Analyst Perspectives

Frontline work is being reshaped from every direction: tighter labor pools, unpredictable demand and a workforce that expects more than just a paycheck. Yet too many organizations are still treating workforce scheduling like a game of Tetris—moving blocks around and hoping they fit. It’s time to admit that smart scheduling isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a frontline imperative. And if the enterprise is still thinking of it as “just logistics,” it's already falling behind.

The learning management system (LMS) market is evolving, with the lines that once rigidly defined categories becoming increasingly blurred. Today, an LMS that lacks Learning Experience Platform (LXP) capabilities risks becoming obsolete in an environment where user expectations are shifting rapidly. In a similar vein, an LMS and LXP that fail to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to guide learners through their diverse learning journeys face a similar fate.

I recently attended the Oracle Apps & Industry Analyst Summit in Redwood City, California. Over the course of two days, Oracle offered a concentrated look at a market that is both racing ahead and tripping over its own shoelaces. Generative, predictive and now agentic artificial intelligence (AI) have become the new currency of competitive advantage across HCM; Oracle alone has delivered more than 150 AI capabilities across its Fusion Apps and 62 inside HCM in just two years, climbing from...

Workforce planning has long been a cornerstone of business strategy, yet many enterprises still approach it with outdated methods. Traditionally, it has been rigid, reactive, subjective and often siloed. But as industries evolve—especially those with high turnover and a large frontline workforce, like retail, healthcare and hospitality—companies must rethink how they forecast talent needs. Technology is reshaping workforce planning, making it more dynamic, precise and forward-thinking.

Attending isolved’s first Analyst Summit was more than just an opportunity to hear about their latest innovations—it was a front-row seat to their vision for the future of HR technology and services. A central theme emerged quickly—they are deeply committed to supporting small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), not just with technology but also with robust services and an ecosystem of partners that elevate HR teams into the strategic powerhouses they were always meant to be.

If you’ve ever held the same job title at two different companies, you know firsthand how misleading job-based approaches to work can be. I’ve had the same title across different organizations, and the roles couldn’t have been more different. The responsibilities, expectations and even the skills required varied so significantly that it made me question why we continue to define work through the lens of static job descriptions.

The HCM market has undergone a significant transformation in recent years. Legacy providers, long the dominant force, built their platforms primarily for administrative efficiency—streamlining HR processes but often overlooking the broader employee experience. However, today’s workforce expects more. Employees and managers now demand intuitive, engaging and connected HR experiences that extend beyond transactional tasks.

Ventana Research recently announced its 2023 Market Agenda for Human Capital Management, continuing the guidance we’ve offered for two decades to help organizations derive maximum potential from workforce- and people-related technology investments and initiatives. In crafting this Market Agenda, we focused on three critical themes top-of-mind for both HCM vendors and buyers: Organizational resiliency, employee engagement and utilizing digital technology to derive deeper insights into the state...

The HCM software market continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace. The innovations we’re seeing are exciting new features and capabilities, but many have more profound impacts: They provide organizations with more effective ways to serve their customers and enhance their experience. HR’s customers –employees, managers, retirees, candidates, leadership and external partners – can now access and take advantage of native mobile apps, virtual agents and chatbots (via text or voice) as well as...

Over the last few years the telecommunications and call center industries have undergone radical changes. Telecommunications was mainly in the hands of national and regional telecom companies, which essentially owned all the cables in the ground. The call center market was dominated by a small number of vendors that provided on-premises systems to manage and route calls when they arrived at a company’s offices. The telecom model was in effect the first cloud-based service, though almost no one...

Our benchmark research into the next-generation contact center in the cloud confirms what most people intuitively know – that consumers now engage with each other and organizations through more communication channels than a few years ago and that many of these are speech- and text-based. Companies are therefore generating large volumes of voice recordings and textual records. They contain vital information about what customers feel about issues connected to their dealings with the organization...

Zuora provides software that supports the rapidly expanding subscription economy. I recently attended the company’s user event in London, called subscribe16. During his keynote speech CEO Tien Tzuo insisted that the subscription economy is not only here to stay but is likely to grow substantially. In the U.K. alone, he said, 40 million users are using subscription services, including 14 million use video streaming services, 5.4 million use music streaming services, and perhaps most surprising,...

Robotics is nothing new to some aspects of manufacturing and the IT industry, but it is relatively new in the customer experience (CX) market. The term often conjures up images of little gray machines taking over tasks previously handled by humans – machines making cars, programmed vacuum cleaners and the like. In the CX space, however, we are not talking about machines but about software that can automate routine tasks. For the time being, I don’t believe robots will take over the contact...

Analysts have been talking and writing about a “360 degree” view of the customer for years. Our own benchmark research into customer relationship management shows that only37 percent of organizations are able to produce analysis and reports that yield such a comprehensive view. Other research into next-generation customer analytics reveals that the main issue in this area for nearly two-thirds (63%) of organizations is data availability. To make the situation worse, customer-related data is...

This year Oracle OpenWorld conference opened with a fiery speech by Larry Ellison, who has stepped down from his role as CEO to become Executive Chairman and CTO. Filling his rhetoric with claims of market leadership and attacks on competitors SAP and Workday, Ellison set an aggressive tone for those who followed him. In a talk relevant to my research practice, Chris Leone, senior vice president of applications development, asserted that Oracle is making progress in human capital management...

Cornerstone OnDemand is a large pure-play vendor of talent management software, with more than 1,700 clients, more than 14.5 million users and more than 60 percent growth in revenue over the past 12 months. At the company’s annual customer conference this year, CEO Adam Miller talked about a trend in the market of talent management applications going beyond automating a series of processes to help engage employees within organizations. I agree with this analysis and would extend the trend to...