|
|||
|
|
|
||||||
|
IBM Unveils Workforce Offering
The recent economic downturn isn't stopping the folks at IBM from unveiling a new offering in the world of talent management: its new Workforce and Talent Solutions. In fact, they think it's the perfect time for such a service to enter the marketplace. "This is the time for talent management, if ever there was one," says Tim Ringo, vice president and global leader, Human Capital Management at Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM. "We could see pressure coming earlier this year on HR spending, as HR is usually the canary in the coal mine" when spending cuts are to be made, he says. "So we sped up development and the announcement of the solution [because] right now is the time when you have to know how many people you've got, what's their performance level, and what skills they have in order to capitalize during the downturn." To that end, the company's new service is "taking what have long been disparate parts of the human capital lifecycle and pulling the pieces together to give our clients an end-to-end capability to access key employee data and manage workforces as a globally integrated talent pool," according to Ringo. IBM is doing this by combining their human capital consulting services with assets including Cognos, Lotus, IBM Research and leading human capital software providers Saba and SuccessFactors. Ringo says the new solution offers four "on ramps" to the talent-management concept for HR executives: learning and collaboration, performance management and compensation, recruitment, and workforce analytics. It also includes the Human Capital Healthcheck Tool, which is designed to utilize IBM's human capital experts to assess where an organization is on its journey to a globally integrated workforce and defines a strategy, technology and process roadmap for the future of the business. Other key components of the offering include: e-recruitment, succession planning, workforce deployment and scheduling, an employee portal, collaboration and social networking. Targeted consulting services, such as change management, process redesign, technology integration, program management and business-performance measurement are also included. Ringo says IBM's newest offering is different than the services offered by other HR consultants. "The other consulting firms are pure-play consulting, they don't have HCM software on a large scale, like Lotus or Cognos, so we're bringing something unique: world-class consulting services with well-known software," he says. "That is not something that Deloitte or Hewitt have today." A Hewitt spokeswoman says the firm does, in fact, offer an HCM tool, through a partnership with SuccessFactors, as well as its consulting services. As for Deloitte, Jeff Schwartz, a principal with the organization and change practice, says that technology solutions "often present incomplete views of the talent puzzle" and that Deloitte's approach to talent management, while it includes software solutions, focuses on aligning the workforce with the broader business priorities of the organization. Ringo says IBM's new solution makes full use of both SuccessFactors and Saba software capabilities. He says IBM will be "resellers of both platforms" and adds that Saba functions will deal largely with learning and collaboration, while the SuccessFactors functions will focus on performance management. IBM will initially target their new service to large, geographically dispersed, globally operating companies with more than 10,000 employees, followed by a mid-market solution released later in 2009 for more regional companies that tend to be single-country focused. Pricing for the solution differs, depending on whether it is delivered through the SaaS model or as an on-premise system integrated into an existing ERP.
December 5, 2008 Copyright 2008© LRP Publications |
||||||
Print
Email
Write to the Editor
Reprints
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
© Copyright 2010 LRP Publications. All rights reserved.
|
||||