Strategic HRM

In my MBA course of study, a required class covered the strategic aspects of Human Resources Management. This course was extremely compelling to me; I came away believing that HR can and should be a proactive, essential, and core part of any organization.

The course argues that HRM practices ultimately determine much of a company's ultimate success or failure. Hiring practices, employee reviews, ratings and compensation schemes, and other elements of HRM have the power to shape the behavior of individual employees as well as the firm's culture. Successful companies retain the best employees and facilitate their professional growth, leading to high productivity.  

For those who accept this argument, it quickly becomes clear that it is a very large and complex undertaking to manage all of these things well.  An entirely new category of enterprise software is emerging to manage this complexity and make it easier to keep strategic perspective.

The two key firms in this new SHRM segment are Taleo, based in Dublin, CA and SuccessFactors, on the other side of the Bay in Burlingame. I'll write more about these two companies in my next entry.

In the meantime, here's something of interest:

press release: SuccessFactors Wins Deployment at Siemens AG With 420,000 Users

commentary by: Xactly's Christopher Cabrera

Welcome

I'm the Chair of the newly created SIG sponsored by eBIG, the East Bay Innovation Group (www.ebig.org) focusing on SaaS. I've created this blog to record my thoughts and perhaps share some of the research I am doing regarding Software as a Service and SaaS companies.

I make a distinction between SaaS as a delivery model and what I am calling "Pure Saas." From Wikipedia:

[Pure] SaaS applications differ from other applications delivered over the Internet in that SaaS solutions were developed specifically to leverage web technologies such as the browser, thereby making them web-native.

In other words, SaaS, in its purest form, is not merely a delivery model. SaaS represents a fundamental shift in how software will be written from now on.

Venture Capital money for software is all going to SaaS. SAP is working hard to release a SaaS offering for SMB (SAP Business ByDesign - article). Oracle is dramatically ramping up it's SaaS efforts (article). The trend is clear.

Hello World!