HR systems in 2050

BARCELONA 

Today is the first day when we are closer to 2050 than to 2000. Time to look back and ahead and try that most perilous of exercizes: predict the future.

2000: Turn of the millennium
The turn of the century, which was also the turn of the millennium, is when I had just started out in the HRIS vendor business, having joined PeopleSoft as Product Manager for France and Spain. I still remember vividly the drivers for all companies investing in a modern HRIS system:

-Self Service
-Training and competencies
-Global HR system of record
-Total cost of ownership.
-Internet was barely starting out and edging out client-server-based systems.

2025: What has really changed
-Rebranding of major HR areas: Time and Attendance/Time and Labor Management has become Workforce Mangement, Strategic HR is now Talent Management, Training has morphed into Learning and, of course, Human Resources is now Human Capital.
-DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) became all the rage, although the pendulum seems to be swinging in the opposite direction
-BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) seemed  destined to a promising future but, faced with security risks, many companies still insist on their employees, even on their contractors, using corporate devices. 
 -Generative AI and AI Agents are more hype than reality.
-Mobile HR has become reality with casual users (i.e. employees and managers) relying as much if not more on their smartphone and tablets to access their HR applications  than power users (HR specialists.)
-Analytics has definitely become bigger and has become one of the success stories helping HR show its value to the business by relying on hard-to-refute data.
-Metaverse and gamification never held up their promises and the fad disappeared as soon as it appeared.
-Well-Being seems to be another of those fads which I have little doubt will slowly fade into the susnet of HR systems never to be seen again.

2050: Who knows

Since I am as likely to be wrong as right, but acutely aware that even if I'm still around many of my readers won't be, let me try the following:
-AI will become a cornerstone of HR systems in more ways than one.
-Reskilling and upskilling and any other dimension of skills will also feature prominently in HR areas of action (if not of concern) especially as a consequence of the previous trend.
-New career paths or new definition of what a career is will appear.
-Communication will go into directions which we can hardly envisage today (TikTok for HR?)
-One change though is inevitable: many vendors will disappear, some will survive and new ones will emerge. 

What HRIS vendors for 2050
The table below looks at HRIS vendors in 2000, 2025 and 2050. I can see some vendors surviving in 2050, but some will be gone just like those I knew a quarter century ago. Who now remembers Peterborough Software? It was such a major vendor in the UK in 2000 and is now largely gone. The only two vendors that I see making it into 2050 is ADP, celebrating its centennial, and SAP. I have strong doubts that Workday, the current HRIS leader, will survive. It may well be on its way out while Cornerstone and Saba will be long dead. As ancient Romans used to say, "Sic transit gloria mundi" - and thus passes the glory of the world. 

Workday vs Oracle: A comparison of two cloud HR systems

PARIS
If Workday is the belle of HR systems, Oracle is undoubtedly her ugly sister. Having implemented both, let me share some examples to prove my point. (The Oracle system here is the one that Oracle actively sells, Fusion HCM Cloud, having retired its shoddy predecessor, EBS, and putting PeopleSoft on life support.)

OVERALL SYSTEM USER FRIENDLINESS
In the 20 years I've known Oracle, one thing has not changed: its scant regard for customers and the most obvious consequence, poor user friendliness, reinforced by a technology that seems always a generation behind others. Key example: In most consumer-grade platforms you can get further details and actions from a given object you're looking at by clicking on the dots that can be found around that object, usually at the upper-right corner (just check any Google page) which in addition you can check by opening another tab.

As expected from a modern HR system like Workday, if you're looking at an org chart and wonder who a specific employee is, all you have to do is right click with the mouse on the dots and that employee record opens in a separate tab for you to peruse their data. Once your curiosity has been satisfied, just close that tab and go back to where you were, the org chart, to continue the work you were doing there.

No such luck if you're using Oracle Fusion. This supposedly latest-generation tool will display a pretty average org chart (see below) and should you want to see the details of a given employee there's no capability to open a tab with that employee's file. You'll have to go back to the landing page, search for that employee and then open their record. And then if you want to go back to where you were (that is, if you still remember what you were doing) you'll have to start all over again, go to the org chart, enter the team you're looking for and the system will display the page you were on eons ago.

As for the search bar, Oracle technology is still stuck in a time warp: it is case and accent sensitive. So if you have an employee called Pénélope (in French) or Penélope (Spanish), and you enter "Penelope" you'll get no results. Obviously, no Oracle developer has ever used Google and other similarly ubiquitous internet tools. 

Menu jumbo-mambo
 

In Workday, action menus are organized alphabetically, which is the logical way to go about things on Planet Earth. The five most frequently used actions appear first, which is a great time saver. On Planet Oracle, actions appear randomly, making you waste quite some time going up and down and across the the screen in hot pursuit of the action you need. Nobody ever told Oracle that making life easier for the customer should be top priority.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SYNC ISSUE
We all know that "integrated" systems are rarely so, but what is amazing is that with Oracle even within a single module or feature thereof you still run into synchronization issues. Let's say that as a manager you perform an action in Workday (e.g., move an employee from your team to another) and this action requires an approval from another role (say, HR.) You log in as that HR person and here's the approval task awaiting you. Try and do the same in Oracle: you'll have a 3 to 5-minute time lag before the action travels from Manager to HR. In real life it doesn't really matter, but in project mode when you're constantly testing system setup and configuration it soon becomes bothersome and frustrating. 

Language enablement is another area where Oracle's sync'ing prowess is, shall I say, sinking? If you need to turn on a certain number of languages to go with your global deployments, with Workday it can be done in a couple of clicks and you see the results instantly. If you are unfortunate to have selected Oracle Fusion, you need to request language activation with Oracle Support. If you happen to do this on Monday, too bad, since this is done over the weekend. And since it takes half a day per language, your global implementation may have to wait an additional couple of weeks before you can go in and start checking translations.

SECURITY AND WORKFLOW
Whereas Workday can handle complex security requirements via domain and business process security, Oracle is very limited, often offering only global roles with no possibility to restrict per country/company or other criteria. In addition, whereas Workday proposes role names that are meaningful (Compensation Partner, HR Partner etc.) Oracle suggests roles with inordinately long names to remind users what that role can do (HRWithCompensationNoNotification). Can't get uglier than that.

