• talent intelligence
    Josh Bersin:AI最终会连通整个企业界吗?问问ServiceNow,他们的回答是肯定的。 本周,ServiceNow在其年度用户大会上迎来了超过22,000名IT和技术专业人士,同时公布了几项对其战略的重大增强。ServiceNow的目标是通过一个全新的工作流软件层整合企业资源,使之能够实现全面连接,进而让员工、顾客以及企业领导通过一个统一的界面访问信息和系统。 历史上,ServiceNow主要通过一系列案例管理和服务交付工具来实现这一目标,这些工具主要服务于IT部门。这个平台极大地帮助IT服务团队自动化和优化了他们日常面临的各种IT请求和问题处理。但随着公司的发展及其野心的扩大,尤其是在Bill McDermott这位我所见过的最杰出领导者的带领下,ServiceNow的发展已经远远超出了原有范畴。 在员工服务领域,ServiceNow即将推出一系列雄心勃勃的产品。首先,原名为HR的员工工作流服务现已扩展到包括工作场所管理、员工入职、调查问卷以及技能分析工具等,还包括从Hitch收购的人才智能平台、内部职位调动与招聘等功能。公司正在开发专门的招聘工作流程,以帮助企业简化面试安排、候选人管理以及内外部候选人关系协调等复杂问题。这个看似小众的领域实际上正变得越来越重要,因为越来越多的公司开始重视内部职位流动和动态。 但在我本周参加这次会议时,我注意到ServiceNow的战略叙述发生了显著变化。Bill McDermott花了近一个小时重申他之前的讲话,但这次他将重点从工作流转移到了人工智能。他基本上将原本的工作流引擎战略替换为了“商业转型的AI平台”,显然,他们不再仅仅关注“数字化转型”。 ServiceNow的商业转型AI平台 他们强调的一个非常重要的信息是,AI将成为企业变革的技术,这与数字化变革的影响相似。 几个月前我们还在讨论数字化转型,现在,这已成为过去式:未来的变革将借助AI实现。没错,从某种意义上来说,每种技术都能成为业务变革的工具,但AI带来的变革程度将远超过互联网本身。这一点我稍后将进一步解释。 ServiceNow将其视为一个集成了异构系统的集合,中心是一个AI引擎。会议上的一个关键案例是一家面包店,因应不同地点的天气变化而调整各种烘焙产品的生产。中心的AI系统能够感知这些变化,预测接下来的行动,并指导工厂调整生产策略,从而满足市场需求,提升销售额。这是一个非常吸引人的案例。 ServiceNow的AI架构 有趣的是,像SAP在20世纪80年代推广集成供应链管理,Qualtrics推广客户体验管理时讲的故事,似乎都在用不同的方法解决相似的问题。Bill McDermott凭借丰富的经验,将这一叙事应用于ServiceNow,展现了他作为CEO的卓越远见和沟通能力。 那么,AI真的能成为未来的企业协调系统吗,将各种遗留平台联系起来,提供解决方案吗? 我确信这将成为现实。虽然这不会一夜之间实现,但最终会发生。这种变革同样适用于我们的消费者生活。 我们日常工作中的效率之所以低下,往往是因为在寻找信息、处理文档、查询库存等活动中分心。如果能直接通过AI查询并获取答案,无疑会极大提升工作效率。(正如我尝试让Siri帮忙却发现它做不到的那样。) 正如我在本周的播客中讨论的,通过语音或文本提出问题比在Workday、Oracle、SAP等系统中四处查找要简单得多。我们曾努力使这些系统更加用户友好,现在,生成式AI的出现将为这些努力带来新的变革。 ServiceNow之所以能够很好地定位自己,有两个主要原因。 首先,他们长期以来一直在开发工作流工具,很多系统都设计得非常用户友好,即便是普通用户也能轻松使用。这就是为什么有这么多IT开发者选择使用ServiceNow的原因。(我在这周的大会上亲眼见证了这一点。) 其次,他们对这些后端系统的工作原理非常熟悉。ServiceNow的工程和产品团队对SAP、Oracle、Workday等系统进行的工作流程和交易处理有深入了解。 我与HR产品团队有过深入的交流,他们向我展示了如何将员工交易集成到ServiceNow平台中,以便构建生成式AI解决方案,与公司内部的系统进行交互。这一过程需要时间,也不会十全十美,但他们已经在正确的道路上迈出了坚实的步伐。这也引出了一个问题:我们是否应该将所有企业系统整合到这种新的界面下。 ServiceNow的HR产品 然而,这种架构也有潜在的缺点。 首先,成本较高。你现在不仅要购买ServiceNow这一复杂的企业平台,还要维护你现有的复杂企业平台。Oracle、SAP、Workday、Salesforce和Hubspot等都在尝试提供类似服务。你已经为他们的建设付出了巨大的成本,现在又要为ServiceNow付费。ServiceNow的产品不便宜,这从他们的收入就可以看出。 其次,这可能会造成系统的脆弱性。ServiceNow的工作流本身可能会因为业务规则的嵌入而变得过时,你必须管理许多小型应用程序,这些应用程序位于你的其他应用程序之上。当这些应用程序更新或被替换时(很多软件公司被收购后,其产品线会发生变化),作为客户的你需要重新配置在ServiceNow中所做的设置。 这让我回想起我在IBM的日子,当时我在主机世界工作,我们的应用程序都是定制开发的,我们有大量的COBOL程序员在构建这些系统。我曾与数据处理部门合作,探讨他们是如何在公司内部整合所有这些系统的。现在,你可能需要在ServiceNow基础设施中构建类似的工具。 如果我现在能与Bill McDermott面对面交谈,我相信他会说:“这是一种更有效的运营方式,我们ServiceNow将为你自动化这一切。”我相信这将随着时间的推移逐渐成为现实。但这也引出了一个问题:你希望将多少组织功能和经验整合进ServiceNow,而不是选择其他核心系统? 每当我们需要构建新功能时,我们都必须决定将其部署在何处。我们是应该将职业管理平台部署在Workday、Eightfold、Degreed还是Cornerstone?你的决定将决定你依赖于哪个供应商及其发展路线图。 考虑到ServiceNow已经取得了巨大的成功,许多公司都在说:“既然我们已经为此付出了代价,那就让我们继续吧。” 生成式AI能否实现这一承诺?例如,在天气变暖时,它能否提前告诉你需要烘焙更多的面包圈? 根据我们通过Galileo®获得的AI经验,我认为答案是肯定的。 这项技术的重要性堪比电力的发明。虽然这听起来有些夸张,但我是认真的。我从未见过如此自我发展、强大并且发展迅速的技术。我们正处于生成式AI进入市场的初期阶段。 在未来几年内,生成式AI很可能会改善这些连接,开发代码,并优化这些端到端的“单一视窗系统”。Google正在消费者领域推进此类工作,Microsoft则在办公生产力领域努力。如果ServiceNow能成为企业级应用中的佼佼者,那将不足为奇。
    talent intelligence
    2024年05月10日
  • talent intelligence
    是时候重塑人才招聘了 -Research Shows It’s Time To Reinvent Talent Acquisition Josh Bersin 的文章 "研究表明,是时候重塑人才招聘了 "强调了人才招聘亟需进行的变革。由于只有 32% 的人力资源高管参与战略规划,而且许多人觉得自己只是个接单员,因此这篇文章呼吁进行战略改革。在劳动力短缺和急需技能型招聘的情况下,目前削减成本和减少招聘力度的方法与对技能型专业人才日益增长的需求相矛盾。文章敦促企业将人才招聘作为一项重要的战略职能,利用现代技术并将其与学习和发展相结合,以提高效率并关注内部人才流动。 原文如下: This week we published a disappointing research study, Talent Acquisition at a Crossroads. The study, conducted in partnership with AMS, points out that talent acquisition leaders (this is a senior position) are largely left out of their company’s strategic planning process and many feel they operate as “order takers.” In today’s world of labor and skills shortages, this is a wakeup call for change. Here’s the data: Among these 130+ HR executives only 32% are involved in any form of strategic workforce planning, 42% believe their company has no workforce plan at all, and 46% say “they’re running around to keep up.” And when layoffs do occur, often the recruiters go first. (Witness Tesla this week.) All this is happening in a world where 58% of companies feel skills shortages are significantly impacting their business plans, more than three-quarters believe they must transform their talent practices to grow, and “skills-based hiring” is a top priority yet difficult to implement. Here’s the paradox: companies are cutting their talent acquisition spending at the same time CEOs feel that skills shortages are getting worse. What’s going on? Talent Acquisition Needs A Reinvention Let’s just face it: recruiting as a business function has to change. Once considered the “staffing department,” where companies posted jobs and scanned resumes, talent acquisition has become highly strategic operation. What skills do we need? How do we find people who will fit our culture? What internal candidates should fill our key positions? Who are the right leaders for us to hire? Unfortunately, almost 80% of talent acquisition functions are quite tactical. PwC’s CEO survey found that CEOs rate “hiring” as the third most bureaucratic