The attendees should not blame the consultants for being on stage. That is what they do. They educate. They coach. They aggregate the information from multiple clients and share the experience with their clients and with their audience. If you have a practitoner speak for 45 minutes, you get the wisdom of one practitoner from, typically, one company, with one point of view. A quality presentation from a consultant or a vendor, assuming they know this is not an opportunity to sell, can give you the wins and losses from multiple companies, industries, and projects. It should be a win/win situation.

I don’t like an infomercial when I attend a conference anymore than the next person. There is a place for the sales pitch, but not during a session track. I know that many vendors have shed a bad light on the reputation of good speakers because they have blown the trust of the audience by thinly veiling their presentation as a content driven story, then selling. That shouldn’t ruin the chance for a good speaker to present and deliver the goods. The bottom line? I love data and lessons learned. Consultants are usually willing to really tell the ugly parts of a story that get glossed over when somebody is talking about a pet project that they hung their career upon.

I have incredible stories of saving companies millions of dollars during a RIF (Reduction in Force), but it is much harder for a customer to stand up and tell a story about how she laid people off faster to save her company money. The corporate communication department doesn’t want employees knowing that their collective loss of a month’s salary was a huge savings for the company and due to a faster and more efficient reorganization. I seldom get a chance to share this story on stage because I don’t have a customer willing to take the risk (in this case, rightfully so) of exposing their story.

I can provide you with dozens of pros and cons for using a 9 Box representation while  working on your succession planning without selling my software. But, I have seldom seen a practitioner presentation give multiple views or methods to reach a broad group in an audience.

If you want more practitioners to speak at conferences, be one of them. Volunteer to speak on a panel if you don’t want to speak on your own. Look at what you are doing that is worth sharing with others and find a way to present it.

The reason conference organizers use vendors and consultants is because they are willing to raise their hand and tell the good stories. HR professionals, usually, are not willing. Even at vendor user conferences, it can be difficult to get users to commit. Their company often won’t let them speak because then it looks like an endorsement. That is a load of #$*&. If you are a satisfied customer and and found a product that serves your company well, then please share the story.

Don’t blame the consultants for being on the stage. Step up to the mic and tell your story. Look for the call for presentation requests for next year’s conferences and be a part of them. Or, when your favorite vendor or consultant asks you to present with them – PLEASE take them up on the offer.

Cheers,
Lois

As software options grow from “integrated” solutions to “best of breed” solutions, so many considerations must be taken into account. The cost of an integrated talent management suite may or may not be worth the one-stop shopping and support. The succession planning feature in the last version of the HRMS really has to be worth the longer implementation cycle it requires. All of this, and so much more, requires a great deal of thought and due diligence.

Some members of the human resource technology market use organizations like IHRIM to seek advice from their peers online or at their conference. Some organizations attend tradeshows by vendors or the Human Resource Executive’s HR Technology Conference to do their shopping. Everybody asks a multitude of questions of their vendors and perspective vendors to support their decisions. I have created a list of the top 8 items I think companies should add to their consideration when evaluating a software company. I think these points are all powerful components of the customer experience you will have once you make a software selection.

1. What is the tenure of the developers on the development team, and has there been a lot of turn over?

The experience on the team should foster a depth of understanding of the code and the customer issues involved. This also speaks of the respect the company gives to their important assets and how hard they work to keep their people.

2. What is the tenure of the support team?

Depth of knowledge of the product can be taught more rapidly than some can imagine. The reason this is a good question is that it demonstrates the respect the company gives to their support people, to make them feel it is worth staying in a mentally stimulating but exhausting job. When you are handling support calls, you are always “on.” You are on the “stage” even if the stage you’re performing on is only through the phone.

3. What percentage of technical support calls are due to people wanting to know how to do something and what percentage is for bugs and software that will perform as advertised?

This gives an indication whether or not customers are always finding bugs and problems in the software.

4. How are features and products designed and enhancements considered, and how involved are the executives?

It’s imperative to find evidence of customer participation in this process. There should also be a mechanism for sales people to bring requests and ideas into the development team and have them taken seriously. Enhancements and features are often specifics gathered from many sources, and the better plugged into the market the employees are, the more ideas can be gathered for consideration. Sometimes products or new features need to be designed before the customers realize they need them. The visionaries within the company decide how that occurs.

5. Who has owned the software code; how many times has the executive leadership changed for a product or a company?

It’s important that at least some of the developers on the team now also wrote the product for earlier versions. Let me put it this way, have you ever heard of a Monet being finished by another painter? Other than a relay, can anybody else finish a race for you? It is not always possible, but I like some consistency on the teams, somewhere along the line.

6. Have there been any litigation issues with customers?

That can happen even within the best companies. But something must have changed to prevent it from happening again.

7. Is the company actively involved in their industry?

Companies should give back to the community that buys from them. Organizations have to learn from their market place by participating in conferences, committees, associations, etc. This shows a willingness to learn and a respect for the market place.

8. Can you try out the software before you buy it to test for usability and stability?

Maybe some software is functional within a pilot program, maybe some might need a lab environment for testing. Be creative to verify that things are not just smoke and mirrors. You can seldom expect to work with a fully functional implementation without an investment, but the company must ensure your comfort level with the tools you will be investing your time and money on.

There are so MANY additional elements of a software evaluation. These are just a few that I think need to be added to the mix.

Cheers,
Lois