By Jim Lundy
We attended the Peoplefluent Wisdom Conference last week in Orlando. There was a lot that occurred in our short time at the event. In fact, the event itself was well executed. It was held at the Disney Yacht and Beach Convention Center, which is an excellent venue. The event had some of the best videos we have seen at an HCM Vendor event, save for Dreamforce. The conversations and panels were good too. This blog post summarizes the four key things we took away from Peoplefluent Wisdom.
Peoplefluent names Jeff Carr as CEO
There are not many times when a vendor can steal the thunder from the entire HRTECH market. Last week, Peoplefluent basically did that when they announced that they had hired Jeff Carr as their new CEO. I know Jeff pretty well, since I worked with him at Saba. Jeff is very well known in the industry since he has worked in it so long (Peoplesoft, Taleo, Saba and now Peoplefluent).
It was a shrewd pick by Charles Jones, who stays on as Peoplefluent Chairman. I know it created a buzz because so many people were talking about it on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. This doesn’t count all the private emails that were flying around. By hiring Jeff, Peoplefluent not only gets a proven industry veteran, they get someone who knows many of the talented people in the HCM industry.
Peoplefluent pushes the Social HCM Agenda
Lots of vendors talk about Social, but then they don’t execute on it. Peoplefluent bought SocialText in 2012 and we are now starting to see the result of that. They showed and discussed their new offerings, which they call Mirror. Social is part of the offering, but it doesn’t overpower the user. Customer reaction to Mirror was immediate and strong.
While we will be discussing the merits of Mirror in our Research, what we can say is that Peoplefluent is pushing the agenda for making Social HCM a reality. Mirror looks very easy to use and that is what end users want.
Peoplefluent and Video Recruiting
Peoplefluent also made an investment in Video earlier this year when it bought KZO Innovations, a Video Content Management vendor (see our Aragon Research First Cut). Suffice to say, the Recruiting Mirror demo was a complete look at how video can be used across the recruiting lifecycle, not just for entry-level interviews. Many video interviewing firms only do the capture part of the interview. There is much more to it than that. That is part of the reason we expect other Social HCM firms to make investments in Video Collaboration. Anyone looking for a video recruiting solution needs to take a close look at Peoplefluent.
Peoplefluent and Mobile
Mobile wasn’t new at Peoplefluent Wisdom, but Mobile is one of the areas that we have seen Peoplefluent innovating in. Just as we saw at Oracleworld, we saw Peoplefluent staff comfortable with giving a demo on a Tablet. Mobile First is the new watch word and Peoplefluent gets that. They went mobile before a number of HCM vendors and now with Mirrors and mobile, it looks like a powerful combination. I’m sure we will hear more about this at HRTECH next week.
So, all in all, it was a big week for Peoplefluent. Charles Jones stole the headlines by selecting Jeff Carr as his new CEO and he also refreshed the entire Peoplefluent product line with a new modern and very intuitive user interface.
Finally, Peoplefluent Wisdom was outstanding event that exceeded our expectations. Much of the credit goes to Alys Scott, VP of Corporate Communications and her talented team. We expect to hear more from Peoplefluent and Jeff Carr in the weeks and months to come.