Today is Ada Lovelace Day and I’m joining bloggers across the world to write a post about a person I admire in Technology. But first, here are a few words about Ada Lovelace, who is considered to be the first woman in technology:

“Ada Lovelace (1815 – 1852) is often referred to as the world’s first computer programmer. The daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron, and the admired intellect, Annabella Milbanke, Ada Lovelace represented the meeting of two alternative worlds: the romanticism and art of her father versus the rationality and science of her mother…. In her attempt to draw together these polar opposites…, Ada collaborated with the renowned mathematician and inventor, Charles Babbage.”

“Ada Lovelace’s reputation comes from her important work interpreting Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine…. Ada translated Babbage’s paper on the principles of the Analytical Engine from French but in doing so she added lengthy notes and further level of understanding which perhaps even Babbage himself had not achieved. Babbage was impressed with her work, describing her as ‘the Enchantress of Numbers’…. Ada had understood the significance of the Analytical Engine and its implications for computational method. She saw that through the punched card input device the Analytical Engine opened up a whole new opportunity for designing machines that could manipulate symbols rather than just numbers. Her achievements are even more exceptional given the attitudes of Victorian Britain towards the intellectual pursuits of women.”

Like Ada, Row Henson is (one of) the first women in HR Technology.  Row has been involved in Human Resources and Human Resource Management Systems for the past three decades. Retired from full-time employment, splitting her time between her homes in Altanta and southern France, Row continues to be very involved in the Human Resource field. She is currently a PeopleSoft fellow, providing thought leadership, input, and advice on the company’s HRMS product line — a natural role for her after serving eight years at PeopleSoft as Vice President of HRMS global product strategy where she was involved in setting the direction for the company’s flagship Human Resources product line. She was voted one of the “Top Ten Women in Technology” by Computer Currents, received IHRIM’s (International Association for Human Resource Information Management) coveted Summit Award for lifetime achievement in her field, and was named the first Visionary of HR Technology at the Annual HR Technology Conference.

I had the pleasure to work with Row in 1997 when we were both living in Paris.  She joined the IHRIM Journal Editorial Advisory Board as I co-founded it, and we have continued to collaborate on articles, presentations, and publications in the field of HR Technology over the years. Among her many professional contributions, she was one of the early advocates raising the bar for HR technology beyond purely administrative and transactional processing to more strategic workforce management issues. Row is not only an admirable HR technologist, but also a wonderful, warm-hearted person, with a passion for travel, french food and wine, and a deep love for her dog.

Not since the appearance of Client/Server technology in the early 1990s has the Human Resource (HR) business community experienced such marketing hype surrounding a new technology as we have seen recently with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). From an IT perspective SaaS is a distributed computing solution and from a business perspective it is a hosted application delivery solution. It is a revolutionary concept that has changed the enterprise perception about computing economics and created a new business model for the purchase and utilization of business applications. As the world sinks into a global recession all forms of business expenditure comes under close scrutiny, and the SaaS business model is a perfect way to reduce Information Technology (IT) costs and help steer companies through the recession period. Although recession-friendly SaaS still has two major barriers to overcome before there is universal adoption of the SaaS concept. They are security and integration. This article describes the SaaS model, identifies why security is a customer concern, and outlines the integration problems associated Human Capital Management (HCM) software applications.

You can download the full article here => HCM perspective for Software-as-a-Service

I recently had the pleasure to meet Professors Andrey G. Medvedev (Professor of Corporate Finance and International Business) and Tatyana Kovalyova (Director for Corporate Programmes and Associate Professor of the General Management and HR Management Chair) of the International Management Institute of St Petersburg (IMISP) in their home town of St. Petersburg, Russia (Prof. Medvedev is now with the Graduate School of Management at St. Petersburg State University). We discussed Human Capital Management and Payroll Administration in Russia.

Russian payroll resembles Western European payrolls in structure. Labor is governed by a labor code with additional laws/rules. Social packages and pensions are prevalent. Each company pays approximately 26% on top of the gross salary for social protection. A 13% flat rate tax is withheld from the gross salary at the source. Due to the soviet history, compensation is in most cases determined by a tariff system similar to what we find for public service compensation in France, Germany and other countries.

Symptoms of liberalization can be noticed in Russia. Employees are now less protected than they used to be in the Soviet Union when it was impossible to terminate employees. Strikes are now possible in Russia (recently, Ford and Coca-Cola). However, larger companies still carry some inertia from the Soviet times. A state-assisted society and a liberal society coexist. Pay in state-assisted organizations is very low. For instance, teachers are not well paid, so that many young teachers leave for industry jobs. In the Soviet Union, company departments for training, recruitment, compensation etc. were all totally separated. In some large companies this structure is still in existence.

