Simplicity
‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
– Simple Gifts (old Shaker Hymn) (listen here, here or here)
Yesterday, we looked at the remarkable focus and effectiveness achieved in the StrictlyTalent application. Resisting the temptation to be all things to all people, the service does one thing and does it very, very well. No bells, no whistles. Focus and effectiveness.
They are not alone. Next week we’ll review a couple more hyper-effective, elegant point solutions. They each behave more like an iPhone app than an enterprise platform. They represent the future of the HRTech industry.
At least for a while.
A funny thing happened on the way to the economic uptick. As HR Tech vendors faced the downturn, they made decisions that fit conventional wisdom. Knowing that revenue was contracting, they quickly closed down marketing, sales and some of customer support. The logic is simple. No sales means you don’t need sales people. No market means you don’t need marketing.
They almost uniformly moved to protect the technical heart of the business. The conventional wisdom was that the essence of a technical company is its technology. So, when things get tough, you shield the core of the business.
The net result is a bunch of companies who have been developing new features and functions in their offerings. When you have development on payroll, guess what they do? They develop stuff.
Meanwhile, you can’t tell the difference between a lot of the offerings. Software development without marketing leaves one deeply hungry for a story. These days, what passes for a corporate narrative is a recitation of product functionality.
Right now, the HRTech market is flooded with look alike sound alike offerings that all claim to do more or less the same things. At the same time, buyers are only really buying things that cut costs and save money. The ‘unified suite’ has little value in the cost conscious purchasing plan.
More than ever before, customers have gotten really smart about implementation costs. The total cost of ownership of a piece of software is driven by a combination of functionality, customer maturity, provider maturity and process sophistication. Customers are extremely wary of deals where the cost isn’t precisely controllable. So are sophisticated providers.
That’s why there’s a burgeoning market for simple, single function tools. These products can be easily integrated into existing workflows without complex implementation processes. If they are simple enough, the can be installed without modifications to configuration or customization.
It looks like the growth will be in these small solutions. Think of it as the HRTech version of iPhone apps.