Managing role conflicts is always an issue the more complex system implementation is. Whereas Workday has its own challenges, business process conditions work pretty well.  (Glossary: business conditions which allow you to decide how a specific role at a  specific step in a given workflow should behave.) Oracle, on the other hand, doesn't manage role conflict satisfactorily. A user case I struggled with during an implementation of Fusion  is the typical case of an HR user who is manager of an employee for whom he also plays the role of HR. If this manager initiates an action as manager and this action requires HR approval, you'd think since this manager is also this employee's HR they don't need to approve themselves. You'd be wrong! Oracle will make you do exactly that, which is absurd. You won't have this issue with Workday because its workflow configuration includes the possibility to exclude someone from approving a task if they are the initiator.

In summary, Oracle's  workflow capability can't hold a candle to Workday's which is extremely rich and allows for a level of granularity and sophistication Oracle customers can only dream of.

HALF-BAKED SYSTEM
Both Workday and Oracle provide various seniority dates to be used where relevant depending on whether one is interested in a hire date, or a company date, or time in a position etc. The similarities  end here: whereas Workday offers straight out of the box all these dates (as a user just go to an employee's record file and you'll see all the dates for that employee), Oracle will ask the user to launch a calculation for the dates they are interested in, otherwise they just remain empty not because some data is missing but because you haven't requested its calculation!!! Use case: You launch a promotion action on an employee and in order to help you make up your mind you need to know how long they have been in their current position.
In Workday, the data display effortlessly so you can continue with your promotion task.
In Oracle, you'll probably be met with an empty field, so you'll have to abort the task (remember you can't have two tabs or pages open at the same time in Oracle), go to the Seniority Dates screen in Quick Actions,  request a calculation, and then start the promotion task all over again. Awful user experience. Got forbid that at that moment you need to check another piece of information (say, compensation). You'll have to exit the promotion task one more time, go to Compensation, view the data and, if you still have not slit your throat in despair, launch a THIRD time the promotion task. One of the nuttier design decisions I've ever seen in my quarter-century experience of HR systems. 

Simple and available - the Workday way

DATA LOAD/MIGRATION
I could rant for days on how complicated data management is with Oracle, but suffice it to give one example: data inactivation. Let's say that you created a contract type which is becoming obsolete. To inactivate it you will need two rows: Start and End Dates of the period when the contract was valid and another row with the Start and End Dates when it is no longer valid. Now, since the End Date of Inactive is till the end of time Oracle requires you to put something like 4532. Why this date and not 9999 the way they do it at SAP? And why do we even need to put an End Date? Because Oracle is still run by the same people who created the relational database and keep on thinking along the lines of this technology that harks back to the last millennium. 

QUESTIONABLE DATA MODEL
Every vendor has their own data model which has been a perennial issue in system-to-system integration. None is worse than the manager data model as pursued by Oracle versus Workday. With Workday, a manager is appointed on an organization (or team) and any employee part of that team will share the same manager. Clear and straightforward - even if some first-time Workday users may be taken aback at the logical consequence of this choice: a manager will always sit in an organization above the one holding his/her team.  An employee is hired into an organization. With Oracle, things are illogical and a source of endless confusion to users: a department with 3 employees can have 3 different managers since employees are linked directly to a manager, and in this case each can have a different manager. A department manager can be assigned (as a system admin task) but only employees without a directly assigned manager will inherit that departmental head as manager. You can easily see how ugly this can turn with different employees having different managers, some sharing the same or having none whatsoever.

Calculated Fields vs FastFormulas
In short, both are ways to write custom rules such as a calculation of a compensation element or a condition/eligibility rule to apply to who should get that compensation component. And that's where the resemblance between the two stops. Whereas Workday has innovated with an easy-to-use feature whereby you assemble your rules from different objects Lego-like, Oracle is still stuck in last millennium's technology -hardly surprising when you know that FastFormulas are a transplant from Oracle's much-hated EBS HR system which only a database nerd can make sense of. See below screenshot from the two to get a sense of  how Workday has managed to become the default tool of HR users. 

Today's tool vs yesterday's

Custom Objects vs Flexfields

Here again, we have similar objects aiming at extending a system's capabilities beyond what was initially supplied by the vendor. But whereas Workday makes it easy to build, use and maintain such objects, Oracle's Flexfields have serious limitations. One of the most egregious being that on any screen it is linked to, a Flexfield appears systematically at the bottom. To give you an example, let's suppose that in a Hire screen in addition to the standard "Business Title" field, you want to add a related field called "Local Business Title". Since Oracle doesn't offer a second such field you'll have to create it via Flexields. So be it, except that being a Flexfield it appears all the way at the bottom of the screen, probably next to a data section on addresses or blood type which have nothing to do with it. Very confusing to the user. Worse, if the Flexfield is to be filled with a value depending on what you entered in the standard field, you'll have to scroll all the way up to remind yourself what you entered and, having duly taken note of it, scroll all the way back down to enter a value for the second, related, object. In terms of customer experience, it's simply awful, but on a par with Oracle's products.

DOCUMENTATION
The differences between the two vendors couldn't be starker: whereas Workday has a flourishing Community where you can find an easy answer to set-up documents, share best practice ideas with other customers, suggest enhancements to the tool (and track its status), Oracle is...well, Oracle. Its Help Center is anything but helpful. All you get is some marketing PowerPoint presentations, fluffy documents, links to attend Events and that's it. If men are from Mars and women from Venus, well Workday is clearly from Planet Customer and Oracle is still stuck in its Planet Larry Ellison - or Technology: the two are interchangeable.

So, why do some companies buy it?
I could go on for hours and inflict thousands of additional pixels on your retina, but I think you get my drift. Which prompts the following question: with Workday being manifestly so superior to Oracle in every way, why do some customers still buy Oracle for their HR needs? 

First, you have to realize that only current customers (those who are using Oracle database or middleware or Financials or legacy EBS system) have any interest in envisioning the possibility of purchasing Oracle's Fusion system. 

Second, a majority of Oracle customers (both PeopleSoft and EBS) moving their HR system to the cloud do it not with Oracle Fusion, but with...Workday, proof enough of what they really think of their current vendor.

Third, as for the minority who decides to stick with Oracle, you may still wonder that only masochists would spend good money on bad technology. And here you'd be more right than you may think. When I referred to these customers as buying Oracle Fusion HR, actually I wasn't being accurate because one of Oracle's (many) dirty little secrets is that these customers actually don't buy Oracle HR because ...they get it for free! Oracle just tells them that if they take Fusion Financials, they'll get HR for free. Most customers make the decision that sure it looks ugly but you don't look a gift horse in the mouth, do you? So, they decide to plod on and make the best out of a bad situation.

