It’s almost scary to print those words. I am afraid I am going to jinx myself. In November and December of 2008, we saw the traffic to CompareHRIS.com plateau and then drop off. I was not sure if that was the result of fewer people looking for systems over the holidays and at year end or if we were actually being impacted by the economic slowdown. I was worried enough that we stopped soliciting HRIS vendors and delayed plans to add a new site for recruiting software and performance management software applications. I decided to wait out this quarter to see what things looked like. My fears have been put to rest. In January, February and March of 2009, we have seen 10 to 25% increases in traffic each month to CompareHRIS.com and 100% plus increases in traffic to hr-softwareblog.com. March also ended up being a record month for leads generated and HR Information Systems selection tool surveys completed. It’s hard for me to tell how many people are buying but the number of searches is increasing.
With CompareHRIS.com, I am in constant contact with a large number of the industry’s leading Employee tracking Software and Employee Management Software software vendors. The same question often comes up which is “Are you seeing any slowdown?” The surprising answer is we are seeing slightly longer sales cycles but, overall, the news is much more positive than I would have expected. Actually, I have only spoken to a single vendor who has had layoffs and they laid off less than 7% of their staff. I have heard that more layoffs are pending.
I am not going to mention that HR software vendor by name, but I think their individual slowdown has more to do with poor management decisions and product design decisions than on any economic influences. I am not sure they have figured this out but for the sake of their employees, channel, and customers I sincerely hope they do. I sat and talked with one of their employees this week who indicated sales were slow but blamed it on the economy. I let him know, that based on my contacts, his company appears to be the exception instead of the norm.
Based on my rosy outlook, I am moving forward at full speed with expanding the capabilities of the CompareHRIS.com concept.