Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Joshua Letourneau on September 8, 2008 at 1:49pm

" . . . open discussion on CRM as the most important innovation in Staffing." . . .

Whoa. Huh?

Permalink Reply by Susan Burns on September 9, 2008 at 11:35am

Shocking isn't it Josh! Hope you'll be able to join and continue our discussion about where there has been progress in Staffing/HR. Your contributions are always fabulous!

Btw - thanks much for the post on the Aberdeen article. Have you seen this latest BusinessWeek article on "Managing by the Numbers"? Lots of implications for strategic planning and workforce modeling.

Joshua Letourneau said:

" . . . open discussion on CRM as the most important innovation in Staffing." . . .

Whoa. Huh?

Permalink Reply by Michael Johnson on September 15, 2008 at 2:20am

Susan (and/or Josh),

Let me know if you'd be interested in a demo. This will be the hottest recruiting CRM system on the market by the end of this year.

http://www.avature.net/technology/recruiting-crm/

Mike

Permalink Reply by Nicole Hackett on September 19, 2008 at 3:39pm

Can we have some of Talent Talk Cafe sessions conducted via webinar?

Email me and I will set up the "Free" webinar whenever you like.

Thanks,
Nicole Hackett
nicole@veconnection.com
www.veconnection.com and http://vec.webex.com

Permalink Reply by Nicole Hackett on September 28, 2008 at 10:46pm

Mike,

I would be interested in learning more about your program. At your convenience, what would be a good time to connect with you?

Thanks,
Nicole
nicole@veconnection.com

Michael Johnson said:

Susan (and/or Josh),

Let me know if you'd be interested in a demo. This will be the hottest recruiting CRM system on the market by the end of this year.

http://www.avature.net/technology/recruiting-crm/

Mike

Permalink Reply by Joshua Letourneau on September 29, 2008 at 8:57am

Mike, Avature must have some plans to invest extremely heavily considering we only have 3 months to go until the end of the year. Is there a huge market launch coming up?

Nicole Hackett said:

Mike,

I would be interested in learning more about your program. At your convenience, what would be a good time to connect with you?

Thanks,
Nicole
nicole@veconnection.com

Michael Johnson said:

Susan (and/or Josh),

Let me know if you'd be interested in a demo. This will be the hottest recruiting CRM system on the market by the end of this year.

http://www.avature.net/technology/recruiting-crm/

Mike

Permalink Reply by Michael Johnson on September 29, 2008 at 12:03pm

Josh, not really a huge market launch but we have several feature releases before the end of the year that are very exciting. If you like Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 , you'll love this. You can get a preview today on our Webinar at 1pm ET. Register at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/497375882.

Mike

Joshua Letourneau said:

Mike, Avature must have some plans to invest extremely heavily considering we only have 3 months to go until the end of the year. Is there a huge market launch coming up?
Nicole Hackett said:

Mike,

I would be interested in learning more about your program. At your convenience, what would be a good time to connect with you? Thanks,
Nicole
nicole@veconnection.com

Michael Johnson said:

Susan (and/or Josh),

Let me know if you'd be interested in a demo. This will be the hottest recruiting CRM system on the market by the end of this year.
http://www.avature.net/technology/recruiting-crm/
Mike

Permalink Reply by Michael Johnson on October 2, 2008 at 7:38pm

This just out today from Human Resource Executive magazine - Avature's Recruiting CRM wins 2008 Top HR Product of the Year selection.

http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/story.jsp?storyId=132336162

Cheers,
Mike

Permalink Reply by Susan Burns on October 3, 2008 at 11:53am

Michael - thanks for sharing the HR Exec piece and congratulations on Avature's inclusion. I'd be interested in learning more about Avature if we could coordinate a demo. It looks as though you are also in Portland so maybe we could coordinate it over a cup of some good local coffee.

Congrats again!
Susan

Michael Johnson said:

This just out today from Human Resource Executive magazine - Avature's Recruiting CRM wins 2008 Top HR Product of the Year selection.

http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/story.jsp?storyId=132336162

Cheers,
Mike

Permalink Reply by Michael Johnson on October 3, 2008 at 12:15pm

Sounds great to me Susan. How does next week look for you? I'll let you decide on the day, time, and place since I'm fairly new to the Portland market. My office is in Old Town but that makes no difference as to where we meet. Shoot me an email directly at mike@avature.net or call me in the office at 503-334-0834. Cheers!

Permalink Reply by Joshua Letourneau on October 3, 2008 at 1:44pm

Mike, do you have another webinar coming up?

