
Incumbents aren’t always incumbent. The case of Employee Communications.
Don’t be afraid of the establishment A start-up leader told me the other day that they didn‘t want to go into a market category because they reckon the big established vendors own that space. I told them they were wrong. Sure the big vendors are very successful there, but no one owns a market category […]

Workday and Peakon. My take.
Workday agreed to acquire Peakon. There is an obvious logic to this deal. Engagement tools are an important part of HRTECH today, and the cycle of larger vendor absorbing edge innovators continues. Cue Disney circle of life music. Engagement tools have done well under COVID-19, with the move to more remote work etc. Whereas 2 […]

Lego, enterprise architecture and the job advert.
Who’s your pick for 2021? pic.twitter.com/j8iHnzPjyR — Ethics in Bricks (@EthicsInBricks) December 12, 2020 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js The brilliance of @EthicsInBricks and @econinbricks reminds me that the software industry should give the Lego metaphor a rest, we can’t compete. I won’t be talking here about how APIs are like the dimples on the lego bricks. I have […]

Salesforce and Slack. Mind the gap.
Thank you ! Creative commons: Jeremy Segrott https://www.flickr.com/photos/126337928@N05/ I’m not one to try and get a razor sharp analysis out before I have had my tea and rashers. There is a lot to ponder on this one, and it is rather long to tell. Some context and a bit of a diversion The big enterprisey […]
How not to work with HRTECH start-ups. The enterprise edition.
“Be cautious about generalizing, especially if it leads you to the conclusion that other people are idiots.” – Hans Rosling pic.twitter.com/4uGCLqk8vv — Economics in Bricks (@econinbricks) December 25, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Thanks to @econinbrinks. An excellent source of wisdom. When I was at Gartner I helped enterprises grapple with enterprise vendor contracts. I know several specialist […]

Melting HR bureaucracy
The tastiest employment contract I‘ve ever seen. German version here. We talk a lot about making HR processes more engaging and improving the employee experience. Software for employee engagement has grown, in the space of a few years, to more than a billion euro market. Making HR processes easier and simpler is a big business. […]

The difficult second album. Advice for HRTECH vendors.
Warning: long, rambling metaphor. Readers of my blog and twitter feed will have seen that I have an interest in music. One of my favourite albums is the first Stone Roses Album, The Stone Roses. I play this record a lot. Here is the song, Waterfall, from the album. The wikipedia entry is worth a […]

It’s all about the data
We have heard from many analysts that this is HR’s moment to shine. For HRTECH vendors too, this is an opportunity to prove that their stuff really works. eLearning consumption is way up, for instance, as is use of survey tools. Processes like Kurzarbeit in Germany and furloughing in the UK mean that flexible and […]
COVID-19 and your HR related applications. Suggestions for users and builders.
I felt there were more than enough folks posting advice about COVID-19 and HRTECH, so having made my position clear, I had promised myself not to add to the exponential curve, but nevertheless, here I am (note, I am neither a lawyer nor an epidemiologist). I have noticed many enterprise tech vendors and consulting firms […]

Ada Lovelace day. A note to men in the software industry.
Today is Ada Lovelace day. If you work in computer science or the computer industry, and you don’t know who she was, please take a moment and google her. But briefly, without her, we would not have a software industry. She was the first programmer, ever. By remembering her pioneering, yet until recently, unheralded efforts, […]