process in their companies, tied with “too many emails” and “too many meetings” as a time-wasting process. And that explains why two-thirds of TA leaders are being asked to cut costs. I had a conversation last week with a former TA leader for one of the Big Three automakers. He told me that in the fervor to hire staff for EV engineering he was asked to hire “any engineer he could find, regardless of skill,” because the company was in such a hurry. No time for skills assessment, competitive planning, or even location analysis. Just “go out there and hire engineers.” We have been studying the auto industry as part of our GWI study and found that important EV roles (reliability engineer or power plant engineer, for example), are quite specialized and hard to find. Strategic recruiting departments need to understand these roles and source these individuals carefully. Just hiring engineering grads from a local community college is not going to move this needle. (Consider the data by Draup on what these roles are. Talent Acquisition teams with talent intelligence skills can pinpoint who to hire.) And it gets worse. In our Dynamic Organization research we found that high performing companies focus heavily on internal hiring, talent intelligence tools to find hidden talent, and continuous internal development to fill skills gaps. We can’t simply throw job requisitions over to the recruiting function any more: the people we need may be buried inside the company. This week Tesla announced a layoff of 10% of their workforce. Was their time to balance and redeploy talent internally? Absolutely not. According to my sources every business unit had to let 10% go, and and many of the people being fired were talent acquisition leaders, the very people who help with these issues. We talk with many HR executives and there is an enlightened group. Companies that understand this issue (about one in eight) have elevated Talent Acquisition to a strategic function, they merge or integrate TA with L&D, and they redefine their recruiters as “talent advisors.” Mastercard, as a leader, just renamed their recruiters as “Career Coaches,” demonstrating their role in helping people find the right jobs. Despite the onslaught of AI, this role is becoming even more human-centric. High-powered recruiting teams source internal candidates, understand company culture, and have a deep knowledge of jobs, roles, and organizational dynamics. When well supported and trained, these professionals are strategic advisors, not just “recruiters.” And companies that understand this often outsource or automate much of the administration in recruiting. Technology plays a major role in this reinvention. Most large companies have dozens of legacy systems, many of which make the candidate experience difficult. When organizations focus on modernizing and streamlining their technology, talent acquisition can become 10-100X more efficient. This, in turn, gives recruiters and talent advisors the time to search for the right skills, carefully select the best candidates, and focus on internal hiring and development as a strategy. Technology Is Here But Not The Entire Answer Of all the HR technology markets, recruiting is the most innovative of all. New AI-powered systems like HiredScore (just acquired by Workday), Paradox (leader in conversational AI), Eightfold, Gloat, Draup, and Lightcast (pioneers in talent intelligence), and many others can reduce time to hire from months to weeks and weeks to days. But none of this technology works if the Talent Acquisition team is left on an island. In the last year I have met with more than 50 heads of talent acquisition and once the door is closed and we talk honestly, they always tell me the same thing. “We are not treated as a strategic function, we are being asked to cut costs, and we are constantly running from fire to fire to keep executives happy.” This type of “service-delivery” focus simply will not work in the new economy. What should companies do? As part of our Systemic HR initiative, we help companies evolve their TA Function to operate in a more strategic way. Organizations like Bayer, Verizon, and many others have elevated the role of recruiter to talent advisor, they’re building skills in talent intelligence, and they’re integrating the recruiting function with L&D, career management, and employee engagement. I’ve always felt that recruiting is the most important things HR professionals do. If we can’t get the “right” people into the company, no amount of management can recover. But what does “right” mean? And how can we source, locate, and attract these particular people? This is a highly strategic operation, and one that must integrate with internal mobility, culture, and employee experience. I encourage you to read our Systemic HR research, join our Academy, or reach out to us or AMS for advice. In this new era of talent and skills shortages, we simply cannot run recruiting in this tactical way any longer.
