Spilling the Tea on HR Tech - How the shift from selling applications to selling outcomes is changing the way HR buys technology

[00:00:00] One of the things Deal also brought out with on just the 4th of May is that in DealEngage, which is their performance management tool, they now have the ability to track token usage. Meaning, you know, if you have put out a mandate or if you are at least just interested in how many people are using the AI tokens, you know, maybe you're paying a subscription, if those still exist by then, or whichever method you're doing to pay for your AI, how many people are actually taking advantage of that?

[00:00:28] And that could go good or bad, but you know, either way, that's pretty interesting that's built in there. You know, you know, their terms that are in there really shows like what it is that they were hearing from their customers. They said most companies have an AI strategy, but like visibility and whether it's actually working. Are people just logging in saying yeah I'm using Claude, sure buddy, or actually, you know, that is what they're primarily using to solve some problems. So pretty fascinating to see that now as part of what is ostensibly part of your HR platform.

[00:00:59] Welcome to the HR Huddle Podcast, presented by Sapient Insights Group, the ultimate resource for all things HR. It's time to get in the huddle. Welcome to Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, where we focus on the hottest HR tech news everyone needs to know to be in the know. We break down the news of the week and help you make sense of what it means for our industry and how it can impact your organization.

[00:01:29] We're recording today on May 6, 2026. And we're bringing all the news that you can use this week. I'm back finally from being out and about. I missed a whole series. I was it was so I was I was doing FOMO because I wasn't wasn't here leading the way. But Cliff, you did an amazing job stepping in as our host and joining me today is my co host, Cliff Stevenson, who is our director of research. And if you don't know who I am, because I didn't introduce myself this time.

[00:01:56] I'm your host, Daisy Harris, chief research officer, managing partner for Sapient Insights Group. We are a research and advisory firm. Cliff, it's obviously just missing out one show. I'm all over the place. My scripts all messed up.

[00:02:07] No, it's not just that both of us have been on the road. We'll start off by talking about that. And I might have mentioned in the last episode for regular listeners that that was gonna be a very short episode. But don't worry, there's gonna be a very long episode. That's gonna be this one. Got a lot of news to catch up on. I think even if we didn't have that sort of gap, this would have been a long one. A lot of cool news.

[00:02:28] There's so much going on. Not only just the events, but just every time I open up LinkedIn, there's another new announcement today. I mean, we had one today. So yeah, it's hold on to your horses. Is that what you say today? Well, the derby is just over, right? Oh, yeah, that's right. Release the horses. Catch the horses back. I don't know.

[00:02:49] Yeah, I'm bad. I watched the dresses at the derby. I was so bad. Terry, who lives there in the area, and is a longtime Lexington and derby horse race attendee who took us there two years ago now, which was the first time I'd ever gone to anything like that. She was texting us saying, who are you betting on? And we're like, I'm like, the best dressed? Am I allowed to bet on the best dress? But this what was nice on the derby this year was that it was the first female trainer. That's right.

[00:03:45] Yeah. One of the stories we're going to talk about this week is Jerry Stengel, who we've talked about before, who does some great research in the space on women and businesses. And she's now doing some great research on health care for women.

[00:04:00] But, you know, she oftentimes, you know, has the commentary that, you know, it isn't really sort of women led is a conversation, but it is it is just understanding that sometimes it's just breaking that barrier. It's the first to the to the table. That's really the representation matters. Right. And that's what we say all over and over again. Right.

[00:04:17] A little girl somewhere who is currently working with horses saw for the first time that another female was out there training horses. And that's that's hopefully going to change someone's trajectory and their career. And we have lots of career news. This there's so many career changes this episode. Right. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of people news that some of my favorite, honestly, hearing about where people are going. And some of these cases, we've had a chance to talk to these people.

[00:04:39] That is one of the benefits of being out and going and go to these events. It's just a really, a really positive time. Another positive time, of course, is this time of year, the best time of year. Why? Because the report is out. This is when the HR system serving now in its 29th year. So long before. The survey is out. You said report. It's not report. It's a survey. You know, I'm having FOMO of not sitting there and 16 hour days of writing it. I think we're both a little wild from this. But yeah, the survey is out.

[00:05:09] It's 29th iteration. I really looking forward to it this year. It is out there. If you have not received a copy either through our distributors that was back in mid April on the 15th or the public launch at the very end of May or the end of April on the 29th, please reach out to us. I will also have a link in the comments to this that you're listening to. You can also just easily go to Sapien Insights Group and you will find it. We make sure that it's easy to find. You have a link to take it.

[00:05:36] It doesn't matter if you say, oh, I work at a two-person company. It's like, no, those are the stories we need to hear. We want to know. Actually, this year, we are going to target that one to 10 employee size company because they are the hardest to reach. And we know that they are dealing with just as much chaos and tough decision making as companies of a larger size.

[00:05:57] So if you are in a company that is less than 10 employees, so all my consulting friends, all of my organizations out there who are our friends, who have their own little small businesses, take the survey. It's a great way to get access to it, right? That's right. You get access to it. And you can even have it broken down, look at your results for last year's by EMEA, for instance. You want to say, oh, I'm a European company. We're going to have a lot more of those this year. We're also expanding in to a finance survey. We haven't done that in a number of years.

