During the past several months, I’ve attended global industry events, analyst days, and vendor customer events from ADP, Workday, the HR Technology Conference & Expo, SAP SuccessFactors, and Unleash World.

At the Unleash World event in Paris, and in addition to moderating the talent management track there, I was also a featured speaker and unveiled new research: “New ‘Core HR’ Will Power The Future Of Work: Three Emerging Technologies Will Form A Foundation For Adaptive Talent Management.” The interest in this topic was, frankly, humbling. The session drew standing-room-only attendance and engaging questions from both customers and software vendors.

This brief is the first in a two-part series of research. The second brief, which is underway now, will dive deeper into what adaptive talent management is and why it’s important. Taken together, these pieces explore what will be needed for human capital management solutions to really support workforce adaptivity and which vendors and organizations are on the cutting edge of success. We hope it provides some insight and new ways to start thinking about your “core HR” investments.