The HR Technologist

Editor’s note – This post is targeted largely to my readers in the United States, but might be applicable elsewhere based on the quality of the mobile carrier in your country that supports the Apple iPhone
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last few days, you probably heard that Apple announced their fourth generation of the iPhone yesterday at the company’s annual world wide developers conference (WWDC).  While news of a new iPhone was largely expected at the event since Apple has introduced each new iPhone at the WWDC the last several years.  Additionally, due to a prototype phone being lost/stolen and pictures published on the internet, this year’s announcement held less surprise than in years past.  What was the highlight of the event was not the phone and the great features, but rather during Steve Job’s unveiling Apple’s exclusive service provider in the US AT&T experienced a service hiccup which impacted the demonstration of the device a bit.

While service issues have plagued AT&T due largely to the overwhelming success of the iPhone and the substantial data demands, the same service issues will prevent new iPhone users from being to take full advantage of the advanced features of their new phone.  I was a iPhone user for the past year and recently decided to abandon the iPhone, not because I wasn’t happy with the phone, but rather I was unable to reliably use the phone for its primary purpose – as a phone due to the ongoing service issues with AT&T.  While making the switch I had to change networks, try a new smart phone and adapt to what was viewed as an inferior smartphone platform (Android).

The switch wasn’t without some drawbacks – I had to leave the simple, elegant user experience of the iPhone for a slightly more clunky Android user interface.  I also lost the ability to surf the web, receive email, tweet, etc at the same time as being on a telephone call, and tight integration with iTunes for my music and videos.  On the flip side I gained two things which were extremely important to me – multitasking (iPhone just got it yesterday) and highly reliable telephone service.

In short, the most compelling reason for me to abandon my iPhone was to be able to use my phone for its primary intended purpose, making phone calls.

As HR professionals we are constantly bombarded by email campaigns, vendor phone calls, booths & sponsorships at conferences and advertisements in journals we read for slick new software which promise to make performance appraisals more efficient/effective, assessing candidates more accurately, digital delivery of just-in-time learning all wrapped up with amazingly insightful analytics and reporting.  Many companies are lured into buying these products only to find out later down the road that the features for which the product was selected are the ones which cannot be implemented due the current technology environment. Whether it is due to lack of available IT resources to support integration to a new product, security restrictions on how systems integrate with your corporate email system, or simple lack of well structured, meaningful employee data, companies have encountered them all and more.

When this happens, HR is left with a sexy piece of software that cannot deliver the functionality that drove the initial purchase decision.  This is not all that dissimilar to the countless iPhone users who have either abandoned their slick phones or who have chosen to live with suboptimal performance.   And Apple who introduced a product that exceeds the ability of their exclusive carrier’s infrastructure to utilize many of the advanced features that differentiate the device, your software vendor has done the same thing.

I’ve said this in earlier posts, but its not the software’s fault that you can’t take advantage of the full feature-set of the products you’ve purchased – just like its not Apple’s fault that your iPhone cannot live up to the hype of the features packed into the product.