Ventana Research Analyst Perspectives

In January of 2020, I was head of product innovation for a newly launched product in the human capital management technology space, targeting high-volume hiring. We had big ambitions for that year, tied to product development and sales, all documented during our annual goal-setting and performance review process. And then the pandemic hit, and everything changed overnight. Everything, that is, except for my annual goals, or those of my team, which had already been set in stone. When the annual...

Ventana Research recently announced its 2023 Market Agenda for Human Capital Management, continuing the guidance we’ve offered for two decades to help organizations derive maximum potential from workforce- and people-related technology investments and initiatives. In crafting this Market Agenda, we focused on three critical themes top-of-mind for both HCM vendors and buyers: Organizational resiliency, employee engagement and utilizing digital technology to derive deeper insights into the state...

As the world of work continues to evolve, so too must the way organizations evaluate talent. Traditional evaluation criteria like education and prior job titles still have a place in hiring, promotion and succession-planning processes. However, organizations that consider transferrable skills first have the opportunity to screen in talent that they may not have otherwise considered, creating a substantial advantage in the proverbial war for talent.

Since its inception, HCM software has upended how people interact with their workplace. Paper resumes have given way to online applications. Physical time clocks have largely disappeared in favor of apps or clocks housed within a point-of-sale system. Even benefits enrollment has entered the digital age, adding tools like decision-support modeling to help enrollees determine which of the myriad offerings will better fit their specific circumstances. This digital transformation does more than...

The pandemic years saw an exponential rise in organizational investment in digital learning, and for good reason. With in-person learning no longer an option, organizations were forced to quickly adapt to the changing world of work in order to ensure workers were prepared with the knowledge and training necessary to operate in ways they had never before seen. Beyond operational imperatives, organizations have turned to digital learning systems to find new ways to track and bolster productivity,...

It has been three years since Oracle hosted a CloudWorld event live in Las Vegas, and it is clear the time has not been wasted. With 12 new releases since the last event, the Oracle human capital management product team has made significant advances in both product and service. Three areas of note: Oracle HCM’s continued focus on personalization of experience, meeting the HCM needs of the healthcare industry and advancing the Oracle Cloud Recruiting offering.

Some weeks back I published my thoughts about the traditional applicant tracking system and how that technology is no longer sufficient to support organizations’ complex recruiting needs. This is particularly true when trying to take a one-size-fits-all approach to hiring processes. Having identical hiring processes and requirements for professional hires as for low-complexity, low barrier-to-entry roles will inevitably result in lost candidates, frustrated recruiters and hiring managers, and...

The learning management system technology market has evolved dramatically over the past two decades. Learning management systems, now commonly referred to as learning experience platforms, are an integral resource for any organization concerned about productivity, organizational agility and operational excellence. These technologies enable organizations to demonstrate an investment in people, as the LMS not only facilitates regulatory and legal compliance and other forms of cost and risk...

Payroll Management is one of the six major focus areas in the Human Capital Management research and advisory practice at Ventana Research. “Continuous payroll” is a hot topic in this area, with much discussion about the always-on nature of this enhanced payroll function and its related demands for supporting technologies. Advancements in payroll technologies and practices have paved the way for off-cycle payroll transactions and pay modes – like earned wage access, for example – to become the...

People analytics enable organizations to gain data-driven insights that optimize the impact and value of the workforce. For decades, human capital management (HCM) leaders have been sold tools marketed as analytics that were no more than dashboards filled with nice visualizations of historic data with no context as to what each individual data point meant to their strategic objectives and initiatives. And yet, our recent Analytics and Data Benchmark Research shows that 83% of organizations...