    talent intelligence
    2024年04月24日
  • talent intelligence
    Josh Bersin 谈Workday的创新论坛:Why I’m Bullish On Workday Again: The Innovation Summit 本周Workday创新峰会揭示了公司由产品主导向市场主导的战略转型。Workday一直以云技术为核心,自主开发了面向对象的数据系统和全球安全架构。然而,随着市场的演进和竞争的加剧,公司在新任CEO Carl Eschenbach的领导下,开始转向市场导向的商业模式。 在这次转型中,Workday开始拓宽其业务模型,更加开放地与合作伙伴合作。公司不再限制API的使用和合作伙伴的接入,而是致力于构建一个像苹果iPhone那样的开放平台,允许更多的行业应用集成到其系统中。这一策略旨在提供更加灵活和综合的企业解决方案,以适应不同行业的需求。 同时,Workday也大力投入到人工智能技术的开发中,推出了基于企业自有数据的微型机器学习模型(micro-LLMs),并在全球范围内调整这些模型以满足本地客户的需求。此外,Workday正在将其人才智能市场向外扩展,通过与多个行业解决方案提供商的合作,强化其在健康护理和金融等领域的业务。 AI技术的应用不仅仅限于技术层面的改进,Workday还通过这些技术优化了用户体验,使得各种任务的完成变得更加便捷。例如,在Workday平台上,用户可以看到AI图标,通过点击即可获得智能辅助完成工作。 在人才管理方面,Workday引入了许多新功能,如智能工作架构中心(Intelligent Job Architecture Hub)以及加强的Workday人才市场,这些都是为了帮助企业简化和改进职位描述和技能需求。 此外,Workday的领导层也展现出了更开放和实用的态度,这对公司未来的发展是一个积极的信号。总的来说,Workday的这一系列战略调整,旨在更好地适应快速变化的市场需求,提高公司的竞争力和市场份额。 Josh Bersin 写了这篇文章,强烈推荐给大家了解下:以下是中英文的供参考   This week I attended the Workday Innovation Summit and there’s a lot to discuss. Having just celebrated its 19th birthday, the company is embarking on a major transformation . And it’s not just product innovation that’s happening, the company is greatly expanding its business model. Workday Has Been A Product Led Company Much of Workday’s success goes back to its focus on being “born for the cloud.” Rather than build business apps in a typical database-centric architecture, Workday developed its own object-oriented data system, integrated workflow system, and global security architecture from scratch. Nobody knew the cloud would be so big nor that we’d have “superscalers” like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon as platforms. Nor could we predict the advent of global data governance, AI, or data and apps distributed across thousands of servers. Well Workday, led by Aneel Bhusri, pulled this off. And not only did they sell architecture, they sold “the Power of One.” In Workday, unlike other ERP business systems, all the applications were designed to work together. No acquisitions, no integrations, no open systems: just a beautifully designed, easy-to-use, scalable enterprise application. (I noted that it reminded me of the i-Phone at the time: beautiful, easy to use, and closed.) This “beautiful walled garden” served Workday well. While Oracle, SAP, and other vendors struggled to redesign their client-server apps and acquire missing pieces, Workday grew like wildfire and is now a global ERP vendor with more than $7.3 Billion in recurring revenue, 10,000+ enterprise and mid-market customers, and a brand known for trust, customer focus, and quality. And all this happened with a founding team that was largely still in place. Last year Workday’s co-founder and CEO Aneel Bhusri decided it was time to step back and the company brought in Carl Eschenbach to be CEO. And now things are starting to change. The company is becoming a “markets-led” business. The “product-led” focus for Workday was both good and bad. Workday was not easy to integrate, there were few APIs for developers, and the company limited its partners. As part of its mission to be pure, Workday prevented many vendors from “partnering” and forced integrators to pay large fees and certify dedicated teams. This “scarcity” strategy created high demand and high prices, and customers actually appreciated it. All was good, until things started to change. Today, with many competing vendors at all levels of the ERP stack, Workday is becoming more pragmatic. And as I’ll explain below, they’re changing their message from “The Power of One” to “Workday is a Platform.” Workday Is Becoming A Markets-Led Company The HCM and Financials market is complex. There are dozens of sub-markets, application areas, and industry solutions to address. An HR system designed for a large hospital system is unlikely to need the same features as a system for a global insurance company. So Workday started to realize its system, while integrated and highly functional, couldn’t keep up. And within HR itself there are hundreds of vendors who sell recruiting tools, career systems, learning platforms, engagement tools, mobile apps, benefits, and data analytics systems. And each of these sub-markets are being transformed by AI. (Our upcoming research on Talent Intelligence, for example, will show you how fragmented this is.) Workday was having a hard time keeping up. The company embarked on a series of acquisitions (Platfora, Mediacore, Adaptive Insights, VNDLY, Peakon, HiredScore, and others). This forced the product teams to focus on user interface and architectural integration, somewhat slowing the feature expansion. And many partners who wanted to integrate with Workday (which customers demand) were ignored. Well under Carl’s leadership, all this is changing. Workday is now fully open to partners, ISV’s, resellers, and industry solutions. Almost 25% of the entire Innovation Summit was focused on Workday’s open partner strategy. And the big message was this: Workday is not a “system,” it’s a “platform.” What