It's not dissimilar to those millions of consumers  who have a regular meal at McDonald's knowing it's not good for their health (or their palate) but that consideration is outweighed by price and convenience. 

So, my advice to Oracle customers as they head to Oracle CloudWorld is to remind them of that old phrase: you get what you pay for. And as you've seen it in this analysis, there's no denying it: Workday blows Oracle out of the water.

Of cars and HR software: Metaphor-based HRIS tips

PARIS

Remember that great song "Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?" from that wittiest of musicals, My Fair Lady? Well, for the past couple of decades that I have been in the HR technology industry, I have been asking myself a similar question: Why can't my HR software be like a car? Throughout my career I have peppered my articles, presentations and meetings with car metaphors to drive the various points I was trying to make. (Here's the scene from the 1964 movie with Rex Harrison singing, well more like uttering, the song.)

You'll find hereafter some of the most frequent ones. Note that most would apply to enterprise software, not HR only; however, since I am an HR technology person through and through, you'll hardly be surprised that's my focus.

System Evaluation
This is the oldest car-metaphor case I can recall, having used it for at least 20 years. In the latest 1990s when I started out as an HR system analyst-cum-consultant spending most of my time advising French companies on which HR system to select, I would use this metaphor quite often. Actually so much that I put it early on in my book, High-Tech Planet. Here's the relevant excerpt of the metaphor which I still use to warn my clients off including ever single product specification whim that might cross their mind just because "it can be useful."

Having four wheels on a car rooftop is certainly useful in case the car were to turn over; but since no car maker offers that, it would be a waste of time to include that feature in a list of requirements, especially when every business process is now available in a computer system developed, sold and serviced by countless companies. Delphi Tech was one of such companies. Actually, it was more than just one of them. It was the biggest, the largest, the best-known one: indeed, as Dick claimed, Delphi had to a large extent created the business of corporate software, or at least contributed to its development. It was, as Dick would say, the Rolls-Royce of computer systems.  (High-Tech Planet: Secrets of  an IT Road Warrior, 2010 edition, p. 3.)

I also warn against using SIs (system implementers) as selection advisors for obvious reasons: SIs tend to focus on one or two systems; many, especially the boutique ones, are actually one-trick ponies. If you only have experience driving one or two cars, you will only recommend those ones. Or using research firms like Gartner who have limited, if any, HRIS implementation experience. This is like recommending a car based on several great features, but forgetting to ask the prospective buyer whether they can drive.

And beware overkill: When famed French soccer club Paris-Saint-Germain bought Workday, considering their small headcount and limited resources, it was clearly like buying a huge bus just for you, your wife and your two kids. Or like buying a Lamborghini to avoid walking on your driveway to your mailbox and back.

Finally, I strongly advise against falling for what I call the "critical capabilities" trap. If you only focus on these, you are likely to overlook other useful aspects and not be able to really pick the system that is best for you. Such an approach is as smart as when buying  a car to look only at the number of wheels and car paint. Three cars can all have the same features (tires, automatic transmission, air conditioning), but when you use them you will know which one is better. 

Product Design
As someone who spent a big chunk of his career in product strategy and management roles (at PeopleSoft and Fidelity Investments' HR Access) I am still amazed at how HR system  vendors make a point to diverge on fundamental design choices. If SAP decides that one process will require different screens, you can be sure that Oracle would prefer to have just one screen (albeit a long one obliging the user to scroll down endlessly) while Workday would probably prefer to have several tabs on the same screen. This can be very confusing for users who, as part of their daily HR tasks, have to toggle back and forth between several HR applications. Wouldn't it be nice if they were all designed along similar lines? 

Just imagine that if Ford puts the brake pedal to the left of the accelerator, so Renault puts it to the right. If BMW  uses a steering wheel to enable the driver to move the front wheels, so everyone else must use levers and sticks and chains. There would be almost no learning-curve effects either from a manufacturing or a usability perspective. And yet, HR software vendors do exactly that, which is quite insane, especially when you know that the musical-chairs game so prevalent among software executives means it's basically the same folks who oversee products across companies. 


Change Management
What many end-user companies are still grappling with as part of their new HR system implementations, especially in the cloud, is the right mix between configuration and training which now goes by the fancy name of change management. As I often tell my client, redoing you car's body and changing the engine would be of little use if the driver is incompetent. If you never learned to drive, buy a BMW and then crash it into a wall , how is that the car maker's fault? 

And when a client insists on implementing the same inadequate process again and again, I warn them against reinventing the flat tire.


HR System Implementation
There are many companies that in their move to cloud HR adopted the approach whereby they start with the low-hanging fruit of talent modules before, like an afterthought, implementing Core HR. More often than not, the added complexity doesn't make up for the lower risk. Core HR is your HRIS engine, without it your global HRIS simply won’t work. It is like trying to drive without a steering wheel: you’re not going to go far.

Discussing the Implementation phase one is often reminded that the Design phase seems never to have been closed since users will always try until the very last moment (and even after!) to change the design. This is very dangerous and akin to changing the tyre while driving the car: recipe for disaster.

Another maddening aspect of requirements is that companies often come up with contradictory requirements. Imagine that you're driving a car and when you arrive at a crossroads you ask for instructions, "left or right?" "Both," is the answer you get. 

Cloud/SaaS HR for the dummies
Surprising as it may seem, there are still many corporate executives involved in on-premise-to-cloud transition projects who are still struggling with the cloud concept. This is where I probably make the most of the car metaphor. Starting at the evaluation stage, I warn my clients about  dinosaur vendors like Oracle who try to make us believe that they can tweak on-premise PeopleSoft into a cloud offering. It's like saying that if you affix wings to a car and add  a pointed nose along with powerful reactors, and find a way to hide the wheels, you can turn a car into a plane. It just won't fly - in more sense than one.  

Or putting a new body on a  30-year car. Would you fall for that?

If you still decide to take the risk to adopt half-baked products, then be prepared to fork out the funds needed to have onboard several consultants for a long period of time and whose function will be to fix the inevitable bugs and issues that are bound to arise. Remember that when the first automobiles came, owners needed to hire a mechanic full-time because those first cars had a bad habit of always breaking down.

For those who can't wrap their head around capex and opex (that's capital and operation expenditure to you) I explain that Saas is like leasing a car versus buying it. When they compare that with the millions they used to pay upfront just for the honor of being an SAP or Oracle customer, these executives' eyes brighten up immediately.