The recognition of the importance of HCM is growing. For example, Severstal sees HCM as a competitive advantage, and the Severstal CEO is personally monitoring the company’s efforts in this area.  The association of IT Directors in Russia operates an HCM Forum.  Since October 2004, the non-profit partnership АRMC, the National Personnel Managers’ Union, organizes conferences, exhibitions and surveys. Yet, HCM clubs for Russian and international companies are still mostly separate.

Companies are quite open to outsourcing if they can benefit from a standard solution that fits their needs. Recruiting companies are moving into outsourcing services. Large consulting companies seem to have less influence now than at the beginning of the free market economy.

As for HCM systems, large Russian companies in most cases use SAP (popular) and Oracle as ERP solutions, often in conjunction with their old payroll system. International partners of the ERP providers, who came with the Western companies in 1992 when the free market economy started, generally provide the integration services. A characteristic example is Gazprom (also an important client of IMISP).

International companies generally bring their own systems to Russia when they start a greenfield  operation in the country. But they tend to keep an existing system in place when they acquire a Russian company. For example, Carlsberg acquired Baltika, the Russian brewer, and after a careful investigation decided to continue using the Russian ERP system Monolith that was highly tailored to their production requirements.

Smaller and newer companies often use 1C’s product odin C, a Russian ERP built around an accounting system. Microsoft Navision and Axapta are also popular with small and medium enterprises.

In conclusion, the Russian HCM and payroll landscape is not that different from the Western European countries. Russian companies are open to foreign software, open to Western methods and business, and open to outsourcing — yet they also put the emphasis conservatively on proven solutions that work.

Jeitosa has just completed the preliminary analysis of Global Readiness Survey results. Some of the key findings include:

• Survey participants were asked what top three challenges they encountered in going global in the HR/HRIT function. The majority of respondents indicated cultural differences (53%) as the top external challenge they faced, followed by compliance with data privacy regulations (42%).

The good news is that there are solutions available for these challenges: leadership development, cultural awareness training, change management programs, and global communication plans can help individuals understand and appreciate cultural differences and provide tools and techniques for improving cross-cultural collaboration. Formalized strategies for dealing with data privacy challenges, particularly in dealing with the European Data Privacy Directive, can be developed and include approaches such as Safe Harbor, Model Contracts, and Corporate Binding Rules.

• The top internal challenges companies are facing in going global fall into two major categories: lack of technology and systems to support global initiatives (51%) and lack of experienced and culturally adept resources to work effectively in a global environment – both a lack of global leadership (47%) and a lack of sufficient other global resources (45%). Going global is a relatively new initiative for many companies, so it is not surprising that many would still be immature in these areas.

Solutions to these challenges are readily available, but organizations need to step up and realize that building a global infrastructure with global systems and global people takes effort, resources, budget, and time. More and more vendors are globalizing their product and service offerings making it now possible to source a global solution for HR systems. With the increased mobility and globalization of the workforce, it is also now possible to find experienced resources who understand first-hand the issues and challenges in designing and deploying a global solution.

• Working globally, companies are also experiencing some successes. By far, the greatest success they are finding is in developing and appreciating global diversity (68%). While this is a challenge for some, it is also a success for others. Generally, the more familiar one culture is with another, the greater the understanding and acceptance of the differences that exist.

You can download a copy of the preliminary research report by clicking here. The participate in the survey and receive a free, personalized copy of the full report, benchmarking your organization to others who have taken the survey, please click here.

Last week I attended my first HR Technology conference in Chicago. To say that things went smoothly with my registration process would be an overstatement, but that is the subject of another blog entirely, so, before I digress, let me return to more relevant observations. As I patrolled the expo hall, attempting fruitlessly to not accumulate the shiny, blinky, handy and sometimes useless gizmos that are generously handed out by the vendors, my goal was to determine, within the cacophony of products clamoring for attention, which products were really different, maybe better, but not necessarily popular.

At the top of my list, I’d have to say that Workday nailed it! The ceaseless crowds at their booth spoke to this, and anything more than a cursory glance at the product revealed its elegance and capabilities. They held their own at the shoot-out, against giants in the field. They were impressive, and definitely popular. However, more technically savvy people than I have written knowledgeably on the subject of Workday, so my focus is going to be on another company that I felt fit my goal of determining who was different and maybe better.

That company, in my opinion, was Peoplenetz. The reason they captured my attention was probably because quite recently, I had the opportunity to work at a fascinating startup company called Visible Path, who are developing the first ‘corporate’ social network. Being there exposed me to some of the inner workings of social networking technology, which, behind the scenes, is interestingly complex. When I started chatting with Mike Harrison, the founder of Peoplenetz, he began to explain his technology, which I might have found relatively baffling had I not already gained some notion of the machinations of social networks. Very simply stated, their products performed functions I didn’t see elsewhere, and the technology upon which it was based, was clean, elegant and powerful. Those individuals tasked with selecting software to help their organizations run more efficiently and make the most of their human capital and available corporate data would do well to spend the little additional time in ‘getting it’ when it comes to Peoplenetz’ array of tightly integrated products. Check them out!