does this mean? It means that if you buy Workday you’re buying a platform like the i-Phone. It works amazingly well, it’s safe, and will sport a family of industry apps to help you build a total solution. This worked for Apple and Salesforce and it’s likely to work well for Workday. SAP has a similar offering, but its level of integration is far more complex. This lets Workday move deeply into new domains and sub markets. (Workday highlighted its new integrations with Shiftwizard in healthcare, Auditoria and Kyriba in finance, and many others. These are not just ISV relationships: Workday is reselling these products. But there’s much more. Workday Unveils Its AI Strategy At last year’s event Workday really waffled about AI. They gave us a lot of arm waving discussions of “Workday AI” but it didn’t make a lot of sense. Well they’ve figured it out, so let me briefly explain. Enterprises don’t want AI for its own sake and they definitely don’t want crowdsourced data which creates legal risk. They want AI solutions that work on their own data. Well Workday has now embarked on a wide variety of AI features, each delivered through its own “micro-LLMs” trained on a company’s own data. (Very similar to how we implement Galileo, our AI HR expert assistant.) And for larger AI capabilities they use a global LLM with local weights and biases for each client. (This is similar to how the Microsoft Copilot works.) So your enterprise data trains your “version” of Workday without sharing any data with others. In some cases (the Skills Cloud, for example), customers can opt to share data anonymously. This lets Workday build a “global skills database” which everyone can share. Vendors like Eightfold, Lightcast, and Draup do this at a massive scale (far beyond what Workday does today), so Workday is now moving into this “talent intelligence” market. (Lightcast is now a Workday Skills Cloud partner.) Many of these features are simple (rewriting a job description or matching invoices to purchase orders) but powerful. All over Workday you now see a little AI icon to help you complete a task. In fact Workday has already re-engineered about 280 different tasks and is working on around 2,000 in total. Customers constantly tell me Workday is difficult to use, and it’s largely just because the system is quite complex. These AI-enhanced experiences are slowly going to make the system more and more “I-Phone like.” Many New Talent Features Now that the product teams have a strong underlying architecture, they’re going crazy with features. Workday is introducing a new “Intelligent Job Architecture Hub,” for example, to help companies simplify and improve job names, levels, descriptions, and skills. (It also shows trending skills in the external market.) Everyone is going to use this. The Workday Talent Marketplace, which is not widely used yet, is being enhanced through HiredScore: employees will get Teams or Slack messages recommending jobs. This is an example of “orchestration,” a new buzz-word among AI systems. (Imagine AI booking your trip including hotels, air, car, etc.) The Workday Manager Hub now shows managers detailed employee engagement data (Peakon has more than 18 billion responses now) and will gives managers “Conversation Starters” to help them start performance coaching, all based on feedback from other employees. There is a major focus on contingent, gig, and contract workers. For the first time I believe Workday can handle most professional services businesses (including pricing projects based on staff pricing), healthcare and retail (AI-powered scheduling and shift management), and many deskless worker needs. It turns out that healthcare and retail are two of Workday’s biggest industries, so these talent-constrained industries are now a good market. Let me talk briefly about HiredScore. This company built an in-line “talent orchestration system” that uses AI to show recruiters who is most suited for a job, explain why it made its decisions, and use this data to find and source internal candidates automatically. While this type of technology is widely used in systems like Eightfold, Beamery, Phenom, and others, the HiredScore system is workflow-oriented. Recruiters love it and it greatly improves hiring speed, quality, and internal mobility. And by the way, despite lots of complaints from users, Workday Recruiting is starting to dominate the ATS market. With more than 4,000 customers it’s becoming a more “safe buy” as companies rationalize their old ATS systems. As David Somers (head of product) put it, HiredScore is the acquisition that “keeps on giving.” In other words the AI team at HiredScore is now going to work with Workday’s Skills Cloud team to evolve and improve that system. The Skills Cloud, while beautifully visioned and named, has had limited success. With HiredScore’s help (and the leadership of Athena Karp, founder and CEO), this system will get more attention. (That includes more content partnerships and a broader set of tools.) This means Workday’s