Countdown to the 2013 HR Technology Conference

Gary Bragar, HRO Research Director, NelsonHall

This year’s HR Technology Conference, less than 10 weeks away, will be back in Las Vegas October 7-9 (please note onsite rooms are going fast, I had to stay at alternate hotels the past two years!).

With 6,000 people from 28 countries attending last year, I continue to find it an invaluable investment of my time to:

• Attend presentations
• View technology exhibits
• Network with peers
• Meet individually with companies that I do business with and others I want to learn more about.

Presentations: Session topics include:

• Strategic View
• Talent Management
• Social in the Enterprise
• Workforce Analytics and Planning
• HCM and Workforce Management
• Recruiting
• Service Delivery
• Expert Discussions & HR Tech Talks.

Be sure to check out the agenda at: http://www.hrtechconference.com/agenda.html

Highlights of just a few of the many presentations include:

• High-Tech/High-Touch RPO: What the Doctor Ordered for Boehringer Ingelheim – presented by Corry Ioli, Executive Director, Talent Management & Acquisition, Boehringer Ingelheim and Sue Marks, CEO, Pinstripe
• Goldman Sachs Buys RPO Eyes (and Hands) for a Quarter Million Resumes! – presented by Tom Osmond, Global Head of Talent/HCM Solutions, Goldman, Sachs & Co and Regina Lee, Division President, ADP
• HR Tech Talks, presenters: I Come From the Water: Evolution of the Modern Manager, Kris Dunn, CHRO, Kineti; Clowns, Sharks, Anemone and HR – What Do They All Have in Common? Mary Sue Rogers, Global Managing Director, Talent 2
• How Mobile, Social and Gamification Tools are Improving Employee Health – presented by Barry Hall, Principal and Innovation Leader, Talent & HR Solutions, Buck Consultants and Scot Marcotte, Managing Director, Talent & HR Solutions, Buck Consultants.

Whether your company has outsourced or continues to do everything internally, there are bound to be several sessions where you can learn how to improve HR in your organization and be a better business partner. When I was on the buy-side prior to joining NelsonHall, I would attend such HR conferences to:

• Learn about the broader industry
• Think about how our HR outsourcing contract compared to others
• Get ideas on improvements we could make.

Technology Exhibits: Since technology is changing so rapidly, it is often difficult to keep up with new applications that are available. The conference is a great way to get exposed to a broad-range of recent innovations. You can stop by any booth and see a demo. There is no pressure and vendors are excited about their new products and services and are happy to show you more.

So here is your chance to make a difference at your organization; you might stumble onto a better, more user-friendly technology for example. Even if you are not the decision-maker, you can always tell your organization about it when you return and request a customized demo. Alternatively, if you are already outsourcing, you might see something that you don’t have and can bring it to your provider’s attention.

Network: The conference provides an opportunity to expand your network with others, including HR practitioners, buyers, providers and analysts, etc. In addition to the daytime events, there are evening socials too. HR deserves to have fun!

As a reader of my blog you are entitled to a discount. Just use the Promo Code HRO13 (all caps) when you register online at: http://www.HRTechConference.com/register.html to get $500 off the rack rate of $1,895. The discount does not expire until the conference ends on October 9, 2013.

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Talent2’s Competitive Edge

Linda Merritt, HRO Research Analyst, NelsonHall

The NelsonHall HRO team recently spoke with Mary-Sue Rogers, Talent2’s global general manager for HR managed services, for an update on the major Asia-Pacific, pan-regional HRO service provider with ~2.6k clients across 30 countries. Its client base includes companies of all sizes in both the private and public sectors. The company had a busy fiscal Q4 2013 winning more than 60 contract awards across its service lines, including payroll, RPO, learning and HR advisory services.

The Asia-Pacific HRO Market is Competitive

Asia-Pacific is a huge and diverse region with many of the individual nations still considered “emerging markets,” with opportunities for long-term growth. Talent2’s in-region competitors are largely global HRO providers, some span all service lines and others go head-to-head-on a single service like RPO.

So how does a ten-year-young company compete with many of the biggest names in HRO? Its competitors also have in-region locations but find it hard to match Talent2’s 40+ HRO-dedicated locations supporting 31 languages in 16 Asia-Pacific countries, including parts of the Middle East. In May 2013, Talent2 further expanded its operations in support of the Asia-Pacific region by opening a service delivery center in the Philippines.

Succeed With a HRO Competitive Edge

It is a core part of providing multi-country services to offer local subject-matter expertise on employment rules, regulations, taxation and compliance reporting, and all of the competitors can provide such services directly or through vetted local partners.