[00:06:27] A lot of questions there. And it's going to be a lot of questions. And I think it's going to tie into a lot of our stories today, which is about what is the value of this system? You know, how is this actually driving business results? That's something that we noted probably on this show quite a bit and realized that was something we need to dive more into. It's one thing to say, oh, I'm using AI. It's another thing to say, oh, I even like the AI systems. But the real question is, how is this helping you maintain customer satisfaction?

[00:06:56] How is this helping you create employee retention? All those sort of things. Let's find out and we'll find out together. Now, I mentioned we had been to a number of different events. And then because we have so many cool stories, I'm going to try and go through this quickly if I can. In no particular order. Two minutes per event is what we've done, right? That's right. Yeah. We're starting to speed around early. I've been to 10 since we last caught up. Yeah. So some of these you can go to either Stacey or I's LinkedIn page.

[00:07:25] Those are easy to find if you're listening to the show. But there'll be more detailed right upstairs. So I'm just going to give sort of the highlights, what really stood out. In no particular order, this isn't even in chronological order, but some of the things that I really like. Going to the Workday Innovation Summit. That's not one I normally go to. Stacey usually goes to that. Longstanding relationship there. It's in beautiful Napa Valley, California. And someone else from that event said something at the very end that I think really stood out and I agree with.

[00:07:52] Which is, this is the most correctly named Innovation Summit. I mean, there was really some innovation there. And it wasn't just in terms of, oh, here's some new products. There was something Emil said right at the beginning. He's like, we need to shift our way from selling applications to selling outcomes. Stacey, I don't know where you might have gotten that term from, but it sure sounds familiar. But it wasn't just sort of just speak.

[00:08:18] We saw that in everything they did when they were looking at SANA, for instance. And some will be talking about SAP's possible answer to that. Looking at how it brings all of those agentic models together into one place and ties that in to other systems that can actually give you some of the outcomes that are going on in that organization. Of course, there's really cool innovations happening with a lot of those products. But that was a really neat sort of almost philosophical, almost an innovation in process sort of change. Really, really cool stuff.

[00:08:48] A very different company that we don't talk about. We didn't use to talk about much, but we're starting to see more and more as Canva. Many of you will know them as a graphic design tool, but they do have Canva for business. They also have Flourish, which is a data visualization tool. That was pretty neat to see. They have a lot of this sort of stuff that's in there that has a lot of application in employee communications, but also recruitment marketing.

[00:09:13] And that was really cool to see that sort of event that's a little more consumer facing, that B2C. Also taking on that B2B, that business to business. Selling to other organizations. That sort of aspect to it. And they're kind of early on in those stages, but they're no less valuable to the organizations that use them. And what's interesting, and you're going to see this from a lot of these, is they were focused on solving business problems.

[00:09:39] Not just here's a cool thing you could make, but what is it that we're seeing from our customers that they're not able to do, right? Or personalizations with your company brand and having that just saved. So no matter what you do, it automatically reverts to those colors, those typefaces. Wonderful. ADP, that was really nice. You know, that one was one that was pretty more focused on some of the business aspect and on the integrations across all of the different platforms they have.

[00:10:06] We've talked about them on this very program about some of the acquisitions that they've had and how do they take something like a workforce software, you know, some of their workforce management capabilities and bring that into some of their AI and some of the other things that they're able to do. iSIMS was the most recent one I went to. In New Jersey, wasn't it, right? That was in New Jersey in Asbury Park. Asbury Park Sound is really, I was about to make a joke earlier that it was the 29th iteration that started well before we were born. You know, because I was feeling old. Why?

[00:10:36] Because I was going around and they had plaques and things set up for Bruce Springsteen. I'm like, wait, is he old enough to have plaques set up about what he used to like busk here and things like that? I'm like, no, no, he's my age. Don't be talking about like he needs plaques. Bruce is a little older than you are. That's true. Bruce, if you're listening, you're wonderful. I was happy to see you. Regular listener, I'm sure. But, you know, iSIMS is really interesting. A lot of the other platforms we're talking about, we're thinking of in terms of expansion.

[00:11:06] What are the different ways they can integrate? How can they work all across the business? iSIMS, on the other hand, is laser focused on the talent acquisition space. They want to be the very best at that enterprise level talent acquisition. I love that. And they show up in the data that way regularly, right? Mm-hmm. And I heard a very interesting point from their new chief AI officer. Had a lot of really good conversations with him. It really made me realize how important it is to do these things in person.

[00:11:32] It's kind of those breakout conversation, the hallway conversations about, you know, how do we still provide value? And it's going to be through those integrations, right? And those agentic connections. And he, interestingly enough, wasn't really sure that MCP is going to be the answer. So I know later on, Stacey, you had some stories about, oh, is, you know, is this, does the model matter? So keep that in mind because we might circle back to keep me under two minutes. Work human, finally.

