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I attended Taleo World to see how well Oracle is integrating Taleo after acquiring the company in 2012. I assessed the announcement by Oracle earlier this year; it was clear then that Oracle needed to make this acquisition to boost its cloud computing and talent management efforts. In the three-hour keynote session, a business overview and software demonstrations indicated what Oracle has in store for the applications and how it plans to fuse its applications and technology to add value to organizations.
The conference was keynoted by Oracle President Mark Hurd, who provided his executive view on the importance of human capital management and maximizing the full value of any organization’s labor. According to my sources, Hurd has exerted significant executive pressure on the success of this acquisition. Success is not guaranteed, however, given the competition in this market against application providers such as SAP with SuccessFactors, Workday, and now even IBM and Kenexa, which it recently agreed to purchase – not to mention ADP, Cornerstone OnDemand, Kronos, Peoplefluent and SumTotal Systems. Even recruiting competitors like Jobvite who at Taleo World were performing after hours marketing to influence Taleo customers to switch. It will take more than marketing to get organizations to switch as the value of integrated talent management processes that take candidates into being applicants and then hiring them into specific roles where they are compensated and reviewed is becoming a high priority.
Oracle did a great job of previewing its integration with mobile technology using Oracle Fusion Tap, which provides an integrated experience on tablets such as the Apple iPad for managers to engage with employees, and to better market a company brand for potential job candidates. With live and scripted demonstrations, it showed how its talent management will operate in the future, and illustrated the value of workforce analytics. I have said in the past that workforce analytics needs to provide more guidance and a profile-based approach – not just showing dashboards with charts or only looking at key performance indicators – but Oracle’s planned improvements for 2013 seem to advance in the right direction. Improving employee satisfaction and engagement, retention rates and development will require a broad talent management suite to source the data for measuring these people metrics.
Taleo provides not only recruiting tools but also in-depth applications for onboarding, performance, learning and analytics, which all play a role in helping Oracle extend its value to human resources and business. At the show Oracle outlined its integration of Taleo Recruiting, Taleo Learn and Taleo Performance with Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management and showed how Taleo Recruiting will also integrate with Oracle Peoplesoft. Oracle has continued to support the Taleo partner ecosystem, which provides tools and services to help in assessment and screening, interviewing, sourcing and electronically verifying candidates. For instance, HireVue, as I assessed, has innovative software that lets recruiters and hiring managers use smartphones for live and recorded interviews and ratings. As another example, Talemetry offers a suite of applications for finding and sourcing candidates across the Internet from job boards and social media, and verifying candidates electronically as part of the hiring process. Such applications help in what our benchmark in recruiting found to be critical areas: expanding the talent pool and shortening the time to hire quality employees.
The Taleo team did a nice job in providing roadmaps across its major applications in recruiting, performance and learning to help customers see how fast it is evolving despite being acquired. Its commitment to three releases a year is realistic and should help it keep pace with customer demand and technology innovation. Oracle has made significant strides to ensure that Taleo is part of its overall human capital management efforts, including integration with the Oracle Fusion HCM application suite. Companies that use Taleo should be heartened that Oracle has made a commitment to not just its recruiting application but also to its performance, learning and analytics products, which eventually will be fully integrated and evolve into a stronger suite. However, those that use Taleo Compensation will have to migrate; Oracle Fusion HCM Compensation is the company’s application of choice, and frankly it is much better anyway. It helped Oracle earn a rating as Hot in our latest Total Compensation Value Index for 2012, about which I have written already. Oracle Fusion and Peoplesoft customers will find in Taleo a quality recruiting suite that, along with new energy and ideas, advances Oracle’s overall efforts in human capital management.
Strategically, Oracle will have to invest into more business relationships with human resources, as its competitors have done. Today’s talent management application market uses Internet-based software as a service – an effort led by HR and business not IT. I’m curious to see whether Oracle will continue to host Taleo World or some type of dedicated HR conference, as it important to serve this audience directly; the HR audience does not attend conferences like Oracle OpenWorld that are designed for IT and not business constituents. Oracle will also have to improve its workforce management software to support the new generation of needs. Our latest research finds workforce management is moving beyond just time and attendance and scheduling. Oracle will find that unifying an organization’s effort in human capital management under an Oracle flag will require pitching not only HR but also the CFO and head of operations, who must understand the importance of leveraging the labor costs of the organization as a measured investment that can only be capitalized by using dedicated applications to ensure the best possible outcomes.
I look forward to seeing how Oracle outlines the importance of Taleo at its upcoming mega conference, OpenWorld, and seeing how it communicates its value for managing talent throughout the human capital process of hiring, engaging and retaining employees. I was impressed with the progress made and Oracle commitment to the customer and products. Meanwhile, if you want to see my real-time analysis and photography from the conference, look for the Twitter hashtag #TaleoWorld and my handle @marksmithvr.