One car metaphor I used a lot when the cloud model arrived, and less so now as the cloud has gone mainstream, aimed at helping users to understand the key difference between traditional ERP (on-premise) and the cloud (SaaS based.) In order to convince the pro-ERP camp I explained to them they can't stop progress.  When automobiles arrived, they coexisted for a while with horse-drawn carriages before these got ditched because everybody saw that cars were faster and more practical. As an early advocate of the cloud model, against Oracle's (in)famous scorning of the cloud, I am glad to see that I eventually was vindicated by the market. (See my Jan. 2011 article, "Can software dinosaurs reinvent themselves as cloud-based vendors?")

One concept that, surprise, surprise, dinosaur vendors  try to push is the hybrid system of on-premise + SaaS system supposed to work in perfect harmony like hybrid cars. I debunk it by pointing that it's like saying, "Oh you don’t like the engine in your car, no problem, we can remove it for you and attach the car to two horses instead." Really!

Another fallacy about hybrid HR systems is that customers are led to believe that it's the best of two worlds. Come on! Will you really buy half of a Porsche and couple it with half of a Ferrari? 

SaaS, a relatively new concept,  is often confused with BPO (outsourcing the full process, be it payroll or recruiting.) When a client tells me they are not sure whether they should move to a SaaS  vendor or a BPO one, I tell them they are mixing things: First of all, you have to analyze and make a decision whether you want to run your full process inhouse or out. And only then can you decide, if inhouse, whether Saas or on-premise; and, if outsourced, then what vendor. In car terms, it is like saying, " I’m tired, I can’t walk to work, so I’ll invest in either a bike or a car." Well, they are two different tings, you should be either comparing bike/motorbike or motor bike/car but a bike vs. a car doesn't make sense. Like the proverbial apples and oranges.

Of second-hand cars
Of  course, no car metaphor would be complete without the time-honored used-car example. When Oracle provides its prospects with heavy discounts to adopt Fusion, I remind them that you get what you pay for: If the price of a second-hand car ("used car" to most Americans) is too good to be true, it's probably because it is neither good nor true. Also, you buy a second-hand car if  you’re a good mechanic (in HR technology words, you have enough in-house skilled resources), because then you can fix it. Otherwise, you’re on your own: Compare this with the first-automobile and mechanic metaphor a couple of paragraphs before.

Sales 
I could spend gazillions of pixels and tire your eyes out of their sockets decrying software sales tactics (the object of my aforementioned book.) One particular tactic which I recently saw  on a global HRIS project with payroll outsourcer ADP was when the vendor stated they were willing to bid with SAP SuccessFactors Core HR (Employee Central) but on the condition that my client bought two payrolls from ADP. I shot back at them, "How would feel if your car dealer offered to sell you a car only if you accepted to also buy two bikes?"

Vendor Management
Despite the Buyer Beware motto, customers  are entitled to escalate issues, especially when a promised feature is not working as touted in sales demos - or, worse, is not available. However, I find it misguided from some customers to focus on minor issues while not seeing the bigger picture. It is akin to buying a car that is  bigger, nicer and faster and yet spend an inordinate amount of time on small imperfections. As in life in general, you should choose your battles wisely: know which ones are worth fighting, and which ones should not be launched.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

This is the latest in an HRIS Selection & Implementation Tips series. Previous posts included:
- April 2018: Cloud HR Implementation Tips: Focus on Migration
- Jan. 2016:  Pricing and Contracting with Your Cloud Vendor: Tips and Tricks
- Jan.2013:  An HR leader's Top 10 New Year's Resolutions


(The fact that the blogger-analyst-consultant has been spending the better part of the last year and a half on implementing a new global HRIS for one of the world's largest car makers is obviously a cute coincidence, since I have been using these metaphors for two decades now.)

Gartner's HR Magic Quadrant: A (Strong) Rebuttal - Updated Sep. 2018

BUENOS AIRES / Update from PARIS

The 2017 edition

For someone whose HR technology career includes a couple of years as an analyst with a Gartner-like outfit (Paris-based CXP), I keep an eye out for what Gartner, IDC, Forrester and a flurry of new analyst entrants produce. Apart from some comments in LinkedIn discussions, I hadn't dedicated a full post on these research firms. Gartner's latest Magic Quadrant dedicated to cloud HR gives me the opportunity to share some inconvenient truths (some of which I already aired in my book, High-Tech Planet : Secrets of an IT Road Warrior.)

There is a lot in the report that I agree with because it is simply common sense or knowledge, just like if Gartner were to state that water boils at 100° C I would agree with that. But that doesn't mean that I do not disagree with a lot, too. And there are quite a few findings that are misleading, inaccurate, odd if not altogether bizarre. And some astonishing omissions.


Methodology-wise, Gartner is guilty of equating mid-market size in the US with Europe. As anybody who has done any market research would know, SMBs tend to be larger in the US vs Europe. The cloud definition misses out completely the private-cloud variant (Oracle recently renamed theirs Cloud @ Customer - which I always found an oxymoron.)


Speaking of Oracle, one can only wonder that it is put so close behind SAP SuccessFactors (SF) when all empirical research shows it should be closer to Ultimate which, in many respects, should rate higher than Oracle, anyway. Gartner then commits the unforgivable crime of belting out features like a good parrot without discussing their value. Why? Oracle Work-Like Solutions is a good example of vaporware, nobody’s interested in it but because Oracle stresses it in its Analyst Day presentations Gartner dutifully presents it too. Why can't Gartner be honest and tell us that customers licensing it (never mind actually using it) are few and far between?  Because  Gartner takes money from vendors, so it is not free to write what it wants.

                                                              The 2018 Edition


Sep. 2018: Oracle’s vision better than Workday? (Last year it was SAP which was ahead of Workday - see below) The company that (in)famously pooh-phoned the cloud before scrambling to tweak  Fusion to have it hosted? (Remember that I coined faux-Saas in Oracle’s “honor”) So, Oracle displays better vision than Workday, the vendor that in less than a decade has managed to win the hearts and minds of HR? Laughable. How can the new Fusion Recruiting module gets such accolades when NOBODY is live on it? I have been involved in more HRIS evaluation exercizes than most of you have had hot dinners, and no HR user has ever expressed any admiration at Oracle’s HR vision, especially not in the cloud. Gartner just buys all the marketing crap that Oracle sends its way, lock, stock and barrel and delivers it to us with no critique whatsoever, just like the customer numbers that Gartner hasn’t audited: but if a vendor claims they have 2,000 customers, then it must be as true as Holy Writ. Preposterous.