[00:12:01] That's always just a really neat event. Really a celebration of everyone that works. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that they don't take what they do seriously in terms of recognition, in terms of rewards, in creating marketplaces for people, and in just, again, really tying it to business outcomes. I think that has become something that's critical. And I think that some of the proof there is in the outcomes that work human themselves have seen. They've seen a big uptake in number of customers.

[00:12:30] They have grown significantly in the last year when a lot of other companies have been victims of the so-called SaaSpocalypse, which I think we touched on once in the show that some of the SaaS companies aren't doing well. That's not the case for work human. Now, through some discussions with them, there's a number of different reasons that could be, right? Recognition is a much, let's just be frank, cheaper way to work with people than hiring more, right? Yeah.

[00:12:55] But it also shows that they have done a good job of connecting the dots between, hey, this leads to better outcomes, whatever those might be, right? That may have any, that could lead down to customer attention. I have friends that work in that space that really tie employee experience to customer experience. So if they have the ability to show that on their dashboards and their analytics and work with some of their services and their sort of consulting side to do it, I think that looks good for them. And I think the proof of that is how well they're doing.

[00:13:24] Now, that was a lot. I don't know if I was able to, I don't know if that was too busy. I was kind of, I don't know if you guys had two minutes per, but we were getting there. While you were, and some of them, I think you did like three in one week, didn't you, right? Like you were flying all over the place. So on the flip side, while you were doing that, I was doing some other events and we were sort of crossing each other in the Atlantic Ocean. Back in April, I went to the Infor Analyst Day Summit, which we had not done that for a few years. We were able to make that. That was in Atlanta.

[00:13:51] Allison Williams, our new analyst in, I wouldn't say in training anymore, but she's working through it, right? She's our director of a program on the research side. And she's now learning all the ins and outs of what it takes to be an analyst, which is, it's actually, as we, whenever I have to train someone to be an analyst, it's a really interesting conversation. Because there's always that question of what is an analyst? I'm like, kind of each of us have our own take on what it is, right? So that's been fun trying to bring Allison up to speed on all that. But we get to go to Infor.

[00:14:20] One of the things I think is that, you know, for those who historically remember Infor, Infor had acquired many, several HCM systems that they then sort of replatformed into some new solutions. They had a really payroll system. They had a very good workforce management system, which was started out by the same guys who then went off to do Dayforce's solution, right? They had a really good HCM system for the healthcare space called Lawson at the time.

[00:14:49] Many people still didn't write that in even, right? They said that they don't have many people who were on that. So they just, they acquired a lot of really cool. They were a private equity firm at the time, still sort of running that way, which makes them, I think, a little bit less, less possible being hit by the sort of SaaS apocalypse, as we've been calling it, right? Because they're not sort of focused so much on their stock number and all the things that are happening with that, right?

[00:15:11] What was really impressed me, because I had not had a chance to get caught up with them, is their laser focus on their big customers, right? They had some of the biggest names in the market, which I did not realize. I knew they had a lot of healthcare, but they had a lot of other people there, customers at that event. They very much tie the HCM world to the supply chain world. So that definitely was a big thing for them, is that connectivity tissue between supply chain and what they're doing on the HCM side.

[00:15:36] And what was really interesting is they had a lot of CIOs and CTOs up on the stage talking for them. And you and I both know, Cliff, we've been at every other event where they're talking to CHROs, and everybody wants the CIO because right now they're getting the budget for the HR technology conversation, right? And I had that conversation with the Infor product lead, and I said, you know, the thing you guys have is you guys have the customers on the CIO level. And they go, oh. And I said, everyone would love to have what you have up on your stage. And he goes, oh, I hadn't really realized that, right?

[00:16:05] So what really I liked is that the stories they told were really focused on AI at a very practical level. So one of the really good examples, I asked the CEO how they were really helping in the healthcare space, which was a big area for them, connect the tissue between sort of what data they had at an sort of enterprise level from a healthcare perspective to what they had on the HCM level.

[00:16:28] And he gave a really great example of how on the healthcare side, you know, they were starting to do things like having AI connect the level of criticality of the patient to the amount of work that a nurse would have to do in that room.

[00:16:44] And then basically, instead of just basically putting out the level of nurses you needed just based on the number of beds, which is how most of the scheduling gets done in the healthcare space right now is beds and kind of level of criticality, but, you know, that's based off of a floor.

[00:16:59] Or they actually were taking the actual level of criticality of those each patient based off of what was going on in the medical files and the electronic medical files and being able to rescale and rescope sort of scheduling at sort of almost immediate level. And that was really interesting because that was a real life problem. And it was really interesting, I think, from the perspective of solving something with AI that helps both the employee, helps the company and helps the patient at a lot of levels. Right.

[00:17:30] So those were really exciting and interesting case studies that they had up on stage. The other event that I went to, which was why I was out of the country, not able to attend some of the vendor events, is that I did go across the ocean and I attended HR Executive Magazine's HR Tech Europe event. The first time I've been to that one specifically for them, I got to do two sessions. Basically did their new intensives, which is almost like mini workshops.

[00:17:55] And then we also ran a session on the European data for the annual HR system survey, which was well attended. Both of the groups were sort of standing room only with the headphones on. I got to try to do the big room and everybody had headphones. And that was an interesting thing. There was some good and not so good about that. Like, you know me, I like to interact with a group and make them talk to each other. They were very uncomfortable that I told them to take their headsets off and actually talk to each other. But they enjoyed it. We got into it.