Talent2 demonstrates deep knowledge of local regulations as well as cultural and business environments. It knows the nuances that others may miss, which can help develop a service offer that is right on the mark for design and cost. For example, in the first instance, Talent2 addresses the following questions:

• What style of payroll service center support is preferred by employees in different areas of its region?
• What are the differences in an MNC headquartered in the West versus one headquartered in the target region?

As a result, 50% of its clients use multi-country services led by payroll and followed by RPO. Some start with one targeted country and add more over time.

Quality services and competitive pricing, along with its deep knowledge, provides a winning combination for Talent2, achieving a NelsonHall estimated ~10% growth in FY 2013.

Then Change to Remain Competitive

Talent2, which became a private company in 2012, is working its way through its stated development roadmap. The multi-pronged plan is focused on upgrading and rationalizing its technology platform to meet current and future client needs and going environmentally green to control internal costs and lower the total cost of ownership for its clients.

HR services are changing rapidly all over the world, as are client needs and interests, and no service provider can long rest on its laurels. Therefore, the question arises: does your HRO service provider’s competitive edge match your needs today, and will it tomorrow?

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Catching Up with ADP

Linda Merritt, HRO Research Analyst, NelsonHall

The recent passing of long-term U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg reminds us of his early role in the formation of what became ADP, a founding member of HR outsourcing. In the early 1950s he was engaged in selling insurance and sold a policy to two young New Jersey businessmen, Henry and Joseph Taub. The Taub’s were pioneering a then new concept; payroll outsourcing. The brothers knew payroll processing and Lautenberg knew sales and marketing. Lautenberg took a risk and joined the Taub brothers and together they created a new industry.

Establish Operating Principles

By the time the company incorporated in 1961 the three leaders established principles that still guide the company some 60 years later. Following are a few of the principles they put in place.

Focus on Business Markets that Offer Significant Growth Opportunities

ADP has always pursued growth through new market opportunities, both by expanding it service lines and by entering new geographies. Much of the early growth was through acquisitions, as well as organic growth. Lautenberg retired as CEO from ADP in 1982 having made over 100 acquisitions!

Over time, ADP became a global player. An early acquisition was GSI, a large payroll and HR services company in Europe. The latest 2013 acquisition is Payroll S.A. to expand LATAM payroll capabilities to Chile, Argentina, and Peru. In the last few years major acquisitions included Workscape (benefits), The RightThing (RPO) and SHPS (benefits).

Embrace Technological Change to Enhance Product and Service Offerings

By the early 1960s ADP had moved from manual operations to the pre-computer punch cards and on to leasing its first computer: an IBM 1401 mainframe. That willingness to continue to embrace the new is seen in ADP’s successful launch of a series of cloud-based SaaS HR technology and BPO service platforms, including Workforce Now (1k-20K employees), Vantage HCM (50-3k employees), and GlobalView for multi-nationals. Together, the three services support more than 40k clients.

The company has also launched extensive mobility options, including RUN powered by ADP for small business mobile payroll and ADP Mobile Solutions for access to a broad range of information and transactions spanning time and attendance to benefits and pay cards.

Attract and Retain Motivated and Talented People

ADP has grown into a $10bn global outsourcing business with one of only four remaining AAA credit ratings in the U.S. With ~570k clients across 125 countries, we know customers support its line-up of services and proprietary developed technologies. What about people? A few recent awards tell the story:

• Ranked second on Fortune’s 2012 list of America’s Most Admired Companies in Financial Data Service
• Ranked in the Top 50 on IDG’s Computerworld 2012 list of the 100 Best Places to Work in Information Technology (IT)
• Named to the 2012 Working Mother 100 Best Companies, for the third time.

We therefore need to ask the question of prospective purchasers: does your prospective or current HRO service provider have long-term guiding principles and can you see evidence of them in action? Because ADP does.

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Mercer on the Move

Linda Merritt, HRO Research Analyst, NelsonHall

This week I attended Mercer’s always well managed and informative analyst forum in Boston, MA. The meeting was focused on the talent consulting line of business.

Talent Management on the Rise

Mercer research indicates that human capital issues are a top CEO concern and managing talent is becoming a board of directors’ issue, moving beyond the traditional CEO succession planning and compensation to overall talent and workforce planning. The new Mercer Talent Barometer Survey, which was introduced at the 2013 World Economic Forum, reports that 60% of the 1,200 global companies surveyed are investing more in talent, but only 30% feel that their workforce plans are highly effective.

