Baseline magazine’s Software as a Service Survey of more than 250 CIOs reveals increased momentum for SaaS HR applications floating at the C-level:

• HR/benefits applications are most likely to be implemented.
• 72% got up and running within the timeframe they expected.
• 43% have been using SaaS for three years or more.
• 65% say that SaaS has lowered software costs.

Total cost of operation with SaaS—as opposed to total cost of ownership which only happens when you buy a traditional license—means no maintenance costs and low-cost or included support services. Of course there are optional premium support packages available for large complex or global enterprises that require that level of support.

However, with traditional ERP providers charging an average of 22% on top of already high license and implementation fees, SaaS total cost of operations is a true value. Maybe that’s why more than half of those surveyed experience greater satisfaction with SaaS than in-house, purchased, and hosted applications.

Not to mention that SaaS makes your company greener. This survey further validates that when software is a service, everyone wins and shifts the advantage from software vendors to the customers.

Saugatuk Technology’s Enterprise-Ready, or Not: SaaS Enters the Mainstream outlines how SaaS adoption is growing in all sizes of enterprises, going international, and demonstrating strong customer satisfaction.

“In just a few short years, SaaS has evolved from simple subscription-based application solutions at the margins – email, web conferencing, and CRM – to offering core application solutions such as HR, Finance, BI and Procurement, as well as IT infrastructure solutions delivered as cloud-based services.”

Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, notes this in an interview with CIO Insight:

“If you can get the information processing you need in a more economical way, then companies will naturally move in that direction…Companies are more open to using software-as-a-service offerings and other Web-based computing services than they were a year ago...Smaller and midsize companies are leading the way…It allows them to level the playing field without having to invest a lot of capital.”

BusinessWeek’s technology columnist Sarah Lacy agrees in her Valley Girl post:

“Great news for the user, but the software makers miss out on the once-lucrative massive upgrade every few years and seemingly endless maintenance fees for supporting old versions of the software.”

This great news for the user is bad news for traditional legacy ERP companies. They complain they can’t make as much money and even sometimes rant and rave. Here’s an odd example: SaaS market will 'collapse' in two years. From Lawson CEO Harry Debes:

“People are stupid…Getting signed up as a SaaS customer is fast, but getting out is just as fast. Whereas traditional software is like cocaine--you're hooked. It's too difficult and expensive to switch providers once you've invested in one…Larry Ellison has the same perspective as I do.”

Perhaps Mr. Debes is in denial and doesn’t see the elephant in the room. In any case, you can catch more of Sarah Lacy’s perspectives along with Marcus Buckingham and Polly LaBarre live at Taleo WORLD 2008.

For even more on SaaS, check out Computerworld’s Software As A Service Grows Up executive briefing guide which outlines these basic advantages and more:

• Lower equipment, staffing and power/cooling costs than internal hosting.
• The ability to grow the number of users or functions quickly.
• No commitment to long software licenses or infrastructure upgrades.

McKinsey has published another stylish chart. The data points echo the oft-cited disparate (and dismal) view of HR performance – which of course depends on your point of view (POV). Take a look at the perception gap.

Aligning talent strategies with business objectives along with accountability and responsibility perceptions are clear disconnects.

So, HR needs to:

Demonstrate the connection between HR and business performance.

Implement talent metrics and communicate business value.

Analyze and evolve the status of talent management capabilities.

Now let’s focus on areas of near agreement. Most HR professionals and Line managers regard HR as administrative not strategic. Many from both sides think HR lacks authority and respect.

Yet the oddest common perception in the findings is that only about one-third of HR pros and Line managers agree that HR relies too much on best practices when designing systems. Although convoluted, the learning from the study findings seem to indicate more reliance on best practices would be welcome, regardless of your POV!

“Show me the money.” Although sports agent Jerry Maguire provided a different style of human capital management, the words ring true. When it comes to HR contributing to the bottom line, we’ve seen the business value of talent management as have a number of independent analysts and studies. Now there are more proof points that deliver evidence of the growing impact.

The Conference Board’s Evidence-Based HR in Action describes how Taleo customer Hewlett-Packard and others are using a methodology called Evidence Based Human Resources (EBHR) to demonstrate the connection between HR and business performance.

EBHR begins with the notion that talent drives performance. Starting with the financial and organizational performance measures, HR professionals then identify human capital strategies that empirically drive the desired outcomes.

That sounds familiar…in fact, talent drives performance is Taleo’s tagline.

Supporting this connection between HR and business performance in the Age of Talent, two Harvard MBAs explain why HR is the place to be in Why Did We Ever Go Into HR?

HR today sits smack-dab in the middle of the most compelling competitive battleground in business, where companies deploy and fight over that most valuable of resources—workforce talent.

The New HR they describe has evolved to the unified talent management platform and executes with a keen understanding of how talent aligns to the business. They describe a transformed function that creates value, nurtures intellectual capital, connects people, engages employees, and channels people’s strengths.

The arrival of the Millennials of Generation Y taking the seats of retiring Baby Boomers signals it’s time to upgrade career site employment brands with Web 2.0 technology and fire up online social network recruiting connections.

Why? Because connection & collaboration drive career choices for Gen Y. Social utilities are beneficial for the enterprise in both recruiting and daily work. However, this issue carries controversy as social network profiles spark debate about appropriate use of the tools to make social networking job connections.

But there’s no debate when it comes to attracting candidates with technology. Innovative career sites can enhance your employment brand. Register for the webcast: Career Site 2.0: 11 Essential Elements on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 2 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. PT to learn more.

There’s no doubt the competition level is high in China with the Summer Olympics. And it may be the same on the business front. It seems that hiring and retaining world-class talent is just as competitive.

The McKinsey article, How to address China's growing talent shortage, opens by highlighting the trials:

“The growing need for talented managers in China represents by far the biggest management challenge facing multinationals and locally owned businesses alike…44 percent of the executives at Chinese companies surveyed by The McKinsey Quarterly reported that insufficient talent was the biggest barrier to their global ambitions…”

The article, Chinese ‘Pay Now, Worry Later’ Mentality May Be Retention Killer, describes the hurdles associated with the sport of job-hopping and notes:

“Organizations can mitigate some of their recruiting and retention woes without throwing money at talent. Implementing some basic building blocks of effective reward-program management into compensation considerations might be a good place to start.”

So the judges would say that unified recruiting and performance management practices and a strong employee value proposition are compulsories for the competition in China as they are worldwide.

The Beijing Olympics surely contributed to other business talent shortages by creating hundreds of thousands of jobs to work on the event. Estimates for the 2012 London Olympics peg this number at 100,000 with 27,000 in service industries.