[00:18:23] But also, too, you know, it was interesting to see sort of how focused people were, how much they were able to pay attention to what you were talking about. So we really that was a really, really good event. While I was there, we got to meet with a lot of our customers, including the chief HR, one of the HR leads for who runs culture and engagement for High Bob. That was interesting. She was talking about what it was like to do AI inside of a tech firm. Right. We got to speak with two large Cornerstone customers while I was there.

[00:18:50] One of them is using their their current solution sort of as an HR mess. And I want to talk to a couple of customers who are using Cornerstone as an HR mess because it is a light HR mess in the European market. They're selling it quite rapidly there. They were very complimentary of sort of how they were thinking about it as a layer across their other applications. Right. And then I got to talk to another organization who is really rethinking how they deploy Cornerstone from a implementation perspective because they've been able to sort of have it extend their AI use.

[00:19:20] And so both of those, I think, use cases were interesting. I also got a chance to catch up with some of our good friends while we were there who David Edwards, which is really good. He just wrote a book. He got to we got to get together and have a conversation about that. I got to talk to your old boss, Kevin Oaks, while I was out there. Josh Burson and me did a catch up while we were out there.

[00:19:40] And then I really was excited to get a chance to talk to our good friend, Anna, who from HR Digi, who has been a big advocate of ours for many, many years in the Sweden area where she does a lot of her work from an analyst perspective. And so we got a chance to catch up with her as well. So it was it was a really good event. I did take a little jaunt over to Scotland, which I enjoyed. I will say I did take a little bit of personal time with some friends.

[00:20:08] My aunt came out to join us on that. And that was really fun because I don't do that a lot of times when we're traveling. We were running from things. Yeah, I know. I had some meetings in the UK on that Monday. And so it made sense to sort of maybe do the weekend there in Scotland. I love that. I hadn't had a chance to be at Scotland yet. Got a lot of advice from people around what I should see, which there is a make your own cocktail place that is absolutely fascinating. Call. I would recommend it for anybody who wants to go there.

[00:20:38] I did do a little bit of Outlander touring. I know if you're not an Outlander fan, you may not. Oh, no, I'm not anti. I just haven't got a chance yet. Yeah, you got to watch it. So that was fun. So we had a good time. I then flew back across the pond over to the Oracle conference. That's the last thing that I went to last week. I just want to quickly do a little language joke. When you went from Scotland or you went from Holland to Scotland, you went from hoi to oi. Oi is hello in Dutch. Is that it? Oi. Thank you. Oi. See? Yeah. I'm going to work on that one. My language-based material. Is that like a dad joke?

[00:21:08] Is that what that is? A Mia-based dad joke. A Mia-based dad joke? Okay. I'll go with that. We had a great time with catching up with a lot of people while we were out there. But then when I flew to the Oracle, which was on the other side in San Francisco, that was really good because we had that at the Oracle baseball field. Not a big baseball fan, but in San Francisco, that was kind of fun, right? To get some pictures out there and to get a dance to actually hold the sessions in the event.

[00:21:36] A little bit chilly, I will say, for me. But I think it was cool to be in a different place than just a conference room, right? The biggest thing, I think, to what was happening there is that Oracle, Chris Leon spoke at rapid pace about all the work that he's doing. It was very clear that he's enjoying his vibe coding environment as a senior leader. And he talked a lot about how they are creating an environment for both non-engineer people

[00:22:04] to do coding and for pro engineers to do coding, kind of both spectrums of the environment, to work within the Oracle HCM platform and across actually all of the Oracle Fusion products. To be honest, Chris is now over top of all of that. And that was interesting to see how they were sort of thinking about the different audiences who were going to be developing content inside and developing solutions inside of, from an AI perspective, the Oracle Fusion environment. What they also really focused on heavily, both Yvette Cameron, Chris, as well as Steve and Miranda, were absolutely focused that they're not talking about AI agents anymore.

[00:22:33] They're talking about AI applications, which is teams of agents. You know, we've seen that from, it's not just them. I think they feel like they are ahead of the curve on that, which might be the case. I mean, we were having that conversation. They definitely are much farther down the road. They've got quite a few applications in play there. And they really, again, same thing. They were talking about doing outcomes. What I think is different from what we just heard on the other side of the outcomes conversation is they are looking at charging based on outcomes. Yes.

[00:23:00] So their financial model, I think, is going to be a little bit different. It's not per API connector. It's not per run, per se, data. They're saying, look, your data is yours. What they are saying is that every time you do an outcome, then that's what you're going to get charged on. So they're doing sort of flat fee models at different levels. And then basically, at a certain point, you're going to start paying for the outcomes that you achieve. Now, that works really well, but it does, I think, make people think a little bit about dashboards, what data is being pulled on a regular basis.