recruiting system (which is one of the most critical business systems in today’s talent shortages) is now highly coupled with the internal mobility and job architecture system, something customers desperately want. I still believe systems like Eightfold and Gloat are far more advanced, but Workday is catching up. Management Culture And Trust And then there’s the biggest issue of all: Workday’s leadership. I spent some time chatting with Carl Eschenbach and he has a very different persona than Aneel Bhusri. Carl clearly wants Workday to go after new markets: new geographies (EMEA, Asia, Japan), new industries (healthcare, pharma, retail), the mid-market segment, and channel partners. Workday is now actively searching for resellers, mid-market integrators, and ISVs to round out the solution. As always, the leadership team at Workday is highly aligned and much more pragmatic. Many times I would attend a Workday event and feel a slight sense of arrogance at the top. As with all successful software companies, it’s easy to think you’re always right when things are going well. I believe this has changed. I actually found Workday to be humble, attentive to new issues, and open-minded to new ideas, new partners, and self-inspection. This, to me, is a bullish sign. And from top to bottom the company is focused on trust, AI safety, and customer service. One more thing I want to point out: the “Workday as a Platform” idea. The company now realizes that this highly proprietary, business-optimized system can no longer be sold as a beautifully walled garden. The company is building a massive set of easy to use development tools, expanded APIs, and programs to attract software developers, partners, and integrators. Now, when customers ass for functionality Workday can look for a partner to resell or embed. The company is losing its “if we didn’t build it we don’t trust it” mentality. I also believe this leadership team really likes each other. As many of you know, team culture is massively important in the tech space. Things change so fast and there are so many competitors the company has to stay aligned. I sense everyone really understands what’s going on. Growth Potential Will Workday accelerate its growth above its respectable 17% per year? Well the company has challenges. Many of its legacy clients have found a plethora of advanced tools around Workday and I know large companies that are switching back to SAP. And despite all the new features, Workday is an older, complicated, rigid system. That all said, I think the company is managing its transformation well. Let’s watch to see how all this plays out.   本周我参加了Workday创新峰会,有很多内容值得讨论。在刚刚庆祝了其成立19周年之际,该公司正在进行重大转型。而且,不仅仅是产品创新在进行,公司的业务模式也在大幅扩展。 Workday一直是一家以产品为导向的公司 Workday的成功很大程度上归功于其专注于“为云而生”。Workday没有采用典型的以数据库为中心的架构来构建商业应用程序,而是从零开始开发了自己的面向对象的数据系统、集成的工作流系统和全球安全架构。没有人知道云计算会如此重要,也没有人预料到我们会有像Google、Microsoft和Amazon这样的“超级计算”平台。我们也无法预测全球数据治理、AI或者跨数千服务器分布的数据和应用程序的出现。 在Aneel Bhusri的领导下,Workday做到了这一点。他们不仅销售架构,还销售了“一体化的力量”。在Workday中,不同于其他ERP商业系统,所有应用程序都被设计为可以协同工作。没有收购,没有集成,没有开放系统:只有一个设计精美、易于使用、可扩展的企业应用程序。(我注意到这让我想起了当时的iPhone:美观、易用且封闭。) 这个“美丽的围墙花园”为Workday服务良好。而Oracle、SAP和其他供应商在重新设计其客户端-服务器应用程序和获取缺失部分时挣扎,Workday却如野火般成长,现在已成为一家全球ERP供应商,拥有超过73亿美元的经常性收入、超过10,000个企业和中端市场客户,以及以信任、客户关注和质量而闻名的品牌。而且,这一切都是在创始团队基本上仍在位的情况下发生的。 去年,Workday的联合创始人兼CEO Aneel Bhusri认为是时候退居幕后了,公司聘请了Carl Eschenbach担任CEO。现在,事情开始改变。该公司正在成为一家“以市场为导向”的企业。 Workday的“以产品为导向”的重点既有好处也有坏处。Workday不容易集成,开发者可用的API很少,公司也限制了其合作伙伴。作为其保持纯净使命的一部分,Workday阻止了许多供应商的“合作”,并迫使集成商支付高额费用并认证专门团队。这种“稀缺”策略创造了高需求和高价格,而客户实际上对此感到满意。 一切都很好,直到情况开始改变。如今,随着ERP堆栈各层面的竞争供应商越来越多,Workday正在变得更加务实。正如我将在下文中解释的那样,他们正在将信息从“一体化的力量”变为“Workday是一个平台”。 Workday正在成为一家以市场为导向的公司 人力资源管理(HCM)和财务市场非常复杂。有数十个子市场、应用领域和行业解决方案需要解决。一个为大型医院系统设计的HR系统不太可能需要与为全球保险公司设计的系统相同的功能。因此,Workday开始意识到,尽管其系统集成且功能强大,但它无法跟上。 而且,在HR本身,有数百家供应商销售招聘工具、职业系统、学习平台、参与工具、移动应用程序、福利和数据分析系统。每一个子市场都在被AI转型。(例如,我们即将发布的关于人才智能的研究将向您展示这是多么的碎片化。) Workday很难跟上。该公司开始了一系列收购(Platfora、Mediacore、Adaptive Insights、VNDLY、Peakon、HiredScore等)。这迫使产品团队专注于用户界面和架构集成,从而在某种程度上减缓了功能扩展。许多希望与Workday集成的合作伙伴(客户需求)被忽视了。 在Carl的领导下,所有这些都在改变。Workday现在对合作伙伴、独立软件供应商、经销商和行业解决方案完全开放。整个创新峰会将近25%的时间专注于Workday的开放合作伙伴策略。而且重要的信息是:Workday不是一个“系统”,它是一个“平台”。 这是什么意思?这意味着如果您购买Workday,您就是在购买一个像iPhone那样的平台。它运行非常好,安全,并将配备一系列行业应用程序以帮助您构建完整解决方案。这对Apple和Salesforce有效,对Workday来说可能也会很有效。SAP也有类似的产品,但其集成程度要复杂得多。这让Workday能够深入新的领域和子市场。(Workday突出显示了其在医疗保健领域与Shiftwizard、在财务领域与Auditoria和Kyriba的新集成等。这些不仅仅是独立软件供应商关系:Workday正在转售这些产品。 但还有更多。 Workday公开其AI战略 在去年的活动中,Workday对AI真的犹豫不决。他们给了我们很多关于“Workday AI”的手势讨论,但这并没有太多意义。好吧,他们已经想通了,让我简单解释一下。 企业并不是因为AI本身而想要AI,他们绝对不想要可能产生法律风险的众包数据。他们想要的是可以在自己的数据上运行的AI解决方案。 现在,Workday已经开始了各种AI功能,每个功能都通过其自己的“微型大语言模型”交付,这些模型是在公司自己的数据上训练的。(这与我们实现的Galileo,我们的AI HR专家助手非常相似。)对于更大的AI功能,他们使用一个全球大语言模型,为每个客户本地调整权重和偏差。(这与Microsoft Copilot的工作方式类似。)因此,您的企业数据训练您的“版本”的Workday,而不与其他人共享任何数据。 在某些情况下(例如技能云),客户可以选择匿名分享数据。这让Workday能够构建一个“全球技能数据库”,每个人都可以分享。像Eightfold、Lightcast和Draup这样的供应商在大规模(远超Workday目前的做法)上做到了这一点,所以Workday现在正在进入这个“人才智能”市场。(Lightcast现在是Workday技能云的合作伙伴。) 这些功能中的许多都很简单(重写工作描述或将发票与采购订单匹配),但功能强大。