments. The payroll process is elevated in importance only when errors are made that result in people being paid or taxes being withheld incorrectly.
That perspective is changing now, as human capital management (HCM) plays an increasingly critical role in attracting and retaining talent and as processes and information become ever more interconnected. In this new environment, payroll management has an enhanced role. As a part of the system of record in every company, payroll data can be connected to information in core human resources management, workforce management and talent management systems to help create a more complete view of human capital for executives and managers of organizations.
In addition, its history conveys on payroll management a unique status in human capital management. Having found it too cumbersome as an internal system, many organizations outsourced their payroll functions to various providers. Now, however, with the rise of easily accessible cloud computing that does not require significant in-house administration, many are re-evaluating payroll as a process that can be integrated with other related ones in a cloud-based HCM strategy. Doing so adds significant value in that both payroll process and payroll data then are connected to the unified HCM solution, enabling employees, managers and executives to use both in ways they have not been able to before – such as streamlining the pay-for-performance process. And with the rise of powerful suite-wide analytics tools, organizations can do much more useful analysis across all HCM data, including payroll, and use the results as part of compensation management efforts to make better decisions. Our most recent benchmark research into compensation found that 69 percent of organizations identify payroll as the number-one operational system to integrate. Further, our research found that many organizations place a strong importance on the compensation process, which is closely tied to payroll, to drive efforts to develop successful pay-for-performance and talent management initiatives across their companies.
Due to the relative novelty of this advance, the market today lacks empirical information to guide organizations as they seek to evaluate optimized payroll management tools and discover best practices to integrate them with the rest of their HCM tools. There is a need for information to understand the market requirements of businesses of different sizes as well as across industries. Filling this void is the focus of our upcoming benchmark research on evolving payroll management, which will explore organizations’ payroll management choices and assess their competency and maturity.
Successfully implementing optimized payroll management business initiatives requires an in-depth understanding of the options available and the people, process, information and technology issues that must be addressed. In our unique benchmark research we will analyze all these dimensions of how organizations are currently using their payroll systems and to what extent and in what ways they are complementing or competing with human resources management, talent management and workforce management applications. And it will identify benefits that organizations are realizing from the use of these new tools as well as issues they have encountered.
We will launch this benchmark research project into evolving payroll technology, processes and information management shortly. As the results become available in coming months, I will be sharing here on my blog some of the most interesting insights the research uncovers on organizations’ priorities, issues and key needs when evaluating payroll management products. I will also be assessing providers’ offerings to see how they are maturing and how well they are meeting the needs of a broad range of organizations of differing sizes and in specific industries. Be sure to keep a eye on this space in the coming months to see some of what our research uncovers as payroll is a key component of my research agenda for 2013!
Regards,
Stephan Millard
VP & Research Director
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