[00:23:29] It's those auto running agents that could be causing some problems in that kind of monetary. They have two great clients who were very excited about the work that they were doing with Oracle who were there. I can't mention their names, but one was with large healthcare. Another one was a sort of global manufacturing organization. And both of them, you could tell, were really building out interesting approaches to using AI. They're all beta customers. They're doing forward engineering, just like we know Workday and some of the other ones are, where they're sending people out to kind of work side by side with them.

[00:23:57] They're calling into their product teams almost every week. What I really liked about the healthcare, Elena, who was there, she was an amazing customer. Me and her had a lot of conversations about how am I paying for all of this? And we're going to get into that. She said she's constantly reworking her budget, constantly going back to her senior leadership about what she thinks it's going to cost. She says she is looking at reducing point solutions to get to that price point that she needs to include the AI. But she says she feels it's absolutely necessary. And she does feel that she's getting the value out of it. So we're going to talk more about that in the data this year.

[00:24:26] We're going to see where it's at. But it was a good event. I was glad I had the opportunity to go. I had not gotten a chance. You had done it, Oracle, the last couple of years. And we'll get to hear more from them, I think, over the next couple of weeks. It's great to get to caught up with Yvette, who's a good friend. Yeah, I mean, we were traveling the world. There was a lot of stuff going on. And then on top of it, we're going to do a lot of virtual events coming up, right? Yeah, we've got a few webinars with most of the companies we've named. In fact, I think every one of these companies that we've named, we're going to be doing some work with.

[00:24:55] Now, interestingly enough, one of the first ones will be an ADP event, Women at Work. I'm already registered. Kind of tying together both ADP that we've talked about and this idea of Women at Work. I don't know if you want to go into any more. I know we're already kind of in. Yeah, I know we could just have the whole session on just these sessions that we're running. This one is, I'm really proud of this. ADP came to me and asked if I would run this panel. The panel comes right after the keynote on this. ADP's done this for multiple years.

[00:25:22] They usually have like 10,000 people sort of log in and listen to it. It's amazing, right? We had a great panel. We had the head of sort of digital AI and infrastructure at Amazon there. We had an amazing Guadalupe who is in ADP doing global work for the organization, right? And then we had someone from one of the large consulting firms who was really talking about sort of what she's seeing from the research that they had done themselves, right?

[00:25:47] And what we were talking about is how we are rethinking sort of and re-energizing the conversation about sort of owning the roles that we have, not just in AI, but in technology as a whole from a women leadership perspective, right? Because, you know, there are some realities about what's happened over the last couple of years. DEI programs have been cut down. Infinity programs have been cut down. We've seen a lot of sort of pushing back on some of the progress we've made in pay equity,

[00:26:17] those kinds of things, right? And what we were talking about is re-imagining, re-energizing sort of the important role that women have to play inside of the business ecosystem. What I really loved was that these were all women who were really thinking about not just women in leadership, which we all should be thinking about, but what it means to the business when women aren't involved, when women aren't at the table. How much do you miss on the consumer side? How much do you miss on the bias side? How much do you miss on just new ideas, new ways of thinking about things, right?

[00:26:46] Because you're just missing a whole group of professionals in the market, right? And so that was, I'm really excited about that. I would definitely encourage anyone to sign up for that. It is May 7th is when the live event will go. We've done some recordings around it, but I definitely say everyone should attend. And then I think we're also doing another event for ADP coming up on May 21st. Which is focusing on HR and IT, how they work together, how you leverage IT.

[00:27:13] They've got a new partner and solution program about IT onboarding. You and I have been talking about this for a while, how these two worlds go together. We are going to have myself and a CIO talking about what it's like to work together, HR and IT, and how important it is for that to work together on the onboarding side and how the business models are connecting. Because AI doesn't care what your title is, right? It just knows who you are. And then you're going to be doing something for HiBob with Australia, right? Yeah, exactly. High Bob, really for the whole APAC region.

[00:27:43] You mentioned specifically some of the AI that's going on at High Bob. But just as, you know, different systems work differently for different sizes, for different people. Also, their regional differences is something we always try and highlight in our work as well. So we're going to be really looking at that region and what's significant and specific to Australia and the rest of the APAC region. The Workday webinar on workforce management on June 23rd.

[00:28:11] So, again, all of these, I believe anyone can just jump in and register if any of these topics are of interest to you. They'll be in our newsletter. And you don't want to miss some of these sessions because we're going to be releasing some of our new data at some of them. Not the new survey, but some of the data that we haven't had a chance to analyze and show. So I think that's going to be the really important thing is that we never get enough time to analyze all of our data, right?

[00:28:32] Yeah, and another thing, too, and although you can probably tell both of Stacey and I love to talk about these things, we always make sure to leave time at the end of these things to get questions from you in the audience. So if you've ever had, you know, some specific questions that come up around any of these topics, we always love to make these whenever possible. You know, whenever it's not the time differences or anything like that, when possible, we leave time for questions.

[00:28:59] So it's a good chance to interact or ask specific questions. You know, sometimes it can seem just like we were talking about, oh, is my company too small? It can seem like, well, this isn't really something that never comes up. Please ask the question. We'd love to get that. Be surprised by how the best questions. I had someone at the last Transform event, I think I mentioned, ask me, what do you do if there's no Internet in my area, right? There you go. Love that stuff. No question is too small. No question is not important, right? Yeah.

