New Florence. New Renaissance.

Big Data and HR

NY Times on an emerging discipline of work-force science

"Today, every e-mail, instant message, phone call, line of written code and mouse-click leaves a digital signal. These patterns can now be inexpensively collected and mined for insights into how people work and communicate, potentially opening doors to more efficiency and innovation within companies.

Digital technology also makes it possible to conduct and aggregate personality-based assessments, often using online quizzes or games, in far greater detail and numbers than ever before.

In the past, studies of worker behavior were typically based on observing a few hundred people at most. Today, studies can include thousands or hundreds of thousands of workers, an exponential leap ahead."

Xerox: Rebirth as Vertical BPO provider

MIT Technology Review recently included Xerox in its Disruptive 50 as it tries to shake up the IT services market.

Besides core document management processes, Xerox  is also going after underserved verticals.

CEO Ursula Burns on one:

“Working with municipalities in California on better parking. Parking is a pain in the ass. And it doesn’t get enough money for the value. In the middle of the day [cities] want to charge a whole lot of money for parking on the street. We developed congestion-parking solutions such that [cities] can vary price. So you’re driving around, and—some of this is still in trial mode—you can get a bing on your phone that says “There’s a parking spot a block over,” and it will charge you the appropriate amount. This is all driven by technology from our Grenoble labs [in France].”

Photo Credit for Si-Log the company’s parking ticket app

Google’s HR analytical rigor

Slate

“And among the tech giants—many of which are also quite profitable and face some of the same problems Google does—the search company is alone in trying to answer its HR questions scientifically. “We make thousands of people decisions every day—who we should hire, how much we should pay them, who we should promote, who we should let go of,” says Prasad Setty, who heads POPS’ “people analytics” group. “What we try to do is bring the same level of rigor to people decisions that we do to engineering decisions. Our mission is to have all people decisions be informed by data.”

“Google’s HR department has uncovered many such nuggets of optimal organizational behavior. Among the biggest finding is that middle managers matter, which overturned Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s onetime presumption that you could run a company in which nobody was the boss of anyone else. POPS determined this by looking at scores the firm’s managers received from two-sided feedback surveys, taking into account both what a manager’s underlings and a manager’s manager thinks about his work. When analysts compared the highest- and lowest-performing managers, they found a stark difference—the best managers had lower attrition rates (meaning fewer people left their teams), and their teams were much more productive across a range of criteria.”

Photo Credit

Mid-level recruiting goes more social

GE has built an internal recruiting staff of about 500 in the last six years. In 2012 the team, helped by LinkedIn (LNKD) and BranchOut (a Facebook app) filled most of GE’s 25,000 openings, about 10 percent of which were executive and senior professional positions. They completed most searches in about 73 days, compared with the average 170 days it takes outside firms. “We still use outside recruiters but only when they’re absolutely required—for confidential searches or very specialized jobs,” says Steven Knox, who heads recruiting at GE for markets outside the U.S. and Europe.

The company’s cost savings have been substantial—close to $100 million last year in search firm fees alone, according to a person familiar with the matter who wasn’t authorized to discuss it publicly. Even more important, Knox says, GE is able to keep attractive candidates on its radar for future searches and find hires who better fit its culture. Explains Knox: “Our recruiters know what it takes to work here.”

BusinessWeek

Photo Credit

Bluebird by Amex

“American Express has partnered with Wal-Mart Stores on its newest product, a prepaid debit card, Bluebird, that’s now on sale in 4,000 outlets nationwide. Customers can add money to Bluebird at Walmart stores or online and use the card anywhere AmEx plastic is accepted. It’s targeted mainly at the 68 million Americans the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. defines as “underbanked” or “unbanked””

“An Ernst & Young survey in March found that 58 percent of customers now bank with more than one company, up 9 percentage points from 2011. AmEx hopes that ferment gives it a chance to compete with banks in the mobile payments market, regarded as the industry’s next frontier, without any of the costs of maintaining bricks-and-mortar locations. “Bluebird is another iteration of the trend that technological advances are allowing you to reimagine what financial services might look like,” says Dan Schulman, the AmEx executive in charge of enterprise growth, which includes the Serve program. Serve allows for instant person-to-person payments via e-mail, text message, and Facebook. “The banking system of yesterday, with branches as the mainstay, is really in many ways not necessary,” he says.”

Bloomberg BusinessWeek

An astonishingly large number – estimated at over 80% – of Walmart customers pay by cash today

The Bluebird Website does a crisp job explaining all the value points of the card

Software AG Innovation Awards

At its ProcessWorld event, Software AG honored 8 of its customers and partners for innovation. My favorite was Echo Entertainment Group Ltd., one of the largest casino operators in Australia.

“It turned to webMethods to automate its chip purchase voucher process. Now, in just two minutes (from a previous paper/manual process of 20 minutes), patrons can complete a digital form on an Apple® iPad® and use a personal ID number to release their funds (and balance the risk of losing as much as $ 500,000 that high-rollers are authorized for). The paperless process improves the customer experience and gives patrons more time for fun at the casino. Meanwhile, staff gains more time to provide an optimum level of customer service.”

John Hagel on innovation via supplier networks

John Hagel on how the Chinese in particular are innovating through vast, scalable networks of suppliers with deep specialization

With smaller vendors “the person on the other side is not a lawyer or a procurement executive – it’s someone who ran a plant like mine” 

As for lack of IP protection “I need to continually innovate …so I can stay a step ahead …even though I know I am being copied”

Via Dennis Howlett

"Golden Kitchen"

Little tech innovation - but definitely a great example of complex supply chain coordination and given the times, a great example of community service at work.

The Golden Temple in Amritsar, India - the holy shrine for the Sikh religion (mistaken by many as the same as Islam because followers wear turbans) serves over 30,000 meals a day (on some busy days over 100,000)

The stats are staggering - over 10,000 pounds of wheat, 4,000 pounds of lentils and more every day handled by over 400 cooks, dishwashers and other workers - all paid for in charity.

Innovation in US Financial Accounting

"Tax Almanac ...a free US resource that is built upon the MediaWiki platform...

and the SEC announced IDEA, the next generation of information delivery services for investors that makes use of XBRL and which will replace the clunky EDGAR service."

AccMan

Birth of a Sales Tool: LinkedIn Meets eBay

Fast Company

"Let's say you're a seasoned salesperson; other Salesconx users can pay you a small fee (usually about $100) for an online "introduction" in which you introduce them to one of your contacts. The idea is that every introduction be mutually beneficial; a snowplow salesman, for example, might connect a tire salesman and a truck salesman. Sohn hopes the marketplace will be trustworthy enough that it will allow top salespeople to leave inefficient practices like cold-calling or mass-emailing behind. Think of it as LinkedIn meets eBay."

"Salesforce.com paved the way for enterprises to trust a hosted service with their business information. Ebay set the stage for a transaction between two individuals that have never met. And social networks have really re-invigorated the notion of a referral as a means of connecting with a targeted individual."