A Look Back at the History of Gartner's Coverage of Talent Management Applications (Part 5)

When I started out writing this series of posts, I did not think it would be this long.  My apologies for the ramble.  In 2006, we made an important change in terms of coverage of Talent Management Applications.  We decided to change MarketScope for E-Recruitment Software into a Magic Quadrant.  We felt the market had matured to the extent it was warranted and some leaders had emerge.  We also introduced a new MarketScope for Retail Time and Labor Applications (the research was going on concurrently) which I worked on with Gale Daikoku from our Retail Industry Advisory service.  We did not do an update to the MarketScope for Employee Performance Management Software in 2006 (you can only do so many of these in a year).  In addition to those major research projects, that was probably the high point in terms of client inquiries.  Talent management was certainly at the top of the agenda.

In May 2007, we published an update to the "MarketScope for Employee Performance Management Software, 2007".  We expanded the scope to include Succession Management and Compensation Management in addition to Performance Management.  This scope change gave us research that evaluated vendors across all the major areas of Talent Management.  We had already been publishing research on the E-Learning market when combined with the EPM and E-Recruitment research, it gave us a pretty comprehensive view.

As we were doing all of this research, I became concerned.  In the Hype Cycle for Human Capital Management Software, 2007, I put EPM at the Peak of Inflated Expectations because I saw a lot of organizations buying talent management solutions and positioning them as strategic, but yet when you talked to them about what they had accomplished, it was largely automation of talent management processes.  So, in December 2007, I published "Unlocking the Strategic Value of Talent Management Application Investments".  I felt it was important that clients understand why integration was important and that analytics was the key to gaining strategic value from these applications.

That brings us almost up to date.  We recently published an update to the "Magic Quadrant for E-Recruitment Software".  We are about to kickoff the update to the MarketScope for Employee Performance Management Software.  I have the approval to make it a Magic Quadrant.  The market has matured enough.  This will be the first one that Thomas Otter and I collaborate on.  I look forward to his insights in this research.   We are also going to focus on case studies to help clients understand best practices in strategic use of talent management applications.

Finally, I get asked quite a bit about when we are going to evaluate vendors for the full suite.  A MarketScope or Magic Quadrant is used when there is a market.  Talent Management Application Suites are not quite there yet.  However, we have a new note type called Critical Capabilities to use to evaluate critical capabilities of vendors within and across markets.  Thomas, Carol Rozwell (our Learning analyst), and I are strongly considering collaborating on one for the suite.  Stay tuned. 

Comments

[Naomi Bloom]

Jim, this provides a really excellent perspective, not only on the types of products and markets covered but also on the fact that your research and insights are driven, at least initially, from the customer inquiries you receive. Thanks for taking the time to give us all this historical perspective. Naomi