Given CompareHRIS.com’s current direct focus on only HR Information Systems and HR Management System software, I think we can almost be considered a kind of economic bellwether for the industry. So what do we think the weather looks like? Truthfully, better than I or most would expect.
Companies are still looking for HR software applications. Even with all the economic news of doom and gloom, we continue to see increases in our traffic and leads generated for our participating vendors. We are expecting a 15-20% increase for traffic and leads this month, which will also be record months for both.
So what HRIS industry buyer trends have we noticed?
I took a look at individual CompareHRIS.com Selection tool results for the first 15 days of September, November 2008 and February 2009 and compared those results to try and get a glimpse into what is happening in the industry. As a guy who sold HRMS systems, I always considered the number of employees and the time line as two of the most important factors.
# Employees Under 100 100 to 500 500 to 1000 over 1,000
September 26% 38% 14% 22%
November 25% 39% 17% 19%
February 30% 30% 18% 22%
These numbers are fairly even except for the slight drop in companies with 100 to 500 employees who completed our survey in February 2009. Our overall lead numbers, however, were up by about 15% for the month of February and the total number of 100 to 500 employee leads remained at the same actual number as November 2007. I will run these numbers again next quarter and see if we continue to see any trends for the less than 500 employee companies who are looking for a system. At this point, as I look at the numbers, I am just not seeing much that we can hang our hat on to establish any trends. I think it’s safe to say that the size of companies looking for systems has not changed by any significant amount over our testing time frame.
Decision Time Frame 30-90 days 90-180 days Greater
September 36% 24% 39%
November 49% 25% 26%
February 38% 35% 26%
The numbers for time line for a decision show a greater variance than the numbers we observed for the size companies that were looking for systems. Most interesting for me that 49% of our survey respondents in November were looking to make a decision within three months. I am not thinking this has anything to do with the economy or anything else. I think that is just a factor of the time of year. People want to finish up year end payroll and then add a system. The number that does at this point tend to show people are slowing down their decision making time frames was the 35% number for February. I don’t think anyone would be surprised to see that those looking for a system expect a longer approval cycle given current economic news.
Future industry trends
Check back with our blog every so often. We will continue to look for trends each quarter within the HRM Software industry and use our blog as a forum for relating those trends to our community. Check back next month when I will run the same numbers by industry to see which ones are looking for systems.