[00:29:25] That being said, Cliff, my question to you is how are we going to get through 20, 20 topics in less than 15 minutes? So we're going to see. Yeah, they're all important. But yeah, it's interesting, though. I hate to go off on a tangent already. But this idea of when something works, that's a great point that you just brought up about what do I do if the Internet doesn't work? Because this is something companies have to think about. Very often, to be fair, we're just as focused on it.

[00:29:55] But companies and even consumers are focused on what is the new cool thing it can do? What is it? What's going on? But the other question should always be, what if it can't even do it? What happens if it doesn't do it? Is my data secure? What happens if just the system's down? What if I don't have an Internet connection? What if does it work on a phone to someone that's up on a roof trying to look up whether they have a certification or not? All those sort of things. Those are important questions, too.

[00:30:23] And it's going to be a big focus of ours, I think, going forward is looking at what does success look like, but also what does failure look like? And what can you do to mitigate that? What does that mean? And what are your contingencies that are in play? Yeah, I think we're talking about one of the things we're going to start asking all the vendors in our briefing. So be prepared if you're doing a briefing with us, we're probably going to start asking this, is what happens when it doesn't have the answer, right? What happens when it doesn't have the answer? What does it show you? And if you are a practitioner out there, ask that during your demos, okay?

[00:30:53] Absolutely. All right, Cliff. So, yeah, let's talk about probably, I don't know. Again, I'm not putting these in a particular order of importance, but this was a big one to me, which is Phenom acquiring Plum. What's really cool here is I've known both of these companies. I've known them for quite some time. And this also is kind of hot on the heels of Phenom being on this show just, I think, two episodes ago for when they acquired Be Applied. That was an assessment tool, right?

[00:31:22] So, you know, Plum does, again, sort of assessments, but, you know, it's on this sort of, I think they call it psychometric-based talent assessments. Basically, you know, what kind of psychology is in there. But a lot of it here is to get into the things that can't be faked specifically by AI. Having just been out at iSIMS, I've recently had a whole conversation with Indeed on our sister podcast. It's this, this is a growing concern, right?

[00:31:52] It's kind of like an arms race of I'm going to use AI to make the best possible resume and send out to the most number of people. While at the same time, organizations are going, I'm using AI to filter those resumes. And so it's like it's the AI to talk to each other. So what do we do? AI to AI? AI, AI. What's going on? It's the forefront of what we're seeing. It's going to happen everywhere else, right? Yeah. And I mean, this was in their own press release. They said, as AI generated resumes, deepfake interview responses, and fabricated work histories, create a new verification hurdle.

[00:32:22] Now I'm going off script a little bit from what they said. But these were the sort of things they're deliberately looking at when they were thinking about an application or an acquisition of this size. So really interesting to see these issues resulting in multimillion dollar deals. Yeah. And we should know, we have a longtime friend of Caitlin McGregor, who was the CEO of Plum. I'm excited to see that she found a home for the hard work she's been doing. One of the things they came out with was that role model technology map, which is kind of a behavioral blueprints.

[00:32:51] And she had done a lot of work against sort of the 40,000 real world jobs that she had mapped that to. So I think her data focus matches what we know is Phenom's data focus. And we know sort of that talent intelligence conversation is shifting much more to how do I know, like you said, not only that it's a real person, but more importantly that it, you know. John Sumster brought up, I think, a really good comment on one of the things I was reading today. He said, you know, we keep looking for the perfect person.

[00:33:19] He goes, but if I'm a brand new employee, I don't have any of the experience or those things you want me to have. So are we just weeding out the people who are there with really good instincts or who have done the hard work of making sure that they had lots of different jobs they had before this, right? And so really thinking differently about what is it we need from human beings when we bring them into an organization. And it isn't always that five years of experience and six years on the job. And that's the specific university that we thought you went to, right? That's exactly it.

[00:33:48] And keeping on this recruiting theme, and you can tell that it's important because we're seeing this movement in the market, Paylocity acquiring Grayscale. Of course, Paylocity, we well know, you know, they do more than pay, obviously. One of the larger sort of just HR technology providers. It's noteworthy that they called themselves now a leading provider of HCM finance and IT solutions, right? Yeah, extremely noteworthy. I notice that as well. It's sort of reading between the lines.

[00:34:18] That's the T right here, folks. The T leaves. So Grayscale does recruiting automation, right? So this is something we've seen from, for instance, UKG, who really rolled out a sort of mass hiring or hiring at scale. This idea of working with frontline workers, being focused on those sort of organizations that need to make rapid and move through very quickly.

[00:34:43] Because it's not enough just to do it fast, of course, it's got to be quality and speed, right? Otherwise, you just replicate the steps. And this was the same as the Paradox acquisition for Workday, right? Workday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So very similar kind of concepts, right? Yeah, exactly. It's addressing a market that clearly, I think, was highlighted a lot during the COVID years, but also in recognition of just the shifting way that we do work now, right? Where we have AI that can allow things to be faster.

