Yesterday opened the 20th HR Technology Conference and I attended one of my all-time favorite sessions hosted by Steve Boese called The Next Great HR Technology Company.
The idea is kind of a Voice-like competition where you begin with a number of organizations all competing for the title, once you get down to the final four, each organization has an expert coach. The coaches for this competition were Lance Haun, George LaRocque, Madeline Laurano, and Ben Eubanks.
The four finalist were:
Beamery: A CRM/Recruitment Marketing platform out of the UK. Combining Recruitment CRM and Marketing Automation, Beamery is built to source, attract and engage passive candidates. Very impressive and in my opinion the most polished of the products presented.
Best Money Moves: A Financial Wellness App built to help your employees reduce their financial stress. This one surprised me the most in how functional it can actually be to help real people. What we know if the more stable your employees are in their financial health the longer tenure they have, so great retention tool as well.
Blue Board: Blueboard is the experiential employee rewards and recognition platform for the modern workplace. Memorable, personal and shareable employee rewards. Give your employees experiences ranging from $150 – $25,000! The example they gave was turning an employee into James Bond for a day, jumping out of a plane in a tuxedo, driving an Aston Martin, and learning how to make the perfect martini.
Papaya Global: Papaya integrates your entire workforce and payroll management on a single global platform and connects you to a network of verified local vendors. Specifically built for the small fast-growing global company, this was very impressive as well, especially to those who have ever tried to grow an employee population in multiple countries!
My voting on these four went like this:
- Beamery
- Papaya Global
- Best Money Moves
- Blue Board
The thing is, Blue Board won the overall crowd vote, and as soon as they presented I knew they would. It wasn’t about the technology, which is fairly basic, it was the cool factor. Everyone watching the presentation wanted one of those experiences!
So, great learning for all the HR Technology companies out there, and one thing I’ve noticed for years in this space, the best tech doesn’t always win. HR Tech buyers and users are like us all. We buy iPhones, not because the iPhone is best, we buy it because we love the design and it’s cool.
Blue Board has a great story, one everyone wants to be apart of, and it’s an easy sell. We want those experiences, and we want to give our employees those experiences. Is it a great technology? Probably not, but it doesn’t matter because it will flat out sell!
The others will sell as well. That’s what I love about this competition, all involved are winners. Even to make it to the stage means you’re one of the top technologies on the market. If you’re in the market for any of the technologies that presented, these are all well worth your time for a demo!
There are very few “cool” HR Tech products on the market. I strive for PILOT to be one of those by being freakishly frictionless for buyers and members (end users) and by creating a “wow” factor by getting people to actually GDS.