在Workday的各个地方,您现在都可以看到一个小AI图标,帮助您完成任务。事实上,Workday已经重新设计了大约280个不同的任务,并且正在处理大约2,000个总任务。 客户不断告诉我Workday很难使用,这主要是因为系统相当复杂。这些通过AI增强的体验将逐渐使系统越来越像“iPhone”。 许多新的人才功能 现在产品团队拥有了强大的底层架构,他们正疯狂地推出功能。例如,Workday正在推出一个新的“智能工作架构中心”,以帮助公司简化并改进工作名称、级别、描述和技能。(它还显示外部市场中的趋势技能。)每个人都将使用这个。 Workday人才市场尚未广泛使用,现在正在通过HiredScore进行增强:员工将通过Teams或Slack消息获得推荐工作。这是“编排”的一个例子,这是AI系统中的一个新的流行词。(想象一下AI预订您的旅行,包括酒店、飞机、汽车等。) Workday经理中心现在向经理们显示详细的员工参与数据(Peakon现在有超过180亿的反馈)并将给经理提供“对话开始器”,以帮助他们开始绩效辅导,所有这些都基于其他员工的反馈。 还有一个主要关注点是临时工、零工和合同工。我相信Workday首次可以处理大多数专业服务业务(包括基于员工定价的定价项目)、医疗保健和零售(AI驱动的排班和班次管理),以及许多无固定工作场所的工人的需求。事实证明,医疗保健和零售是Workday的两个最大行业,所以这些人才匮乏的行业现在是一个好市场。 让我简要谈谈HiredScore。这家公司建立了一个内嵌的“人才编排系统”,使用AI向招聘人员展示最适合某个职位的人员,解释为什么会做出这样的决定,并使用这些数据来找到并自动获取内部候选人。虽然这种技术在Eightfold、Beamery、Phenom等系统中广泛使用,但HiredScore系统是以工作流为导向的。招聘人员非常喜欢它,它极大地提高了招聘的速度、质量和内部流动性。 顺便说一句,尽管用户有很多抱怨,Workday招聘正在开始主导ATS市场。现在已有超过4,000个客户,随着公司对旧ATS系统进行合理化,它正在成为一个更“安全的购买”。 正如产品负责人David Somers所说,HiredScore是一笔“源源不断的收益”。换句话说,HiredScore的AI团队现在将与Workday的技能云团队合作,以发展和改进该系统。技能云虽然构想得很美,名字很漂亮,但成功有限。在HiredScore的帮助下(以及创始人兼CEO Athena Karp的领导下),这个系统将得到更多关注。(这包括更多的内容合作伙伴和一套更广泛的工具。) 这意味着Workday的招聘系统(这是当今人才短缺中最关键的商业系统之一)现在与内部流动性和工作架构系统高度耦合,这正是客户迫切需要的。我仍然认为像Eightfold和Gloat这样的系统更先进,但Workday正在迎头赶上。 管理文化和信任 然后是最大的问题之一:Workday的领导层。我花了一些时间与Carl Eschenbach聊天,他与Aneel Bhusri的个性非常不同。Carl明确希望Workday进军新市场:新地理区域(EMEA、亚洲、日本)、新行业(医疗保健、制药、零售)、中端市场细分市场和渠道合作伙伴。Workday现在正在积极寻找经销商、中端市场集成商和独立软件供应商来完善解决方案。 一如既往,Workday的领导团队高度一致,更加务实。很多时候,我参加Workday的活动,都能感受到顶层有些自负。就像所有成功的软件公司一样,当事情进展顺利时,很容易认为自己总是对的。 我认为这已经改变了。我实际上发现Workday很谦虚,对新问题很关注,对新想法、新合作伙伴和自我检查持开放态度。对我来说,这是一个看涨的信号。而且从上到下,公司都专注于信任、AI安全和客户服务。 我还想指出一件事:关于“Workday作为一个平台”的想法。该公司现在意识到,这种高度专有的、业务优化的系统不再能作为一个美丽的围墙花园来销售。公司正在构建一套大型的易于使用的开发工具、扩展的API和吸引软件开发者、合作伙伴和集成商的计划。现在,当客户询问功能时,Workday可以寻找一个合作伙伴来转售或嵌入。公司正在失去“如果我们没有构建它,我们就不信任它”的心态。 我还相信这个领导团队真的很喜欢彼此。正如你们许多人所知,团队文化在科技领域非常重要。事情变化如此之快,竞争对手如此之多,公司必须保持一致。我感觉每个人都真正理解发生了什么。 增长潜力 Workday能否将其每年17%的尊重增长率加速?好吧,公司面临挑战。它的许多老客户发现在Workday周围有大量的先进工具,我知道一些大公司正在回归SAP。尽管所有这些新功能,Workday仍然是一个较老、复杂、僵化的系统。 话虽如此,我认为公司正在很好地管理其转型。让我们拭目以待,看看这一切将如何发展。
    talent intelligence
    2024年04月19日
  • talent intelligence
    Josh Bersin:3400亿美元的企业学习的市场将迎来巨大变革 作者:Josh Bersin  本文探讨了企业学习行业的演变,特别是人工智能如何引领这一行业的巨变。企业每年在员工培训和发展上的开支超过3400亿美元,从传统的课堂培训到在线学习,再到以技能为中心的学习,行业一直在不断发展。现在,人工智能预计将彻底改变公司的学习管理系统(LMS)和学习体验平台(LXP),通过个性化和动态生成内容来提高学习效率和效果。文章强调了适应这种变化的重要性,以及AI在企业培训和人才发展中的潜力。 企业在员工培训和发展上的年支出超过3400亿美元,平均每名员工每年花费超过1500美元。这笔巨额开支支撑着一个全球产业,涉及数百家内容和技术公司,现正站在重新定义的风口浪尖。请允许我详细解释这一过程。 从电子学习到集体学习再到自主学习的演变 20世纪90年代末,随着互联网的崛起,以传统教室授课为主的培训产业发生了翻天覆地的变化。企业和内容提供者纷纷开发“电子学习”课程,试图在线复制面对面教学的体验。那是一个充满创新的时期,虽然今天看来有些过时,但它孕育了像Skillsoft(并购了众多竞争对手)、Cornerstone(同样并购了众多竞争对手)以及一大批传统的学习管理系统(LMS,例如Plateau、SumTotal、Learn.com、Pathlore等)公司,这些公司最终都被并购。 如今,LMS市场的规模已超过200亿美元,这一切几乎都是在线培训推动的结果。虽然这些系统可能看起来笨重,但它们对全球每家公司的交易和记录保持都至关重要。 当公司争相购买LMS系统——这是一个投资者非常关注的热门市场时,他们发现一个庞大的课程目录并不实用。因此,他们开始构建一套特征,我称之为“以人才为驱动的学习”,包括基于能力的学习、与职业角色一致的课程和职业发展路径系统。这些特征被添加到LMS中,使得这些系统不仅仅是教育工具,更像是“人力资源系统”,从而促使供应商扩展到更多的人才管理功能。 早期的开拓者Saba和Cornerstone开始推出绩效管理工具。回顾起来,这些尝试可能看起来有些简单,但当时它们代表了一个重大突破。突然之间,公司不再单独购买LMS系统,而是选择购买包含多个功能的“人才管理套件”,这迫使专注于LMS的供应商开始涉足招聘、目标管理乃至薪酬管理。他们可能没有意识到,放弃核心业务最终会导致他们被市场颠覆。 随着Facebook(2004年)、YouTube(2005年)和Twitter(2006年)的相继出现,内容世界发生了巨变。视频、文章和专家意见变得触手可及,那些笨重、以课程目录为导向的LMS系统显得格外难以使用。因此,随着公司寻求新的解决方案,原本投入巨资于人才管理的LMS市场开始显露老态。学习体验平台(LXP)市场随着Pathgather(2010年)、Degreed(2012年)、EdCast(2013年)的诞生而兴起,企业转向这一新兴领域投资。(更多历史,请参阅《从电子学习到集体学习》。) 2010年代初,整个行业的理念是尝试模仿Google,打造一个既具有Twitter式动态性又拥有YouTube式丰富内容的企业学习系统。传统的LMS和人才管理系统逐渐过时,供应商在缓慢的增长中寻求出路,最终合并为几家大型玩家。 随后,微学习的概念兴起。iPhone成为了视频播放平台(2008年),Instagram(2010年)、Snapchat(2011年)及后来的TikTok(2015年)向我们展示了短视频和“微学习”可以是多么的有趣。过长的两小时在线课程变得不受欢迎,因此LXP供应商开始扩展自己的产品线。随着公司将越来越多的内容投入到LXP中,我们意识到需要一种方法来寻找、精准定位并个性化所有这些学习材料。 此变化自然引发了内容市场的爆发。LinkedIn、Coursera、Udemy、OpenSesame、Go1等供应商决定开拓这个领域,推动了新材料的狂热消费。自那以后,内容市场继续繁荣发展,尽管仍然主要由小型玩家主导,但被更大的聚合商所整合,这些聚合商销售并分发多种品牌。 (顺便提一下,Workday在2016年收购了视频公司Mediacore,以抓住这波趋势。由于缺少核心LMS功能,他们花费数年时间将其发展成为一个完整的LMS。) 进入技能的世界。 你可能不会相信,但“技能记录系统”的概念最初出现在LXP领域,供应商如Degreed和EdCast建立了一个搜索术语数据库,并用“技能”一词标记内容。在消费者市场,我们能接收到成百上千的信号来推荐广告,但LXP供应商只有少数工程师,因此他们的“技能分类”相对简单。这个概念迅速走红,公司开始专注于构建基于“技能”的培训,随后是招聘和人才战略。 同时,L&D领域正处于创造性混乱之中。出现了如360 Learning、Fuse Universal、Kineo等数百家内容创作和分享系统的供应商,旨在帮助公司创作、分享视频内容,并按角色、技能或职能进行组织。这些并非严格意义上的LMS系统,但它们位于LMS前端,使员工能够轻松创建和消费动态内容。 这一时期,从2018年至今,成为L&D领域的热潮。市场充斥着各式各样的视频内容工具,同时像STRIVR和Talespin这样的先锋公司开始为虚拟现实(VR)构建工具和内容系统。自创内容平台、视频平台和VR平台正在满足重要需求,而LMS市场则变得更加固定、枯燥和无趣。(Talespin最近被Cornerstone收购。) 顺带一提,我仍然认为“能力学院平台”市场具有巨大潜力(这类平台提供综合的专业能力和小组学习功能,例如我们的Josh Bersin Academy)。Docebo、Learn-In、Nomadic、NovoEd和Intrepid等供应商仍在增长,但随着时间推移,这些系统可能被整合进人才市场。这一领域一直是行业的一个亮点。(想了解更多,请阅读《能力学院:L&D的未来方向》。) 作为分析师,我得诚实说,过去几年对我来说有些单调。我们帮助了数百家公司决定该选择哪种L&D系统,但通常我们发现这些组织有太多平台,内容分散杂乱,缺乏一致性的数据处理,以及在这一领域的过度投资。因此,这个静态期代表了过去3到5年的趋势,是企业整理过去十年购买历史的好机会。 世界突然再次发生变化。技能分类的理念迅速蔓延,同时新兴的人才智能系统,如Eightfold、Gloat、Fuel50等纷纷涌现。这些新兴系统使公司能够按技能寻找人才、根据技能推荐职位和机会,并按技能动态规划职业路径,再次与L&D领域发生碰撞,促使我们将所有内容“整合”进这些新平台中。(更多信息,请阅读《人才智能入门》。) 本周我刚与我最喜爱的L&D专家之一通话(他即将在我们的会议上演讲),他向我展示了他所在的大型制药公司如何将其LMS、LXP和人才市场融合成一个无缝、端到端的体系。他可能略微超前于当前趋势,但这正是事物发展的方向。 然而,故事还在继绀。又一场变革已经到来,这一次的影响力与YouTube、Instagram或iPhone相媲美,甚至更大。