The business of talent has become both exciting and disruptive, with possible new entrants, globalization, media, innovations, and opportunities. (Talk about new entrants, eHarmony is considering getting into the talent matching game!)

With a possibility of double-digit growth, the talent group looked at how to grow across the talent value chain by expanding its services, tools and technology offerings for talent, rewards, and communications to increase growth and leverage Mercer’s depth of experience and capabilities.

The answer will become apparent over the next few months as more packaged solutions are launched that combine consulting, information, and technology to meet the needs of clients that want a less-customized consulting approach with “off-the-shelf” packaged and reusable services and tools.

Workforce Planning Versus HR Analytics

Some elements that will be leveraged are already mature and solid revenue producers. Surveys, benchmarks, and analytics for compensation/total rewards and job structures are a more than $200m line of business. Globalization of the revenues is already well on its way, with about equal distribution from North America, Europe, and emerging markets across 57 countries.

Instead of focusing on HR analytics, Mercer is emphasizing data acquisition and integration, data modeling, as well as data visualization as it applies to a wide range of workforce and data that drives business results. This may mean a consulting and outsourcing services engagement, it may mean workshops and training, or self-service use of integrated SaaS technology platforms with one or more Mercer products.

Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast

There are a lot of moving parts in Mercer’s strategy to create an integrated talent solutions portfolio.

It is brought together under the go-to-market Talent Impact label that includes new and existing products and services to forecast, engage, mobilize, reward and assess talent. Behind the scenes Mercer will be streamlining its own architecture into fewer and more integrated technology platforms to support the new offerings.

There is a lot to be done in a short time, but that is in alignment with the “think big, start small, and move fast” philosophy of Orlando Ashford, senior partner and president of Mercer’s talent business. Mercer is on the move!

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HRO and Innovation – Getting Practical

Linda Merritt, HRO Research Analyst, NelsonHall

Innovation in multi-process HRO (MPHRO) has been a topic of discussion, and some contention, since the early mega-deals that created the modern MPHRO market more than ten years ago.

Even in the early days there was a desire for innovation, but there was also a lack of common definitions and mutual understanding, along with difficulty in articulating innovation in contract language.

There was an even greater barrier – systems spaghetti. Early MPHRO clients had highly-customized ERP infrastructure, aging legacy systems, and third-party applications, much of which may have been non-centralized and non-integrated. Each major customer was in their own bubble of services and systems. It quickly became apparent that it would be hard to add new and different innovations within the constraints of the contracts and the technologies.

Platforms for Innovation

Major MPHRO service providers now have global multi-client service delivery and data centers with sophisticated workflow processes. Early clients have been moved bit-by-bit into the common support infrastructure, even if they remain on their own, licensed ERP systems.

Many HRO clients are ready for increased standardization and multi-client platforms to reduce cost and to improve performance. Innovative cloud-based SaaS and services platforms are opening up new services to the mid-market and parts of the large client market:

• Clients on a shared service platform benefit from ongoing incremental improvements
• Clients benefit from access to new products and services without paying a significant portion of the R&D needed for a one-off innovation.

Some tension between continuous improvement and innovation is natural, as the line between an “included enhancement” and what is “new and different to be added as an extra charge” looks very different depending on whether you are a buyer or a supplier.

Collaborative Innovation

Client user groups support both HRO improvement and innovation. Vendors were originally reluctant to let clients communicate with each other (partially because the clients might “gang-up” on the vendor – and sometimes they did!).

Companies like IBM and Xerox were leaders in developing client advisory boards. These interactive groups provide feedback on the services, give input into common needs, and even offer guidance on parts of the vendor’s development roadmap. They are not just “the voice of the customer”; they are also a built-in base of beta testers. Willingness to put some skin into the game is also a great way to test market viability and further strengthen relationships.

Infrastructure of Innovation

Buyers can develop their processes for HRO innovation in the following ways:

• Assess vendors for innovation capabilities as part of the selection process
• Develop the language and mutual expectations for measurable innovation upfront and include in the terms of contract. Include who pays, and when, determine if there will be vendor incentives, and clarify the client’s role
• Use the governance process to jointly monitor, manage, and measure improvements and innovations over the course of the relationship.

The good news is that we are beginning to build the HRO infrastructure for future innovation; common language, standardized multi-client platforms, and client user groups.

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HRO and Innovation – a Changing Dynamic

Linda Merritt, HRO Research Analyst, NelsonHall

Last week the Human Resources Outsourcing Association’s (HROA) Publications & Practices Committee held a webinar on collaborative innovation in HRO with industry experts Lisa Johnson, director of recruiting, North America at Gate Gourmet, Rolf Kleiner, senior vice president and chief innovation officer at Kelly Services, Inc. and Dr. Greg McLaughlin, senior vice president of research & development for Global Targeting, Inc.