Why doesn’t Gartner tell you that more Oracle PeopleSoft customers move to the cloud with Workday than with Oracle Fusion (which Oracle wants you to believe is true cloud by slapping the moniker cloud on it – which Gartner dutifully obliges.)

Putting SAP ahead of Workday on …Vision? Is Gartner deranged? Who in their right mind can countenance such an absurd claim: Workday with its single line of code, true SaaS offering, revolutionary UI, workflow, reporting, same-platform payroll, pionnering Community. And SAP is ahead? With SF? Completely silly.

SF Employee Central (EC)  figures are not accurate: As usual with these mainstream analysts, such figures are accepted from the vendor's mouth, lock, stock and barrel - not verified. I am on record for being very critical with vendor-provided figures, but Gartner considers them like Holy Writ. Also, to mention "EC payroll" is, again, just parroting the vendor with no critical thinking: There is no such think as EC Payroll but good old SAP Payroll, just like there is no such thing as Oracle HCM Cloud but just  a rebranding of  Fusion, which is available on-premise as well. I can understand the vendor trying to mislead the customer, but the analyst doing it, too? How shameful! Gartner clearly makes a lot of money from SAP and Oracle, and being in their pay it has to put lipstick on their pigs.

Sep. 2018: As for SAP, Gartner aids and abets vendors in their well-trodden path of misleading customers, when it parrots the false claim of SuccessFactors’ “supported payrolls for 42 countries”. As I have denounced SAP for so long, that is BS, pure and simple (can BS be pure?) We the cognoscenti know it is just good ole SAP Payroll hosted and interfaced to SF. GARTNER: stop lying to customers by feeding them false information. You have just become an extension of vendors’ marketing organizations.

Very odd to see Talentia and Ramco which I NEVER ran into in any bid having pride of place (well, sort of) in this report. Just because you need to put a logo on your fancy diagram, doesn't mean that you should make up analysis. Ramco has no meaningful presence in either the US or Europe, which represent the lion's share of the global HRIS market. Shouldn't be there...yet!
Sep. 2018: Other examples of absurd findings: Ramco having 40 payrolls! Really? Only SAP (on-premise), after several decades, was able to provide that many localized payrolls. Not even PeopleSoft, for so long the best HR system around, was able to get close. Workday, PeopleSoft’s successor, has barely managed a couple of payrolls, and Gartner wants us to believe that Ramco, with limited financial and human resources vs Workday (or Oracle,) has been able  to produce so many payrolls. Puh-lease!

Same thing with Kronos whose only claim to HRIS fame is that it is the Time Management leader (I positively hate the term “WFM”), but it doesn’t have the footprint to be considered  a suite. Where is its global HR Admin (or Core HR)? And yet Gartner says it is one of its criteria, as it should be. Cornerstone has much stronger credentials to feature in the report than Kronos since it has a (light) Core HR offering. And yet the Santa Monica-based vendor is nowhere to be seen. As glaring omissions go, this one is simply bizarre.

Meta4? The zombie vendor? If you consider Meta4 as a cloud vendor just because its offering can be hosted, then why not have PeopleSoft? It can also be hosted, and is as much on life support as Meta4 is. But Gartner takes money from vendors, so it is not free to write what it wants. The shared vs public cloud is not as meaningful as the private cloud (Cloud  @ Customer as Oracle calls it) which doesn’t even get a mention. I wonder why. And of course, as is usual with those pseudo-independent analysts, many figures are given, not verified. Very sad when analysts become an extension of vendors’ marketing departments.

Echo-chamber mentality
Mind you, there are times when a vendor dares produce a truly independent analysis. A couple of years ago Forrester wrote about the low customer uptake of Oracle Fusion. The vendor immediately retaliated by cutting all funding. Since then Forrester has been toing the line. As with Gartner, you can't bite the hand that feeds you. Forrester's latest report is a case in point where it becomes almost indistinguishable from Gartner's. Lesson learned, you might (and can) say.

Along with many others, I have been demanding of Gartner & Co to commit not to take any paid assignment from vendors and avoid making money from them. But they refuse to put an end to this inherent conflict of interest and therefore lose in credibility and ability to produce unbiased analysis. It is a disservice to user organizations to make them believe otherwise.

Sep. 2018: Great minds think alike. Independent analyst Shaun Snapp from Brightwork Research just published a cogent analysis documenting Gartner's inherent conflict of interests.

Another weakness of this type of analyst reports, is that since most of these analysts have NEVER implemented an HRIS, they completely ignore the issues related with implementation. What’s the point of selecting the best HRIS in the world if you can’t find resources to implement it? Or they are too expensive? Or the methodology is fuzzy? Or the SI ecosystem is half-baked? Or building reports or maintaining workflows is too  cumbersome? Or if change management leads to customer rejection? Nothing whatsoever in the Gartner report. This is like recommending a car based on several great features, but forgetting to ask the prospective buyer whether they can drive. Largely pointless.  I checked the LinkedIn profiles of the analysts involved in the report: the "stars" (Hanscombe, Lougee, Poitevin) and most of the others have ZERO to little cloud implementation experience. And yet here they are pontificating about something they have limited knowledge of. How reassuring.

Check out my analysis done with my own two ten fingers, with no paid assignment accepted from any vendor and you'll see the difference: SOW -  A Comparison of 3 Cloud HR Vendors: SAP, Oracle and Workday.  I firmly believe that there is a lot to be said for critical thinking, lack of bias and independence. 

The blogger/analyst/consultant is continuing his World Localization Tour as part of one of the largest global HRIS projects in the world. After Brazil last week, he is now in Argentina presenting the prototype to HR representatives from several Spanish-speaking countries. NEXT STOPS: France, Spain and Turkey.

NOTE ON BUENOS AIRES: For anybody currently in the Americas' most beautiful capital city, I strongly recommend Fuerza Bruta, a terrific Cirque du Soleil-like  show at the Centro Cultural de Recoleta. And, of course, enjoy the amazing architecture, large avenues (9 de Julio is the world's largest avenue with 18 lanes), numerous parks and the world's best meat. If you are staying near Avenida Corrientes (Buenos Aires' answer to the Big Apple's Time Square) as I am, Chiquilin is a great option. I will later dedicate a full-length post to HR technology in Spanish-speaking Latin America (already done it for Brazil.)

