Matthew Brown's Analyst Perspectives

If you’re an HR professional, the term “API” might make you want to hand things off to IT and move on with your day. After all, you’re here to focus on people, not tech jargon, right? But here’s the thing—APIs play a major role in making sure your HR technology works for you. And no, you don’t need to be an engineer to understand why they matter.

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.

Payroll is one of the most universal touchpoints within any organization, impacting every employee on a regular basis. It’s the one thing every employee notices if it does not work perfectly. Yet, despite its far-reaching presence, payroll often operates quietly in the background, treated as an administrative function focused solely on ensuring people are paid accurately and on time. This perception, while understandable, drastically undervalues what payroll can offer.

Technology should be viewed as an enabler of program success for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, providing extended support that enables teams to expand their reach and ability to execute more complex business processes. AI-powered recruiting platforms, for example, help remove bias from the hiring process by analyzing job descriptions and identifying language that may unintentionally deter diverse candidates. Tools that utilize algorithms to parse and review resumes can prioritize...

For many years, HR teams encountered an endless stream of buzzwords often intended to garner excitement about new technological developments or further evolution of the HR profession. Unfortunately, this often leads us down unproductive paths in the attempt to be part of the conversation. Often, executives and senior leaders will express a requirement to include the latest buzzwords in any software RFPs as a minimum for participation. HR teams find themselves in a position of compliance but...

The topic of skills is not new to the world of talent management or development, making many appearances in the talent conversation over the years. Recently, it has been a permanent fixture in the discussion, focusing on the total integration of skills across all aspects of the employee experience. The term “skills economy” describes the evolution of how value is assigned in the workplace and employment, emphasizing the importance of individual skills over traditional job credentials.

Compensation practices are currently experiencing a substantial transformation, driven by evolving workforce expectations and rapid technological innovation. This shift is fundamentally reshaping how organizations approach rewards and recognition for workers. Technologies like data analytics enable more precise and personalized compensation management strategies while also fostering greater transparency and equity in how performance is measured and rewarded. These changes reflect a broader...

I am happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Learning Management Systems: Ventana Research Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research.

Today’s workforce places a high expectation on an enterprise’s commitment to fostering a fair and inclusive workplace. Numerous advances have been made in technology and employment regulations in the past few years, elevating the need and urgency for equitable and transparent operations relative to employee compensation. Technology plays a critical role in unlocking an enterprise’s ability to modernize its compensation practices and enact a system of processes designed to ensure a fair and...

It has been a predominant buzzword for several years across all areas of human resources (HR), but artificial intelligence (AI) and learning and development (L&D) are finally beginning to integrate at scale, and it is one of the most transformative evolutions for the function of learning and development in the last 15 years. For a few years, we have been learning more about how AI will impact our daily personal lives, and more recently we have seen widespread evidence of how AI will impact our...