A Look Back at the History of Gartner's Coverage of Talent Management Applications (Part 2)

You may have noticed in the quote in Part 1 that I did not envision the emergence of a talent management application suite in February 2003.   It took me a while to see the light.  We published the update to the Magic Quadrant for US Midmarket HRMS in July 2003.  So, I was able to take a little bit of a breather because I had done the updates that needed to be done.  I was still taking a lot of inquiries on niche talent management applications, especially recruiting and employee performance management.  There was also major M&A activity happening that proved a little distracting (PeopleSoft acquiring J.D. Edwards).  By November 2003, I finally came to the realization as I worked on my first Predicts note (an annual special report Gartner publishes) called "Predicts 2004: HCM and Financial Applications".  I made the following prediction:

HCM spending will be focused on talent management solutions in 2004.

A talent management suite supports key strategic workforce management activities, including recruitment, performance management, training, career development, succession planning and compensation. Two types of vendors provide talent management suite capabilities: ERP/human resource management system (HRMS) vendors and talent management suite vendors.

ERP/HRMS vendors don't have a specific offering called "talent management"; rather, they provide the requisite strategic capabilities in their HR modules (plus, in some cases, add-on modules) as well as functionality for administrative requirements (for example, health and safety, benefits administration).

Talent management suite vendors provide strategic workforce management capabilities without the administrative components. These vendors are converging on the talent management suite from several different directions: E-recruitment vendors are expanding into performance management; performance management vendors are expanding into career development/succession planning and compensation; and e-learning and compensation management vendors are expanding into performance management.

The talent management suite will continue to be more vision than reality in 2004. Some providers have the necessary breadth of modules, but only the requisite depth in one or two of them. We expect to see vendors increase their depth across the talent management suite through 2004, but it won't be until 2H05 that talent management suite providers will have enough depth across all modules to compete with best-of-breed niche vendors in each application area.

Talent Management Application Suites were not a great epiphany.  Client inquiries were pushing in that direction.  Vendors were already ahead of the game and building out suites.  I also did get the timing wrong.  Spending in 2004 was definitely moving to Talent Management.  However, I did miss it on the depth and breadth of suites vs. niche talent management applications.  We are entering the 2H08 and we are not there yet in terms of breadth and depth across the suite.  In Part 3, I will discuss how we changed our market coverage to included both HRMS and Talent Management Applications.

Comments

[Meg Bear]

Jim,

What a great thing to do. It's fun to see how things compare to initial predictions as well as to get as sense at how right you were in your analysis. Thanks for sharing, looking forward to the rest of the series.

-Meg