Event Report: PeopleStrong #AltifyHR2019

This is my first attempt at the Event Report. PeopleStrong organized their annual product launch event ‘AltifyHR2019’ on February 15, 2019, in Mumbai. PeopleStrong is important ‘Core HR Platform' among the mid-sized global vendors according to ‘HR Technology Market 2019’ report prepared by Josh Bersin. However, PeopleStrong confirmed that they offer SaaS, and PaaS platforms, in addition to Collaboration and Productivity Tools. Their SaaS HR Platform provides options for Recruitment, Core HR, Workforce Management, Talent Management, Payroll, and People Analytics. Around 200+ eminent HR Professionals were present at the event.

Workshop:

Abhijit Bhaduri, (Digital Transformation Coach, Author, Blogger, Influencer, Keynote Speaker & Columnist) addressed the Pre-Launch Workshop on “Managing the Work, Worker, and Working of Future.” With a sneak peek into the future, he explained how the world of work is changing in line with the developments in the external environment. He also highlighted the trends at work, especially changes in the career trajectories. The workshop summed up with thought-provoking audience participation in three groups, namely Dreamers, Strivers, and Transformers.

Product Launch:

Pankaj Bansal, (Co-founder & CEO, PeopleStrong) commenced the product launch by introducing their Intelligent, Open and Connected HR technology solutions. He first elaborated about their growing number of clients in 14 sectors including BFSI, Technology, E-commerce, and Retail. And then shared facts and figures underscoring their growth, for example: Number of Users, Expected Target, Transactions per month, Number of devices, Paychecks processed with Total Amount, Job Applicants and Data Sources.

Pankaj highlighted that in quest of excellence, their R&D Team strived to improve their product offerings in the following areas: Microservices, Open APIs, Internationalization, Additional Configurations, and Data-Lake. For narrating their Alt One Partner Story he said that they now have 20+ vendors across domain in three segments: HR Apps, Recruitment, and Employee Benefits. For providing synergistic solutions these partners offer their expertise to strengthen PeopleStrong offerings.

There were four important product announcements from PeopleStrong: Alt Builder, Alt Analytics, Alt Messenger, and PeopleStrong Developer Community. To enhance employee experience and maximize user adoption they aim to improve ease-of-use by removing complexities and rigidity in HR Tech offerings. Let us look at these products in detail.

1. Alt Builder: With this offering, companies will be able to develop their own Apps according to their needs and requirements. This customization will be possible without any involvement from professional coders and developers. With this ‘Platform as a Service’ (PaaS) product, anyone can develop these apps with simple drag and drop features. One can also connect these apps with the entire HR database. After the product launch, they invited ideas for app development from the audience during “Hackathon.” PeopleStrong Team successfully showcased this capability by developing an app within 20 minutes based on the ideas suggested by eminent HR Professionals.

2. Alt Analytics: Backed with Power BI from Microsoft, ‘Alt Analytics’ was the second announcement from PeopleStrong. In addition to providing valuable insights from people data, it offers predictive capabilities for strategic decision-making. Apart from real-time monitoring with simple dashboards; it will help HR Professionals to take preventive actions based on predictive insights.

Sashi Sreedharan, MD, Microsoft India unveiled this product and said that Alt Analytics is going to revolutionize the way we address crucial HR issues. HR will take smarter decisions with real-time data and deeper insights. His views are very much in line with the 2018 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends Report. According to the report, ‘People Analytics’ rated the second most important trend, and 84% of respondents think that it is essential for decision-making.

PeopleStrong also announced its robust integration with Microsoft products like: Microsoft Team, Office 365, and Outlook. ‘Jinie’, the Chatbot, is one of the important offerings from PeopleStrong, considering the growing trend towards Conversational User Interface. Integrated with Workplace Technology tools like Microsoft Team and Office 365, ‘Jinie’ add value to the HR Tech offerings in terms of convenience and ease-of-use.

3. PeopleStrong Developer Community: The next big announcement was PeopleStrong Developer Community to become Open and Connected HRTech platform. With plug and play apps, developers can now extend PeopleStrong product capabilities according to their needs and requirements. Especially for seamless integration with their internal or third-party Softwares. There are five options in APIs Directory including Alt Worklife, Alt Payroll, Integration, Alt Recruit, and Jinie. Pankaj said that after using APIs for integration people are now developing their own technologies.

Similarly, partners will be able to comply with client requirements for providing customized solutions. As stated earlier they have three categories of 20+ partners: HR Apps, Recruitment, and Employee Benefits. For example, in HR Apps they partner with Hyphen for Employee Engagement Surveys.

4. Alt Messenger: According to research there will be 10 billion connected mobile devices by 2021. Half of the world population is using Messaging Apps like: WhatsApp, WeChat, and FB Messenger. At present, it is the most used app category. To capitalize on this opportunity PeopleStrong offers Alt Messenger with an additional layer of security to provide a better experience than WhatsApp. With inbuilt Jinie – Chatbot it can also offer Conversational User Interface.

Alt Messenger provides a secure channel for employee communication. It also facilitates collaboration with internal as well as external networks including Consultants and Gig workers. Without worrying about data privacy, Alt Messenger fosters efficiency, productivity, and ease-of-use.

Hackathon:

As discussed earlier the product launch followed by Hackathon with audience participation. By initiating group discussion at the table they requested everyone to suggest ideas for app development. The audience suggested developing an app for ‘Leave Management.' To effectively demonstrate Alt Builder capabilities, PeopleStrong Team managed to develop and present an app within 20 minutes.

Conclusion:

The event concluded with a musical performance by Annu Kapoor, (Bollywood film celeb and television presenter) and his team. Thanks to PeopleStrong #AltifyHR2019, I got an opportunity to meet Abhijit Bhaduri, Achal Khanna, Amarpreet Kalkat, Holger Muller, and Dr. N. S. Rajan.

Following Slideshare Presentation will give you a glimpse of the event.

Altify HR 2019 from Vijay Bankar

  

Event Coverage:

PeopleStrong Press Release, Holger Muller - Twitter moments, Business Standard, HR Katha, and Peoplematters.

About PeopleStrong: 

PeopleStrong is the largest HR Technology company from India, that is enriching experience at work for over 250+ customers and over 700,000 users. On its journey to writing the #NewCodeofWork, PeopleStrong delivers its technology and services in one offering, using its on-demand technology product PeopleStrong Alt, which has distilled tens of thousands of hours of research and development (R&D) - a decade long experience of servicing the HR functions of top Indian companies.