HRM SaaS InFullBloom vs Everything Else: The Musical!

Since my singing finale to last year’s closing keynote at the HR Technology Conference (if you missed it, you missed it because no YouTube versions have popped up — yet), many colleagues have asked me about my next such performance.  And no, the picture (that’s me in the foreground) isn’t from HR Tech but rather from my long ago Cancun club singing phase. 

I won’t be the closing act for this year’s conference (although I’ve got some vendor-sponsored events lined up at which my singing may be de riguer), but I have been working on a little musical number that expresses my strong belief that SaaS, when done right (i.e. when InFullBloom) is the future of HRM software — really of all business applications software.      

HRM SaaS InFullBloom isn’t merely subscribed and vendor-hosted in a purely multi-tenant deployment; that’s just the table stakes.  HRM SaaS InFullBloom (aka Bloomin’ SaaS) incorporates the best of what multi-tenancy, a correct HRM object model, and modern software engineering techniques can enable, including:     

• full deployment in the cloud so as to reap the maximum economic benefits of that industrial model for IT;
• the inheritance of business rules, content, really all types of embedded intelligence across tenants as well as within tenants — and with full capabilities to include 3rd party embedded intelligence for those tenants who have subscribed it while providing the needed metering/billing to ensure that those 3rd parties are paid for the use of their IP;
• the aggregation of useful, shareable data within tenants as well as across tenants (obviously with the right permissions and incentives in place), to enable both benchmarking and the sharing of such data as applicant, recruiting source and total compensation plan design;
• frequent (at least several times a year), everyone-gets-it functionality enhancement releases (along with those legs & regs) with opt-in by tenant for much of what’s delivered;
• configuration available to nearly everything, from business rules and work flows to user experience and valid values and on to every type of embedded intelligence, that expresses the different ways in which organizations design their HRM policies, programs, plans and practices, to include supporting tenant-specific extensions to delivered object attributes and methods;
• interrogatory configuration, for the initial implementation, for each new release roll-out, and as individual tenant’s business needs change;
• self-provisioning, to the maximum practical extent, which, when combined with interrogatory configuration, takes a huge chunk out of the time and cost, not only of implementations but also of the entire sales to go-live cycle;
• models-driven development, which is critical to reducing dramatically the cost and time to deliver new functionality while improving the quality of what’s delivered;
• “wrapping” each relevant object with the boolean expression of its applicability (e.g. across all tenants or within a tenant to specific work locations or work units) and then with an outer “wrapper” of full effective-dating — yes, full effective-dating, and that means fully automated retroactive processing as well as prospective, otherwise known as forecasting or simulation, processing;
• global treatments (where that’s relevant to the vendor’s target market) of HRM data, processes and regulatory compliance;
• global calculation engine (again, where that’s relevant to the vendor’s target market) whose metadata determines whether and how the engine calculates a payroll, calculates leave accruals or does 401K discrimination testing; and
• that list goes on. 

If you recognize this list, then you’ve gotten wind of my preferred HRM software architectural behaviors “starter kit,” which is part of the IP I license to vendors.  Obviously a topic that’s near and dear to my heart and one on which I plan to post extensively, behavior by behavior as well as on the power of specific combinations, in terms of both vendor and customer benefits. 

 But first, I needed a theme song that expressed my view that, once buyers/end-users have been exposed to Bloomin’ SaaS, they’ll be turning up their noses at everything else.   I’m sure you’ll want to learn all the words so that you can join in at the first opportunity, perhaps right back in Cancun.  And remember: everything else is the farm; Bloomin’ SaaS is Paree.  

http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/howyagonna.htm     

Chorus (sung twice after each verse):
How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm
After they’ve seen Paree’
How ya gonna keep ’em away from Broadway
Jazzin around and paintin’ the town
How ya gonna keep ’em away from harm, that’s a mystery
They’ll never want to see a rake or plow
And who the deuce can parleyvous a cow?
How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm
After they’ve seen Paree’  

Rueben, Rueben, you’re mistaken
Said his wifey dear
Once a farmer, always a jay
And farmers always stick to the hay
Mother Reuben, I’m not fakin
Tho you may think it strange
But wine and women play the mischief
With a boy who’s loose with change