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        Mark Smith's Analyst Perspectives

        We have just released our 2012 Value Index for Total Compensation Management (TCM), in which we evaluate the competency and maturity of vendors and products. Our firm has been researching this category for many years, and our latest benchmark research in total compensation management found some improvement among applications in a field where many organizations still use outdated applications to manage an area with large financial and human capital impacts.

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        Topics: Human Capital Management, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Peoplefluent, SuccessFactors, Cloud Computing, Oracle, Business Performance Management (BPM), Compensation, Customer Performance Management (CPM), Excentive, Financial Performance Management (FPM), HR, Sales Performance Management (SPM), SumTotal Systems, Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), TCM, Value Index, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

        Businesses’ strategic imperative to optimize human capital is creating significant energy in the market for applications used to attract, optimize and retain talent. Amid all the recent acquisitions and changes that I have been writing about in this field, SumTotal Systems seems to get less attention than its size and the reach of its business merit. The company has more than 45 million users, with more than 15 million of them operating in a cloud computing environment spanning more than 3,500...

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        Topics: Social Media, Sustainability, Human Capital Management, LMS, Performance, Recruiting, Research, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Mobility, Business Performance Management (BPM), Compensation, Financial Performance Management (FPM), HR, HRMS, Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), SumTotal Systems, Talent Management, Workforce Analytics, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

        The acquisition frenzy in the enterprise software market continues. The announced acquisition of Taleo by Oracle will remove the independence of another successful cloud-based software company. Publicly traded Taleo (NASDAQ: TLEO) provides talent management applications on a rental cloud computing basis. Acquiring Taleo, which by all accounts has done a good job of growing the recruiting and applicant sourcing software business in a scalable cloud environment, was too good for Oracle to pass...

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        Topics: SAP, Social Media, Human Capital Management, LMS, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Oracle Fusion HCM, Peoplefluent, Recruiting, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Mobility, Oracle, Business Performance Management (BPM), Compensation, Financial Performance Management (FPM), HRMS, Information Management (IM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), SumTotal Systems, Talent Management, Taleo, Workday, Workforce Analytics, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

        In a move to invigorate adoption of its cloud computing and talent management applications, SAP has announced its intent to acquire SuccessFactors – a deal valued at US$3.4 billion . SAP’s years of development and business efforts have produced only mediocre results in customer growth and revenue in cloud computing for human capital management comparably to its expectations and others in the market. In a teleconference SAP and SuccessFactors executives hyped the potential of the combined...

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        Topics: SAP, Human Capital Management, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Mobility, Oracle, Business Performance Management (BPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), HRMS, Infor, SumTotal Systems, Talent Management, Taleo, Workday, Workforce Analytics, Workforce Management, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

        I just attended the first-ever analyst summit (Twitter #SumAS11) of SumTotal Systems to learn more about the company’s people and products since my in-depth analysis from earlier in the year. This key player in the business applications market offers a portfolio of applications in HRMS, workforce management and talent management, pieced together over several years with financing from its owner, Vista Equity Partners. This has been a busy year, as SumTotal acquired GeoLearning, Accero and...

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        Topics: SAP, Human Capital Management, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Oracle, Business Performance Management (BPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), HRMS, Infor, SumTotal Systems, Talent Management, Workday, Workforce Analytics, Workforce Management, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

        As Workday held its annual Workday Rising conference this week, it’s a good time to note the accomplishments of the company and to provide a fair and balanced coverage that has yet to be spoken by my industry peers for some reason. Co-founder and co-CEO David Duffield, who founded PeopleSoft, champions a set of core values in its culture and leads a workforce that has built a new generation of ERP applications for deployment in the cloud computing environment. The suite brings together human...

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        Topics: SAP, Human Capital Management, Kronos, NetSuite, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Recruiting, Zuora, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Oracle, Business Performance Management (BPM), Cornerstone OnDemand, Digital Interviewing, Financial Performance Management (FPM), Hiring, HRMS, Saba, SumTotal Systems, Talent Management, Taleo, Tidemark, Workday, Workforce Analytics, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

        The new year started off with a bang in the human capital management software market as SumTotal Systems acquired GeoLearning, a leading learning management system (LMS) software vendor.

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        Topics: Learning, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Performance, Cloud Computing, Business Performance Management (BPM), Compensation, Financial Performance Management (FPM), SumTotal Systems, Talent Management, Workforce Analytics, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)

        The market for talent management software continues to consolidate as SumTotal will acquire Softscape to bring together a combination of customers, people and products that reaches more than 25 million users and 1,800 customers globally. This purchase follows three other recent ones: ADP acquiring WorkscapeKenexa acquiring salary.com and Taleo acquiring Learn.com. The result is fewer but stronger software companies providing applications that enable human resources departments and others in...

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        Topics: Human Capital Management, Softscape, Business Performance Management (BPM), HRMS, SumTotal Systems, Talent Management, Workforce Performance Management (WPM)
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