Openworld Update #6

Just one post today to wrap up the action...

Most of the good ideas are coming from the Expo areas, not from the sessions.  They are remarkably disappointing.  Today's sessions...


"20 Countries in 20 Weeks With No IT Support"
In fairness, I should have asked what they were doing in those 20 countries.  Traveling the countryside?  Cooking classes?  Book reports?  The answer is technically an HCM implementation, in that they were adding EEs from a recent acquisition.  Their time today was spent explaining how they built a template to enter the data, and a glorified macro to type it in.  That's it.  No integration, no testing, no full migration, no change management, no training.  Data entry.  And it took 20 weeks to enter 900 records.  The best thing I can say for this session is that it ended early.

"Building Your PeopleSoft Application Strategy"
You should upgrade now, because then the CEO will sign off on everything.  We have the skit to prove it.  Oh, and all HR people have to offer at the big table is an engagement survey ("Everyone is sad, but we treat them really well.  If only we knew more!"), turnover ("I wish we knew why people are leaving!") and a fear of the unknown ("What?  We have to upgrade our system again someday?").  But it's ok, as long as you upgrade, you'll be fine.

Hopeful for more tomorrow, with some promising sessions lined up.  But the feeling from the IT team is the same.  And I've heard it was similar last year.  It's unfortunate, given the cost of the conference.  I am trying not to get my hopes up for the HR Tech conference in Chicago, but I think having a host of vendors on hand will provide more insight into processes and specifics than we are seeing here.