没错,就是AI。 AI,如许多人所预料,将彻底颠覆这个行业。正如我们在电子学习和人才管理时代所见证的那样,这意味着供应商生态将彻底改变。 AI如何改变一切 让我不夸大其词地告诉你。在这30年的故事中,有一点始终未变:企业培训关注的核心始终是内容。是的,我们希望内容更简短、更快速、能在手机上查看——但如果内容本身没有实用价值,不切实际,不易于消费,它就无法发挥作用。你们中有多少人为了得到学分而快速点击通过那些以页面为基础的合规课程,但实际上几乎没有注意内容?这正是我们面临的挑战。所有这些向视频、微学习、大规模开放在线课程(MOOCs)以及其他形式的转变,都是为了解决这个问题的尝试。 比如,假设企业学习系统能识别你是谁,你只需提出一个问题,它就能生成答案、一系列资源和一组动态学习对象供你消费。有时候,你可能只需快速获取答案即可。其他时候,你可能会深入研究内容。还有时,你可能会浏览整个课程,并花时间学习所需的知识。 假设这一切都是完全个性化的。这意味着你不会看到一个“标准课程”,而是根据你当前知识水平定制的特殊课程。 这就是AI即将带给我们的。而且,这已经在今天开始发生了。 不仅生成式AI能够回答问题和吸收内容(例如,Galileo™已经容纳了我们25年以上的每一项研究,包括视频、播客和文章),它还能生成视频、测试、测验甚至整个课程。它可以作为技术课程的教学助手,也可以作为领导力项目的教练或导师,并且能够进行语言转换。 AI能够根据你的身份动态生成内容,这意味着什么? 那么,LMS市场、LXP市场、VR学习市场以及所有内容提供商将如何呢?在未来几年,我们将见证一场巨大的行业洗牌。 供应商正在采取的行动 虽然我无法确切知道每个L&D供应商正在做什么,但可以肯定,变化正在迅速进行中。 Docebo Shape能够从文档中生成高效的互动式培训材料(Arist也能做到这点)。Uplimit构建了一个完整的L&D平台,采用AI智能体和课程中自动生成的内容。我们的合作伙伴Sana不仅能自动生成内容,还围绕AI核心建立了一个完整的LMS系统。Cornerstone通过收购Talespin,能够动态创建角色模拟和几乎可以无限配置的场景。快速增长的“精确技能”供应商Growthspace,可以根据1100种具体的商业技能,为你匹配一个“技能教练”,与你的具体目标对齐。 LMS市场不会消失,但正如人才智能系统正在逐渐取代应聘追踪系统(ATS)和人力资源管理系统(HRMS)一样,AI驱动的内容平台将逐步侵蚀LMS市场。我的制药公司朋友希望他的LXP能成为他们的“动态内容系统”,但坦白说,我不确定LXP供应商是否已经准备好迎接这个挑战。许多供应商,从LinkedIn到Microsoft,将不得不重新考虑他们如何成为“动态学习”系统,以及他们希望在其中扮演什么角色。 正如所有技术转变一样,通常情况下,从头开始构建的系统会超越旧有系统。对于Cornerstone或Docebo这样拥有数千客户的公司来说,当新技术出现时,他们不能简单地“替换”他们已经建立的系统。因此,新兴的AI驱动学习系统可能会由新的供应商推出,并随着这些公司的发展,开始取代和竞争现有的系统。 尽管看上去简单,学习技术实际上非常复杂。Workday几乎花了十年时间从Mediacore发展到一个相对健全的LMS,并且他们才刚刚开始尝试AI。因此,不要期望你现有的供应商能够一夜之间彻底改变。 但有一件事我可以确定:颠覆即将来临。就像Plateau、Saba和SumTotal在2000年代初期时“市场上最热门的供应商”一样,它们很快就成为了过时系统和收购目标,当市场变化时同样的情况也可能发生在今天。新兴供应商如Sana、Growthspace、Uplimit、Docebo、LMS365等将崭露头角。 尽管风险资本家通常对这个市场持谨慎态度,但往往是那些拥有最佳管理团队的公司最终胜出。大型供应商如LTG、Cornerstone和Skillsoft拥有充足的资金,因此随着市场的发展,任何事情都有可能发生。但对我来说,一件事是明确的:前方是一个巨大的增长周期。 AI的机会是真实的,而且极为巨大 想象一下我们公司中的遗留内容量。全球必然存在价值超过一万亿美元的  合规培训、销售培训、运营培训、安全培训和领导力发展内容。如果AI能够在大规模上“重新利用”和“再创造”这些内容,我们将看到这个巨大的市场向新系统转变,最终实现知识管理和学习的完美结合。 我来举一个简单的例子。我们的一位Galileo客户是一家拥有百年历史的大型航空航天公司,他们在工程、产品设计、航空和国防技术方面有着丰富的积累。他们构建了喷气引擎、导弹、核潜艇以及各种系统。对于一名新工程师,他们需要超过三年的时间来完成“入职培训”,因为需要掌握大量的知识产权、设计专长和系统操作。他们的资深工程师们都在逐渐退休! 他们在我们的帮助下,开始了一个以AI为中心的试点项目,把多年累积的内容放到一个新平台中,供年轻工程师使用。我相信,这将带来翻天覆地的变化。Galileo将协助处理管理层面的问题,而一个类似的AI助手将帮助工程师学习、寻找文档、观看视频并参加相关课程。传统的LMS和HRMS工具可能不会在这一过程中发挥重要作用。 考虑一下你的公司。你们囤积了多少内容、专业知识和旧有的培训资料?AI可以“释放”这些资源给你的员工,使其以前所未有的方式变得可用。这是一个激动人心的新时代,充满了即将到来的变革。
    talent intelligence
    2024年03月21日
  • talent intelligence
    Workday收购HiredScore的意义,这可能颠覆人力资源科技领域 Workday计划收购HiredScore,这是人力资源技术领域的一次重大变革。HiredScore是一家领先的基于AI的招聘匹配工具提供商,此举将大大增强Workday在人才智能和招聘方面的能力。这次收购预计将整合HiredScore的专长到Workday的系统中,显著改善其应聘者追踪系统(ATS)、技能云和整体人才智能产品。此战略性收购可能会重塑人力资源软件市场,迫使其他供应商加速他们的AI计划,可能激发一轮新的收购热潮。 以下是原文: This week Workday announced intent to acquire HiredScore, a leading provider of AI-based matching tools for recruiting (called “talent orchestration”). While it wasn’t discussed much in the earnings call, this deal is a big positive for Workday and could have many implications for the HR Tech market. Let me explain. (I have not been briefed by Workday yet, so more information will come as I learn more.) Right now there is a massive marketplace war for high-powered AI-based recruiting tools (estimated at $30.1 billion). Historically dominated by applicant tracking systems (ATS), this market provides essential technology to help every company grow. The ATS market, which is more than 25 years old, has been rapidly transformed with high-powered AI tools that help with candidate matching, search, skills inference, and sourcing. And now that AI tools are readily available, these systems are becoming big data platforms loaded with billions of employee profiles, running complex AI models to help match people to jobs, projects, and gigs. Most ATS vendors (including Workday) have slowly extended into this space through matching. The original idea of a resume parser (software that reads a resume and scores it against a job description) has evolved into complex text analysis and AI-powered inference technology, forcing ATS vendors to invest. As the ATS vendors enhance their AI capabilities, a parallel universe of AI-first Talent Intelligence vendors emerged. These vendors, like Eightfold, Gloat, Beamery, Phenom, Seekout, Skyhive, Retrain, and Techwolf are building skills-centric big data platforms to match people to jobs, gigs, and mentors. These systems do much more than rate matches: they identify skills, find adjacent skills, match people to careers, find mentors, and more. They are essentially open big-data AI platforms built on vector databases that can be used for many enterprise apps (job architecture design, skills planning, internal mobility, pay equity analysis, etc.). In many ways they represent the future of HR Tech. (Read our Talent Intelligence Primer for more.) As the Talent Intelligence vendors grow, they start to deliver “HCM-threatening” platforms that impinge on the HCM “System of Record” idea. If you have all your employees, candidates, alumni, and prospects in Eightfold, Phenom, Seekout, or Gloat, for example, Workday or SAP look like a tactical payroll and workflow management