Congrats on the award - I think the market opportunity for CRM vendors focusing on Talent Acquisition (which is technically more TRM than CRM) is positioning against the current vendor set largely known for unresponsiveness and stagnation due to a lack of sound competition. Because they see themselves "ahead of the curve" (which is debatable given the lauded failure of CRM as a large-scale enterprise investment, hence the genesis of the SaaS model), we need the real cream to rise to the top . . . which improves the entire market.

I'd be further interested in seeing if Avature will be launching an ATS to minimize any technical issues arising from "sit[ting] in front of an applicant-tracking system" - if not, is there an ATS that you recommend to work with your solution? As of late, I've been trying to cut down on the technology bloat I currently have (this app for this, that app for that, these apps to sit on top of those apps, etc.) I look forward to the day that we move toward a quasi-SAP or Oracle solution on the market that allows us to move beyond the piece-meal, heavily silo's app market we have today (plus, total cost of ownership and wasted time goes way down). Instead of a consolidation of best-of-breed, I see new 'solutions' each quarter I hit a major recruiting tradeshow! I mean, wow, it's hard for me to keep up anymore . . . and somewhere along the line, this mindset dawned that a great recruiter has to know how to use the 10,000 apps on the market - yeah right. Give me a recruiter or sourcer who can get people hired and I'll take that person any day of the week. I think the bigger challenge is knowing what apps are a waste of time . . . and avoiding the "bleeding edge" because our job is to get people hired, not spend 4 hours a day navigating 35 different interfaces.

Anyway, I've been keeping up with your work and writings and I think you closely understand and care about solving challenges in the market :) I'm looking forward to tuning in and learning more.

Michael Johnson said:

Sounds great to me Susan. How does next week look for you? I'll let you decide on the day, time, and place since I'm fairly new to the Portland market. My office is in Old Town but that makes no difference as to where we meet. Shoot me an email directly at mike@avature.net or call me in the office at 503-334-0834. Cheers!

Permalink Reply by Michael Johnson on October 3, 2008 at 3:06pm

Great points Josh and thanks for the kind words. We're very familiar with ATS since we built the first web based ATS at HotJobs with our Softshoe product - long before Taleo even existed I think. We acquired Resumix and brought many of those customers, almost half of the F500, onto the web based ATS platform. Yahoo! buying HotJobs and ditching Softshoe was great for Taleo since they were perfectly positioned to inherit those customers. Enough about that.

We do have an ATS already that will be officially released to the market soon. It's an extension of the CRM platform but expands in the areas of "process" required in corporate systems - req approval, shared calendars, vendor management, onboarding, compliance, etc. Today, we integrate with any ATS that has an open API (XML or https). The ATS buying cycle on the corporate side is about 5 years so it's a tough nut to crack. There's a need and a gap in the market for CRM right now that can sit in front of the ATS. But telling someone at big company X to ditch their ATS in place of a CRM would be economic suicide. It may get there someday, but I think you see where I'm going with this.

That said, for a smaller firm, our CRM has work flow and reporting that is sufficient. In fact, most of the agencies/TPR's I have shown the product to would define it as an ATS and are excited that it includes sourcing tools into one app. You can also tag people as clients in the system and manage both your recruiting and business dev efforts. So if you're looking to combined AIRS Sourcepoint (a technical dinosaur IMHO) with your ATS you should call me at 503-334-0834 or email me at mike@avature.net to see a demo. I still use Broadlook Contact Capture though - I like Donato's gadgets.

One last point about your comment - "Instead of a consolidation of best-of-breed, I see new 'solutions' each quarter I hit a major recruiting tradeshow!" Help is on the way.....that's one of THE fundamental issues that Enterprise 2.0 addresses. The idea of 'mashups'...applying that to Enterprise 2.0 can be seen as mashing up relevant tools into one application/solution that works for you. Long gone will be the constraints associated with IT-generated applications.

But if you're on old architecture to begin with - a la AIRS and others in the HCM app space - the barriers are significant to reaching this holy grail. Consider the typical software life cycle of a company - innovate, get customers, plateau, sell the company, innovation stops, product dies, new player replaces you. If you're lucky/smart, you sell at the high like AIRS did to The Right Thing, BrassRing did to Kenexa, Vurv did to Taleo, etc. I know, we've been there when Resumix sold to us (and it was awful technology but lots of good customers). The Right Thing and Kenexa now have a "technology story" for their RPO businesses - watch for more of that in 2009 and 2010 BTW. If I'm buying technology today I'm not looking at the plateau and certainly NOT at the company that got acquired - they're already dead. Look at where the innovation is happening and where the "lightweight programming models" that Tim O'Reilly defined are - you'll be riding the next wave while you're buddy tries to catch up.

Cheers,
Mike