From the looks of things, it does not look all that much different. From Steve Boese’s  post, it might look as if HR technology is going consumer. This is all fine and worthwhile as it would be good to see more HR and other enterprise business systems adopt greater usability, accessibility and end-user adoption. You get the feeling from viewing the user interfaces of most HR technologies, that they all used the same group of programmers from ten years back.

Everything that Steve says is true. However, these are more iterative steps rather than a wholesale change in direction for HR technology. When one evokes the term “next gen”, it should mean something deeper and more profound than cosmetic changes or added functionality. Much in the way Web 1.0 was a sea change from Web 2.0, it is time that HR technology take a more disruptive leap and break from the heavy process oriented, end-to-end suite mentality. Process is necessary, but it is not the whole story.

The true innovation in Next Gen HR Technology will be to enable more data driven decision making. Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) are good at processing data and ERP systems are good at centralizing and storing HR data. What is missing is the actual data itself, or to be more precise, the right data. Without the right data that is measurable, quantitative and consistent, the information that exists in an HRIS cannot yield better decision making. If one looks at the data in these systems today, the reality is that much of the data is arbitrary, missing or outdated.

Data driven HR technology has the ability to change almost every facet of HR whether recruiting or performance management or career development or training. It also has the power to give HR leaders the tools to make a real and measurable impact in strategic business planning from corporate restructuring or mergers and acquisitions. It is the type of transformative innovation that can reinvent an entire industry, and it is the type of leap that should define Next Gen HR leaders and technologies.