This week fisher VISTA released its annual HR Buying Trends Survey Report, a 12-page review and analysis of the results of the company's annual survey of HR buyers. The report gathers intelligence on the purchasing habits, preferences and budgets of buyers throughout the HR marketplace. You can link direct to the PDF here.

Some of this year’s key findings include:

• HR spending outlook is strong but product category matters – respondents indicated they planned to spend more per employee in the next 12 months on 4 specific product categories. But less on a lot of other categories. For example, more than 40% of respondents plan to spend more on manager training, employee training, employee benefits, and rewards and recognition.
• Buyers are turning back to peers when researching vendors. Search engines had been the clear top choice in recent years, but fell to a close second this year.
• Buyers consider familiarity with a vendor’s brand “very important” for only some product categories. This was an interesting finding because knowing how important brand familiarity is for your product category impacts how you spend your marketing money and how you position your solutions.

Some other fun facts within the report include information on:

• The importance of analysts
• What social platforms HR buyers value most
• How likely HR buyers are to fill out a registration form when downloading content 
• Percent of HR conference attendees that visit the exhibition hall

Again, download the report here (no registration required).

Enjoy.