Romania: Between HR technology and childhood memories

BUCHAREST

The blogger at age 8
wearing a traditional
Romanian costume

Two historic events are taking place in Romania this month. First, King Michael will celebrate the 90th anniversary of his accession to the throne, a record for any monarch in history*. Sure, he lost it 70 years ago, but post-Communist Romania returned, if not his crown, at least his palaces (I am staying just a few blocks from his Bucharest home, Elisabeta Palace), castles (you should visit lovely Peleș Castle) along with full honors and titles (move over, Elizabeth II, your 60 years on the throne are kid's stuff.) The second memorable event is that yours truly is launching from here the first of a worldwide series of HR localization workshops for one of the largest cloud HRIS projects in the world.

Romania has always been close to my heart. That's where my mother's family hails from, and where my Paris-born mother grew up, separated by the Iron Curtain from her Paris-residing mother for 20 years. Amazing at it may sound, between the ages of 2 and 21, my mother never saw her own mother, growing up in the most beautiful region of Romania: Transylvania (known as Ardeal in Romanian.) Dracula's region is indeed not only the most beautiful from a landscape perspective, it is also among the most ethnically diverse areas in Europe: Romanians (the majority) live next to Hungarians and Germans, and almost every town in Transylvania has a Romanian, Hungaria and German name (In another record, Romania recently elected as president a member of the German minority, thus becoming the only country in Europe whose leader comes from a minority group!) Many cities are medieval jewels, in particular what is known as the "Saxon towns."

I spent many a lovely summer in Transylvania in my teen years, enjoying the food (see below), fishing in the Mureș river, trekking through the Carpathian mountains, bonding with the extended Romanian family: cousins galore from Geoagiu de Sus to Teiuș and Alba Iulia, the old capital where 99 years ago the country was reunited, as well as Cluj-Napoca where my mother started university and Bucharest where cousin Felicia lived and where my mother and I  had to hide from the building's Securitate man since we were "foreigners."

Sun of IT rises in the East...and women too!
It is therefore with great pleasure that I always come back to Romania, although now it is more likely to be to Bucharest on business than Transylvania, although the latter's capital, Cluj-Napoca has become a major IT hub, rivaling Bucharest. Many large multinationals are taking advantage of the good infrastructure and education, competitive salaries and tax structure and Romanians' linguistic abilities, to set up engineering and shared service centers. Many of my international clients have consolidated shared HR operations from either Cluj or Bucharest. As an employee, if you have a question about your vacation balance, send an email or pick up the phone and your request is likely to be handled by a Romanian.

An even more remarkable development is that an increasing number of women developers are to be found in Romanian-based IT centers: latest figures show that almost 30% of the tech force in Romania is female. Much higher than in Western Europe or the United States. Communism doesn't have much to recommend it for (my family lost land acquired through hard work when the monarchy was overthrown) but at least it pushed women into science and engineering jobs, resulting  in the amazing stats I just mentioned.

HR in Romania
Although Romanian companies can elicit their share of complex rules (especially when allowances are dependent on absence/time data or extraneous factors such as outside temperature several days in a  row), in comparison with other countries I know well such as France, Italy or Brazil, Romania is a model of simplicity.  For instance, whereas France has a good 20 different types of labor contracts, Romania has, for all intents and purposes, only two: fixed term or unlimited term (permanent.) Temporary employees are not common either, reminiscent of Italy who banned it for so long. But post-Communist Romanian governments have clearly embraced pro-business labor laws, simplifying the tax code (both individual and corporate income tax is a flat 16% rate), getting rid of the quaint labor booklet or carte de muncă (similar to Brazil's carteira de trabalho) and overall making life much easier for employers and (some) employees. Although the dreadful and dreaded bureaucracy of old hasn't entirely disappeared, the current situation clearly has nothing to do with the olden days of the command economy.

 

One challenge we have implementing a global system like Workday is that many data that Romanian companies manage through their local HRIS (usual  a payroll tool) are not available off-the-shelf in the global system (e.g., validation of their SIRUTA code or the COR Occupational Classification list) . So there's a feeling that as Romanian companies abandon their local system they get short-changed by moving to a global system imposed by their corporate "overlords." Nothing further from the truth and a misconception, because they are not abandoning everything in their payroll but just rearranging the scope of what is done in the local system vs the global one. In addition with a modern tool like Workday Romanian have at their disposal features that allow them to do things they never dreamed of doing - not mentioning that having global processes in place, as warranted by being part of a global group, canNOT be done via a local system.  In other words, sure a few things are lost, but so much is gained that the tradeoff between local and global means a positive balance.
 
HRIS vendor market
The Romanian HRIS market can be divided into two groups. Tier-1 vendors cater to the local subsidiaries of multinational groups and large Romanian companies (including utilities such as Romgaz and state agencies such as the Romanian Central Bank). Amazing how history tends to repeat itself, although with a twist: A decade ago I worked on the Oracle localization effort for Romania, leading a workshop in Bucharest; and now here I am running another localization workshop in Bucharest, but this time on the customer side. Tier-1 vendors include the usual suspects we know, with SAP on top (the only one with full localization including payroll) and Workday the #1 cloud HR vendor with limited localization (and the need to improve its Romanian translation).

...and their lei

Tier-2 vendors cater to the other Romanian companies: smaller in size but more numerous. Charisma and Wizrom are top of the pack, with Charisma the payroll vendor used by many multinational subsidiaries.

Culture and the rest

View of Bucharest's Royal Palace from the blogger's
room in the landmark Plaza Athénée hotel 

My favorite hotel in Bucharest is the Plaza Athénée (now part of the Hilton hotel chain): in Communist times my mother would book a room there when we visited Bucharest since as a "foreigner" she was not allowed to stay with her cousin (the local authorities in her hometown, though, turned a blind eye - after all, they all went to school with her!) I continue the family tradition in this grand hotel, whose heyday was in the 1930s where glitterati, royalty, diplomats, and spies made of the Paris of the Balkans (as Bucharest was known) their HQ. It faces both Revolution Square (where hated dictator Ceaușescu's fall started) and the Royal Palace. The Old Town and most sights are within walking distance.

Romanian cinema has rapidly become one of the most dynamic in the world winning prizes in major festivals. I strongly recommend   Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu, Cristian Mungiu's at times disturbing Behind the Hills and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Many of Communist-era movies are forgettable, but I would single out the exceptional World War I drama Forest of the Hanged.