Understanding Innovation

Innovation has been a conundrum for years for HRO buyers and suppliers. There are many ways to define the word ‘innovation’ and that makes it hard to be sure each party is speaking the same language. All three experts agreed that open discussions between clients and service providers are needed to develop a mutual understanding of what innovation means in the context of the relationship and contract.

Greg walked us through aspects of innovation range from the conceptual “innovation is an experience”, to the practical “innovation begins with a need and ends with an outcome that creates a competitive advantage.”

Lisa looks for HRO suppliers with the spirit of innovation – backed by experience. Rolf looks for employees who “rise above the white noise” to work on special innovation projects that also support talent management.

Innovation and Continuous Improvement

The HROA Buyers Group’s survey on innovation and continuous improvement showed there is a commonality in basic definition and understanding developing across the community of buyers, service providers, and advisors. From the words of HRO community members:

• Continuous improvement is an enhancement of a product, service or process that already exists:
  • Increased operational efficiency, improved user experience, ongoing, incremental, and step changes
  • Efficiency and effectiveness gains that “keep pace with the market”
• Innovation is something new and different:
  • Cutting edge, transformational, precedent setting, competitive advantage, disruptive, and dramatic
  • A significant and often transformational change that, once introduced, “you wonder how you ever lived without it.”

The HRO community is in agreement that continuous improvement and innovation should be a collaborative effort between the HRO service provider and the client:

• 92% of respondents agree that this collaborative effort is what should be happening between service provider and client, but only 59% see that as true now, with 40% of buyers and only 22% of providers agreeing that collaboration is actually happening in the marketplace right now
• 77% agreed that innovation should be a collaborative effort among the parties, with agreement from 100% of advisors, 60% of HR practitioners, and 83% of providers.

 The Innovation Gaps

Significant gaps – and therefore opportunities – remain:

• 75% of respondents said that continuous improvement is in the HRO contract
• Only 42% agreed that innovation is included in the HRO contract.

In the next blog I will be getting practical about innovation in HRO.

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The Seams Matter in HRO

To complete our review of HRO’s total cost of ownership (TCO), I want to expand on the factors that can either ramp-up or create a drag maximizing savings. The ADP studies on TCO do more than show the savings that real customers are achieving; the research also looks at why.

First, we need to understand what goes into TCO, which can help create a base case for outsourcing and in tracking the results. Included in the ADP TCO research are:

• Systems cost for initial implementation, upgrades (both amortized over three years), and system maintenance
• Direct fully loaded labor costs for associated administrative and IT employees
• Non-direct labor cost for overheads like facilities and corporate overheads
• Supplier or outsourcing costs.

Some of the costs are hidden in budgets other than HR’s, including IT, finance, or corporate. Remember that some of the employee costs are also hidden out in the field. We call them the shadow staff—people who support HR processes part-time. It’s important to understand the full cost of providing pre-outsourced services to be able to determine the difference in operating expenses after outsourcing.

There are also costs that result from the “seams.” Seams create gaps and can be found between technologies, processes, and people. These costs are seldom apparent or included in base cases, but they are real and can make the difference in 8-10% savings versus 20-30% savings.

Why does using a single vendor for multiple integrated processes create additional savings? With more services on one vendor integrated platform there are fewer interfaces to maintain, which costs less. When using various separate technologies and vendors, more complexity is in the system, and that generates an increased need to ensure that interfaces are maintained and addressed every time a change is introduced; it also increases the need for customizations and workarounds. When a payroll change was made, I could not understand why it took so long. It was because payroll data touches so many other HR processes that every calculation and interface needs to be addressed, tested, and ensured, many of which touch other suppliers and outsourcers, which adds even more time and cost.

Fewer systems, fewer non-integrated interfaces, and fewer vendors reduce complexity and can further reduce cost. The same concept is true for processes and people. Changing and standardizing internal processes and behaviors across the enterprise is hard. Persistence over time can make the difference in achieving 20% savings and 40% or greater savings.

The good news is that you do not have to do this all alone. Understand what you can expect from your primary HRO vendor(s) and what is included in standard pricing and what additional services are available at additional cost. HRO vendors like ADP, IBM, and Infosys, while specializing in various areas of HRO services, understand the importance of ongoing HRO governance, relationship management, change management, and step-by-step maturity along the way to maximizing the TCO benefits of HRO.

Linda Merritt, Research Analyst, HRO, NelsonHall

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