Regards,
Mark Smith
CEO & Chief Research Officer
Ventana Research has just released the 2012 Value Index for Data Integration, in which we evaluate the competency and maturity of vendors and products. Our firm has been researching this software category for almost a decade. Our latest benchmark research in information management found that data integration is a critical 
component of information management strategies, according to 55 percent of organizations. Our benchmark research on organizations using this software not only uncovers best practices and trends, but it also highlights why IT is using data integration to advance its competencies across people and processes.
I am excited to provide research and education on this critical information technology, which every organization needs to automate data management. The new Value Index for Data Integration looks at vendors and products and their suitability to an organization’s IT and business needs and priorities, which we tie to our benchmark research with input from organizations that are using or assessing the technology.
The Ventana Research methodology utilizes a request for proposal and assessment approach. Each value index takes over six months to complete; unlike other analyst firms, we look at the product details that have the most importance in successful adoption and support for a range of IT and business needs. We evaluated data integration vendors across seven critical categories that are essential for achieving planned benefits: usability, reliability, manageability, adaptability and capability of the products, and also the customer assurance areas of validation and TCO/ROI. We weight each category according to its priority to buyers, and sum the results to 100 percent for scoring purposes. In the process we identify best and worst practices that further refine how we assess technology vendors in each category. For instance, we place a heavy emphasis on adaptability, manageability and reliability since these are critical points of evaluation that can determine whether data integration successfully meets a broad set of data management needs across the enterprise and on the Internet. You can read the details of our methodology and process by purchasing the full 2012 Data Integration Value Index report, or by leveraging our assessment service to help guide your selections.
The Value Index analysis for data integration examines the creation and deployment of data integration processes across the enterprise and Internet. It looks at a range of business and IT-specific needs, including data modeling, integration with enterprise systems, support of information management systems, workflow and collaboration, specific support of data sources and targets, support for a variety of data including XML, content, social media and event processing. We also examine in-depth capabilities for specific types of integration with other applications and processes. Since data integration is an essential issue with information, we examined the interface to data governance, data quality and master data management, and the broader range of support for data management on an organization’s information systems.
Our Value Index assesses 13 data integration software vendors
and is most comprehensive in the industry. Eleven of them deserve to be rated Hot, which is the highest value level and demonstrates maturity of offerings. Informatica ranks at the top, followed by IBM, Information Builders, SAP, SAS, Oracle, Microsoft, Pentaho, Talend, Syncsort and Pervasive. Two vendors, SnapLogic and Attunity, were rated as Warm.
We note in our analysis that Informatica excelled across a majority of categories, including data integration for data quality, master data management, cloud computing and event processing. IBM follows Informatica with a strong overall set of software. Information Builders has the most robust level of adaptability. SnapLogic, which specializes in cloud computing and component-based approaches, was rated Warm, but did quite well in usability, where it was rated Hot. Many vendors have not expanded significantly to support cloud computing; SAP, SAS and Oracle are not able to compete with some of the vendors above them. Some data integration providers have new releases coming that will help them advance in 2013.
Since our last assessment a lot has changed among dedicated data integration applications, with new versions that advanced their usability, manageability, reliability and adaptability. Some providers provide more flexible integration points to data sources and targets for big data environments. Many now offer better integration with business processes and more direct support for business analytics. Many are getting better at applying analytics to data during the transformation process to support a range of big data and business process needs. In many cases, improvements in workflow and collaboration across teams distinguish the hottest vendors, whose technology is being used simultaneously around the world.
We take pride in our Value Index, and we believe it is cool to be a Hot vendor. Unlike us, IT-focused analyst firms that do not research or advise organizations have little insight to offer on data integration and overall information management that’s based on in-depth benchmark research and product evaluation. Just rating a vendor on its revenue or vision is insufficient when organizations need to assess their current environments before they determine which vendors should be examined for future needs. We are the only research firm to evaluate vendors and provide practical advice that can help organizations assess and select their own data integration software.
Congratulations to the vendors that stood up to our detailed assessment processes and granular analysis, which represent how organizations assess and select vendors. We’re proud of our objective and in-depth analysis, which we publish without review or editing by the technology vendors, unlike other analyst firms. While some vendors may object to the results, our independence provides the basis for the most trusted research in the industry. If you want further information, please download the executive summary and see how the full report and assessment service can help your organization. We look forward to offering continued guidance to buyers in this critical information technology category, and helping IT and business professionals who need to have the most efficient processes in managing data.
Regards,
Mark Smith
CEO & Chief Research Officer
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