Vurv’s announcement about their acquisition of PBN for offboarding and workforce analytics underscores for me the movement of the industry toward integrated, embedded analytics:

“Vurv will also incorporate PBN’s unique workforce analytics solution to provide real-time monitoring of key performance measures, in dashboard format, which enables senior executives and HR leaders to track financial, compliance and workforce metrics and provide an integrated and holistic view of the entire employee lifecycle from recruiting to separation.”

Read the full press release.

The days of reporting databases, data marts, and data warehouses are numbered. Organizations need real-time information presented in an usable approach that line managers can understand and take action on in carrying out the activities of their day-to-day jobs. Analytics must be integrated and comprehensive across all business functions, from planning and budgeting to requisitioning and recruiting to onboarding, complete life-cycle management and offboarding. They must incorporate planning, financial, compliance, benchmark, and best-practice information to be useful. And, they must be presented in a visual, dashboard-like manner with configurable graphics and drill-down capabilities so that users can tailor the information making it truly usable based on their own individual needs.
Congrats to Vurv for demonstrating their leadership in embedded workforce analytics!

As is common this time of year, I’d like to put forward my own projections for 2007. Here are the top five trends that I believe we’ll be hearing a lot about in 2007:
1. Sourcing Strategies — Software as as Service (Saas) will become the de facto approach for systems deployment. The infrastructure is being proven through companies such as Salesforce.com and Dave Duffield’s new venture Workday. Companies are tired of the “upgrade treadmill” and established vendors like Oracle and SAP will struggle to respond.
2. Talent Management — Performance Management will be a fundamental aspect in most HCM deployments. Shareholders are increasingly holding their executives accountable for performance, and HR executives will have to step up to the plate. Performance management software will the most frequently deployed application over the coming year.
3. Social Networks — Our global, mobile, virtual world will continue to evolve as much of our “water cooler talk” will continue to move to the Web via blogging, tagging, and advanced search algorithms using natural language syntax. VOIP and chat software will continue to expand into more aspects of our business and personal life.
4. Globalization — While most global companies are now well situated in Europe, there will be increasing movement toward Asia, in particular China. As the Web technologies mature, and as English, the lingua franca for business, continues to expand, it will become increasingly easier to work across global borders bringing more challenges and cultural conflicts.
5. Workforce – The aging baby boomer population, increasing numbers of immigrants, and ongoing use of offshoring to lower cost environments will continue to have a profound impact on our workforce. Line managers and human resources professionals will need to expand their repertories to develop the facility to manage an increasingly diverse workforce.

Many of these things will not come as a surprise to anyone — life/business, afterall, really is an evolution — revolutions in a true sense are rare.