[00:35:12] But is it enough just to, you know, as I said, just be quick. We need to also be able to personalize this sort of recruiting thing. And it also needs to bring the right sort of experience to the end user as well, because that has long-term implications. I will just put a note out there to remind everyone that one of the best case studies I heard was not using AI to weed through everybody, but using AI to help the candidate actually find the right job, right?

[00:35:39] And then to do the interview with the human being. So you have a face-to-face conversation first, and then you use AI after that to do all the scheduling. Like, remember, AI doesn't always have to do the thing that everybody else is having it do, right? Think a little out of the box. So I'll just put that note out there. Now, I want to admit, though, that the very next story is about using a voice AI. We'll go through it. So anyway, Greenhouse acquired Ezra AI Labs.

[00:36:06] Ezra AI Labs is a voice AI interviewer to give basically a voice conversation that's meant to sound a lot more natural for these conversations. So you're, again, able to do sort of hiring at scale. I think the term they also use here is structured hiring. So, again, if you think in terms of the sort of classic hiring pipeline or funnel, if you have never been in talent acquisition, idea being that you get a whole lot of people at the beginning. Some of those will get, you know, an email.

[00:36:37] And then from there, some of those will then get an actual phone interview. So it's taking that part of the possible bottleneck forward, but still gaining all the information that would have been taken in. And if the company is good, they are giving them feedback all along the way so they know what's happening. Let's remember that. Yes, absolutely.

[00:36:55] In fact, one of the stats that was pulled in the press release is that 74% of candidates now use AI in a job search and 46% of their trust in the hiring process has decreased. You know, one goes up, the other one goes down. Not surprisingly, trust has become kind of the watchword. You know, if we say outcomes might have been the thing I heard most in all of the trips, I think trust is the other one. How do we quantify it? How do we increase it? How do we note that we're increasing it?

[00:37:23] So just like you said, Stacey, it's not enough to say, oh, how fast can we hire people? People have to feel as if they are valued during that process. For a number of different, even if they're not hired, you do not want those people as potential. Everyone's a potential customer. Everyone's a potential customer. Everyone in touch becomes a brand ambassador or brand detractor. Every good recruiting organization understands that that's the marketing model, right? Yeah. Absolutely. And then Gusto, one of the systems that shows up for a report.

[00:37:51] Almost everyone here, I think, shows up in our report. Yeah, we should know. We use Gusto internally for our own payroll system. Oh, yeah. So just to be fair to the market. But they show up in the survey all the time. They're definitely more focused on that sort of smaller payroll. Yeah, under 150, even under 50, I'd say, is where they enjoy it. But they've acquired Mosey. So this is very interesting, Stacey, because you said something earlier along the lines of even the smallest of businesses still have to deal with a lot of these issues.

[00:38:20] This is an exact case in point. So Mosey is a compliance company. You know, like everyone now, they're AI-powered. But the idea is to bring in extremely small level, you know, levels of compliance and risk mitigation for even down, and by small, I mean down to the municipality, down to the city level, right? So you have all of the sort of relegations, regulations. Sorry, I've been watching too much soccer. That's why soccer fans are out there.

[00:38:50] State and local, all your filing, all the paperwork that's required, you know, your minimum wage requirements, all those sort of things for extremely small companies. This didn't used to always be an issue. There used to be size cutoffs, at least in the United States, about when you really needed to worry about that. But that doesn't allow for scaling, and also those regulations change all the time, especially when you get down to the city level. When you get that local, sometimes you'll find that you need to have certain things in

[00:39:18] place, even at one person or five person. Both of us have been business owners. Stacey still are, so you know that sometimes there's the smallest things. Yeah, that's probably been my biggest learning curve. I mean, I was in HR. I understood all the risks and everything. But becoming a joint owner with my partners, it is the compliance that still trips us up, even though we know what we're doing. It's hard to keep track of it all. Their stat, which I thought was really interesting they put here, was that in the United States, it remains a real big issue.

[00:39:47] Businesses with fewer than 50 employees face roughly $14,700 per employee per year in compliance costs. I have to think about that. I'm like, maybe, especially when you're thinking about all through your payroll and your tracking and the amount of insurance you've got to track and how many different systems you might, and legal fees that you have to pay on a pretty regular basis, right? Just to make sure you're sort of in sync with everything. So yeah, that could very well be. And they say approximately 20% more than large enterprises with dedicated legal teams.

[00:40:14] We've been doing a lot of work with a lot of other compliance-based organizations. We've worked with Mitracek and Mineral in the past. I've had some really good briefings with them about what they're doing in this space. We've talked with Brightmind, who also has, which is expert HR in the UK. Yep. And they've done a lot of focus in this area. I mean, what I can tell you is that this space is shifting rapidly because I think a lot of people think they can start with AI. We know from our research already that two to three resources are used per person, per company

[00:40:43] when they're evaluating compliance needs inside the organization. There's a bit of a, I think, hold your breath and wait. At what point does AI mess someone up so bad that the huge compliance issue is caused? And then we're all going to go back to saying we definitely have to have a human in the loop on that conversation. So I think what I'm interested in seeing here from Gusto is that this is, it sounds like they're not just doing the compliance conversation as a whole, but they're also thinking about all

[00:41:11] the kind of legal things that small businesses need when they start up too, which is a different dialogue there, right? Yeah. Classificational workers, for instance. But yeah, that's very interesting. And then I keep it on that theme of acquisitions in the talent acquisition space. Crosscheck. And that's spelled, if you've never seen it, crosscheck. It's cross, normal, and CHQ. That was from the old days when we were all doing that, right? Acquired Traitify. T-R-A-I-T-I-F-Y. Like a trait. It's pretty good.