Romanians have produced great writers: Eugen Ionescu wrote Englezește fără profesor ("English Without a Teacher") in Romanian before he moved to Paris, Frenchified his name and wrote a French-language version which became La cantatrice chauve, a masterpiece of absurdist theater and the longest running play in French history (it just celebrated its 60th anniversary, playing every single day in the same tiny theater in the Latin Quarter in Paris). During the 30s, like all Romanian aristocrats, Princess Bibesco had a preference for the French language and wrote what is still amazing prose. Although many other good Romanian writers are only available in Romanian, Mihai Cărtărescu's amazing Nostalgia is available in English and I strongly recommend it. Transylvania-born Herta Müller writes in her native German (although she is fully bilingual), mainly about life in Communist-era Romania: for her efforts, she won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The blogger, at age 10, with his mother in a
photographer's studio in Aiud, Transylvania

Speaking of languages, Romanian is a linguistic oddity: the only Latin-based language that maintains noun cases lost since Roman times, and with a strong Slavic influence. In other words, if you speak Russian and Italian, Romanian will be easy to learn. My favorite Romanian word? The joyful "lalelele" which means "the tulips."

Last but not least, Romanian food has to be sampled: often hearty, it relies on local produce, has some similarities to dishes found elsewhere in the Balkans. Many meats are served with mămăligă, similar to the Italian polenta, a type of mashed corn. I cannot eat eggplant purée, sarmale (meat in vine leaves)  and ardei copți (roast red peppers) without thinking fondly of my childhood summers where we grew those vegetables in the garden (water came from...a well! it was cold, clean  and delicious). Sweet cozonac and ișler (the latter, a Transylvanian specialty that reminds me of the Latin American alfajor)),especially when served with a shot of vişinată should round off your evening brilliantly. 

*King Michael holds another record: He is one of the  few monarchs in history to have both preceded and succeeded his father on the throne.

Next destination after Bucharest: Casablanca, Morocco. 

(This is the latest in a series of wide-ranging articles focusing on a single country. Previous posts:

July 2016: Middle Kingdom: Musings on Chinese HR, technology and the country
Nov. 2014: Of Switzerland, the country, its HR practice and technology landscape
June 2013: Thoughts on India, its HR/technology space 
Dec. 2012: My 20-Year Affair with Spain  - with more than 10,000 views it is one of my most popular articles
Aug. 2011: Brazil Rising: Thoughts on HR, technology and an emerging giant )


NOTE: All pictures are by/from the blogger and therefore copyrighted.

Middle Kingdom: Musings on Chinese HR, technology and the country

SHANGHAI

The Oriental Pearl Tower  seen from the Bund.
As spectacular as un-Chinese since, unlike Muslim
minarets and Gothic cathedrals, Chinese palaces, pagodas
and pavilions have traditionally been low-rise affairs

Surprising as it may seem for the globe-trotter I am, until this week I had never set foot in China. Although I had worked on many global projects which involved rolling out an HR system for a Chinese workforce the opportunity never arose for me to visit the ancient land known to Marco Polo as Cathay* (the name is still used by one of the most successful airlines in the world, based out of Hong Kong.)

It was therefore with great trepidation that I boarded the world's largest aircraft, the Airbus A380, for the longest trip east that I had ever taken in order to spend most of the week in Shanghai with the local subsidiary of a multinational client. This was a unique opportunity to gather business requirements face to face with HR users in their local environment, something only imperfectly done in virtual meetings, on the phone or by email.

You soon realize that if in China rules and laws may not be voted on by a democratically elected parliament, but rather handed down by the omnipotent Communist Party, they are adhered to ferociously, as I was reminded when, during one of the workshops I led, I suggested we shorten the lunch break from one hour to 45 minutes. The reaction was a categorical NO. Labor laws are labor laws: one hour's break for lunch is one hour. Can't say I was shocked since that is exactly the same rule as in France (but outside the rest period, the Chinese workforce is a hard working one and I was impressed by the quality and dedication they bring to the task.) Actually, many other aspects of China's labor laws seem to be directly inspired from France's: such as the 1-2% of a company's payroll which must be set aside for the worker union to spend on employee benefits. But then French laws are at times very socialistic, if not outright Communist (ever wondered why the Labor Code in France is a little red book?)

Replica of Xi'an Terracotta Army
soldier, gifted to the blogger
by the Chinese delegation to the
UN World Tourism Organization where
he worked in the 1990s

A rapidly changing country
As everybody knows, China has managed to bring hundreds of millions of people into middle-class wealth faster than any other country on earth: in the past 25 years income per person has risen 13 times, whereas in the rest of the world the figure is barely 3 times. I see on Shanghai overcrowded roads more SUVs  than anywhere else but the US. Beijing has more billionaires than New York.  If there ever was a national success story it is China. And yet serious problems are looming: it is still an autocratic country, unemployment is rising, especially in the poorer rural areas in the country's western half, inflation is high (Shanghai home prices rose by 20% last year), the population is greying fast as a result of the one-child policy aiming at reining in demographic pressure, pollution shows its ugly face in many places with foul air a constant irritant. Some un-Chinese traits such as individualism and Western-style consumerism are on the rise in this increasingly unequal People's Republic. (I always marvel at Chinese tourists who buy designer bags at Paris upscale department stores for a price that is higher than many workers back home make in a year)

Now, to the topic at hand, requirements to manage a Chinese workforce as part of a global HRIS. In some aspects HR law and  practice in China may be complex, even cumbersome (but is there a place  where that is not the case?) However, in many other aspects it is quite simple and even free-market based, reminiscent of the practice in the (income-tax free) Persian Gulf states. For instance, in Europe and America, there is a quite clear-cut distinction between permanent employees and contractors, HR processes apply fully to the first, not to the second. In China, there are no contractors: everybody is a permanent employee. There are also no part-time workers. In other countries, some employees may work only 30% of the normal schedule, and in some cases be paid differently, all depending on labor agreements and regulations. In China, if you're going to work for a company, you work full time. Otherwise, go somewhere else. And no labor agreements either, which makes it much easier to set up compensation plans and eligibility rules

Art Deco glory.
East meets West at the spendid
waterfront neighborhood known
as the Bund

Over lunch, when the Head of HR asked me why there were so many strikes in France (yes, that national trait has made it to the other end of the world) I replied, "For the usual reason: to get more money." She looked very surprised: "Really? But if they want more money and they are not getting it from their current employer, why don't they just move to another better-paying company?" Admirable logic, which makes sense in a fast-growing, emerging market like China, but, alas, does not apply in sclerotic European countries like France.