system. (ServiceNow also understands this, and is building talent intelligence into its workflow platform.) Up until now the big HCM vendors like Workday, Oracle, and SAP have struggled to build these new systems, largely because their original architectures were not AI-based. So they’ve attracted customers with offerings like the Workday Skills Cloud or SAP Opportunity Marketplace that aren’t fully completed yet. We have talked with dozens of Workday Skills Cloud customers, for example, and they see it as an important “skills system of record,” but its real AI matching and inference capabilities have been limited. Along comes HiredScore, a well respected AI-based matching system with 150 employees and 40+ seasoned AI engineers in Israel. These folks are experts at candidate matching (quite a complex problem), and they’ve built a very innovative “orchestration” system to help line managers coordinate activities with HR business partners and recruiters (more on this later). While I’m sure they’ll continue to build out HiredScore, they can also contribute to Workday’s overall talent intelligence offering, improving the entire system – including the Skills Cloud, Workday Learning, Workday’s Talent Marketplace. As large as the recruiting software market is, the market for internal career tools, talent mobility, skills inference, and corporate learning is five times bigger. This acquisition gives Workday a shot in the arm to accelerate its entire AI platform strategy. (As the Identified acquisition did back in 2014.  Identified was the roots of the Workday Skills Cloud.) Market Implications Of This Move This move could change the market for HR software in a few significant ways. First, Workday Recruiting customers will be thrilled. Workday’s ATS now benefits from a first class matching and candidate scoring solution. This helps Workday compete with the bigger ATS players and gives Workday a new revenue source as they sell HiredScore to the existing 4,000+ Workday ATS customers. (Similar to the Peakon acquisition in Employee Experience.) And the talent orchestration features (kind of like a “staffing copilot”) gives Workday a very unique feature set. Second, this forces Workday’s talent intelligence partners to step up their game. Remember when Apple acquired Dark Sky, the most compelling micro-weather app on the market? Once they integrated it into Apple’s other apps, the market for third party weather apps went away. Workday could limit its partner network to avoid letting HiredScore competitors into the ecosystem. Third, this forces HCM vendors to accelerate their AI. Since HiredScore is such a well-respected product (every client we talk with adores it), it will become part of Workday demos and sales proposals quickly. Workday’s HCM competitors will start scratching around to find a similarly mature AI vendor to acquire. And that could kick off another round of acquisitions, similar to the frenzy that took place in the mid 2010s. Finally, there’s one more scenario, and I give this good odds. Not to be outdone by Workday, the Talent Intelligence vendors may just expand their ATS capability and decide to go “full stack.” I wouldn’t be surprised to see this happen. Why Is AI-Based Candidate Matching So Important Why is this technology so important? Well if you’ve ever tried to recruit on Indeed or LinkedIn, you know why. The quality and reliability of “candidate matching technology” is a lynchpin of a talent platform. Just as Google Search crushed Yahoo, Excite, and Inktomi, a powerful next-gen matching tool adds an enormous amount of value. Not only does it speed talent acquisition, it fuels all the internal mobility, career portals, skills, and eventually learning and pay systems. Why do I say this?  A “match” is a sophisticated problem. Unlike a Google search which looks at text and traffic, when you search for a person to fill a role you have to think about dozens of complex relationships. What are this person’s skills and capabilities? What are their credentials or certifications? Who else are they connected with? How likely will they fit into the job, role, and company? What is the impact of their industry experience? What tools and technologies do they understand? And it gets much more complex. The Heidrick Navigator platform (built on Eightfold), uses AI to assess functional skills for management and leadership, identifies a person’s “ability to drive results,” and more. This important application of AI powers many of the most important decisions we make in business. That’s why the Talent Intelligence space is growing so fast. As of this week there are more than 1,800 Director or VPs of “Talent Intelligence” in LinkedIn, and that number is up almost six-fold from one year ago. Can Workday take the lead in this emerging space?  It’s impossible to tell at this point, but the horses have left the gate and the race is on. This deal sets the players in the right lanes and feels like the earthquake to shake things up.  
    talent intelligence
    2024年03月01日