[00:41:40] That's right. Thank goodness. Interesting enough, they call it outcome-based AI hiring. In fact, one of their terms is it's the first, according to them, the first outcome-trained foundation model for hiring. There's that term again, outcomes, because the idea being like, how do we get an assessment of a person, but based on the outcomes that get brought into the organization, right?

[00:42:08] It's not enough to say, oh, they've got that trait or whatever it is. I think these recruiting solutions have to be a little bit careful because as we move to outcome-based payment for AI, do I start to say, I'm only going to pay you if what you give me adds value? That's a bit of a risk on the SaaS model that we're starting to see come out is if it is about outcomes, there is a much different metric of value that I put on top, not just reducing processes or reducing administrative or risk, right? Yeah.

[00:42:38] Not to add to our runtime, but I do think that they're very related. I do think that the movement towards outcomes or usage or consumption-based models is directly related to every organization wanting to prove the value of what they put out there in case there does need to be a pricing shift or to at least allay themselves against some unknown factors that you didn't have in a traditional SaaS model, right? When that's storage, which you're primarily, but moving on. Deal.

[00:43:08] I also did a acquisition just today, I believe, or yesterday, but this news just came in today. Not to be confused with Traitify, this is Sastrify. So somewhere, I think it's just eight dudes just making up companies in Silicon Valley. I'm not laughing at them, I'm laughing at them. I am. I love you all, of course, but the names sometimes, I get it. A lot of them are taken. And thank you for not naming yourself Pay Something. Yeah.

[00:43:35] Sastrify is, again, I would say, more or less, once you know what they do, you can see where the name came from, right? If Traitify was trying to bring up traits and put them into a system, they're doing the same with SaaS. So they do procurement and management. If you think about companies that do contract management or even software life management, that's basically what we're doing here just specifically for SaaS.

[00:44:00] So entire software lifecycle management that covers your licensing, renewals, anything. That's why I kind of thought about the contract side because a lot of it's inside. But here we're also talking about devices, security updates, those sort of things that are in there. Keeps it all under one spot. What are all these different systems? Stacey, I know that for a very long time, we've kind of been the leading authority on just how many different systems exist within one company. And we're talking about just kind of anything at fault roughly within HR and work tech.

[00:44:30] And the number that we have is basically what people go with because we have the largest report on this. And it's always larger than anyone expects, no matter what. It really is. And I do think that this IT onboarding, I mean, it's the same conversation we're going to be having with ADP. That is exactly what we're doing is their partner in this space.

[00:44:50] And I think, again, when you think about what's driving this sort of need to sort of think differently about onboarding for small businesses, AI doesn't work well if I don't have all my data connected. And if I don't have my systems connected, I don't know who has access to what. And it seems like that shouldn't be a big deal, but it's becoming a bigger deal and it has to be connected to my people data, right? And so I think we're seeing more and more of this. So this doesn't surprise me. It's interesting that, you know, I think deal is really pushing the envelope as to what they will be in the market, right?

[00:45:19] I think first it, oh, we're just payroll. Okay, now we're payroll HRMS. Now we're global EOR, right? Like every time you kind of turn around, deal's got some new thing that they're coming out with. It's that sort of back and forth competition with some of the other ones that are growing rapidly. So I think, you know, this, again, competitively, we're seeing people following what's happening here, right? Yeah. And talk about kind of a sign of the times or maybe even some innovation, but also relates to some of our research on how many people are actually using embedded AI tools or using AI tools.

[00:45:48] One of the things deal also brought out with on just the 4th of May is that in deal engage, which is their performance management tool, they now have the ability to track token usage. Meaning, you know, if you have put out a mandate or if you were at least just interested in how many people are using AI tokens, you know, maybe you're paying a subscription if those still exist by then or whichever method you're doing to pay for your AI, how many people are actually taking advantage of that? And that could go good or bad.

[00:46:18] But, you know, either way, that's pretty interesting. That's built in there. You know, their terms that are in there really shows like what it is that they were hearing for their customers. They said most companies have an AI strategy, but like visibility and whether it's actually working or people just logging in saying, yeah, I'm using Claude with sure about it. Or actually, you know, that is what they're primarily using to solve some problems. So pretty fascinating to see that now as part of what is ostensibly part of your HR platform. Yeah, exactly.

[00:46:47] And we're going to see more of that. But I'm already, you know, I will say I'm taking a little peek at the data. You can't be sure of it. It's still got to be cleaned. It's still, although Tammy's doing cleaning. Tammy, you can't listen to this part. But I will say that I am already seeing an increase in home developed, right? Which means I'm using AI to develop on top of my HR system. Not a primary system, but definitely another system right now. All right.