Language-wise (you may want to brush up on my 5 pillars of "glocalization") if you're going to roll out a global HRIS in China, make sure all self service features are available in Mandarin. Otherwise, the system won't be used. Many HR power users, even if working for a multinational company, will struggle with English, so having the whole system in Mandarin is a must.

Workflows with different levels of approvals is also a must-have in a country where deference to senior management is part and parcel of the culture. Electronic notifications have made great progress in the Middle Kingdom but some document still need to be printed out for signature and be handed out to the relevant recipient. If you ever wondered why China is referred to as the Middle Kingdom it's simply the name in Chinese: The first character for the name is a horizontal rectangle cut in half by a vertical stroke, meaning, you've guessed, Middle. Like all great societies, China sees itself as the center of the universe. Can't blame them; after all, they are the most populous nation on earth, soon to be the richest, and the one with the longest continuous civilization in the world.

It's all about Human Resources

HR rules and HR Departments are nothing new in this country. The US only got its Civil Service with its grades and steps and examinations at the end of the 19th century, but the Chinese Ming dynasty, which ruled the country until 1644, already had a Department of Personnel with a nine-grade bureaucracy and legendary examinations one had to sit for and pass before being entitled to a position. Modern China is simply the heir to a long, centuries-old  tradition.

Among the various HR domains and processes, time recording can be quite complex in many Chinese companies, especially manufacturing now that China has become the world's factory. However, soaring taxes, transportation and energy costs means that China's labor force is no longer as cheap as it was. China will increasingly have to move up the value chain, which explains the strong emphasis on training, competencies, learning and development, and executive assessment. Again, nothing surprising in this ancient Confucian culture where learning values  are rated very high.

The blogger ready to board the Shanghai
MagLev Train. At an average speed of 300 km/186 m
per hour, with a peak speed of 430 km/237 m per hour,
it is the world's fastest train.  It is also the only one that runs on
magnetic-levitation technology.  Whether it is profitable
remains to be seen as it is pricey and covers a short distance
(in a highly congested area, though)

Payroll, is of course, highly regulated like everywhere else, but China is far from being the worst offenders. And there are limits to nannying employees: for instance, salary advances, which in some countries are mandatory if requested by the employee, simply don't exist in China You are paid for the work done, not the promise of it. For any help, go to your family, is the message in a culture where family bonds are stronger than in the West, but weaker than in Mao's times (In China people don't resort to banks for their savings needs but rather to the family or peer-to-peer networks.)

Absence management is also complex, and China is rather unique in that it distinguishes between absence types mandated by law and  those awarded by a company as a benefit for a differentiated treatment. The former  have to be taken during the take period, and if the employee leaves before its end they are compensated; whereas the latter, if not taken, are lost and are not compensated. And just as part-time employees are unusual, taking an unpaid leave or a sabbatical is unheard of for most people. Note the existence of many recruiting and training agencies (such as Zhaopin or 51job.)

Benefits involve many players: government, worker union and employer. Noteworthy that if some benefits (such as birthday allowance) are not provided by the worker union then the employer will play the substitute role and provide them.

In a  country where education has long been seen as a passport  to success, small wonder that competency frameworks, training agencies and learning models are all the rage. Many companies would finance employee degrees in exchange for a guaranteed stay with the company (similar to tuition reimbursement by US companies.) For some useful training (such as languages), private enrollment would also be refunded by the employer if the employee brings evidence of the certification thus earned.


China's HRIS vendors hold their own
To meet the HRIS needs of Chinese companies, whether domestic or subsidiaries of multinationals, the array of providers is quite large. SAP's market share is largely around its on-premise offering, and Oracle's is based on PeopleSoft. Cloud vendors are represented by Workday, a distant third but growing fastest. Kronos is well-entrenched when it comes to time management. Unsurprisingly for such a highly patriotic, even nationalistic, country, Chinese vendors have, together, a majority market share. They include household names in China such as Beisen, the undisputed talent company, and other vendors such as Neusoft (or even micro-blogging firm Weibo) covering various HR processes, when not the whole gamut of functions.

The biggest challenge facing homegrown vendors is how to go global, not an easy task when some tools which we take for granted are not available in China. First-come visitors to China may be surprised, even shocked, to find that social media and internet tools like Facebook and Google are banned (unless you, or your company, are lucky to have your own VPN.) In the West, and even the rest of the world, so much HR work, actually so much business work, involves using these platforms that you may be thrown offbalance when you realize you cannot keep up with your friends (on Facebook), get your email (on Gmail), check a video on YouTube, or plan an itinerary on Google Maps. Surprisingly and erratically WhatsApp, despite being a Facebook product, is allowed to operate in China. The Chinese make do with local variants such as Baidu, Weibo or WeChat (which is integrated with LinkedIn.).

The Chinese are a justifiably proud nation, but also a pragmatic one. They will find ways to live up to their full potential and be a full member of the global business community, something they've longed for and craved for a long time.Needless to say that this post only covers the People's Republic of China (PRC) aka Mainland China. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao are completely different in terms of context, HR maturity and vendor landscape. In due course they will warrant their own blog post.

(The blogger is currently crisscrossing the globe gathering requirements for a multinational company. Next stop: Detroit, USA.)

(This is the latest in a series of wide-ranging articles focusing on a single country. Previous posts:

August 2011: Brazil Rising: Thoughts on HR, technology and an emerging giant 
December 2012: My 20-Year Affair with Spain  - with more than 9,000 views it is one of my most popular blog posts
June 2013: Thoughts on India, its HR/technology space
Nov. 2014: Of Switzerland, the country, its HR practice and technology landscape)

NOTE: All photos are the work of the blogger and copyright applies

From the blogger's library

*I strongly recommend Gary Jennings' superb novel, The Journeyer, about the great man's 13th- century travels throughout a China few  people had ever seen then. 1,000 pages which you can't put down until you reach the end. For anybody wanting to understand China's wrenching changes in a historical perspective, Jonathan Spence's In Search of Modern China is a must-read. Nobel-Prize winner Pearl Buck's novels, set in pre-Communist post-Imperial China,  have a lot to say about the Chinese soul and experience. The movie buff I am relishes Zhang Yimou's movies (especially when the incomparable Gong Li is in them): Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou, Red Sorghum and Flying Daggers are favorites. He is also the man behind the highly acclaimed opening and closing ceremonies at Beijing's 2008 Olympics.