Marketing has a bad time of it. This is due, in part, to the sloppy and ineffective way it is practiced in our industry. It's sort of cute to think that HR and the industry surrounding it is a hideaway for entrepreneurs who wish to believe in their ideas at the expense of market success. While this posture is stereotypically a characteristic of inventors in general, the degree to which big idea, no clue world-changers populate our universe is astonishing. In more sophisticated settings, marketing is responsible for all dimensions of the customer relationship including installation and support.

Think about "scaling" a team to handle the ins and outs of support for an Enterprise sized Applicant Tracking Company. With little in the way of experience, the problem is far less obvious than it seems. Both PeopleClick and Recruitsoft have encountered serious challenges in their rollouts because the customer wants it her way, cost be damned. Simply executing on the promises in the fixed price contracts is a bedeviling challenge. Planning and accounting for the implications of 100 simultaneous installation and support contracts is an exercise in imagination the first time you encounter it.

We think that Webhire's low profile market strategy is going to be a winner over the long haul. They should be able to pick up the high volume of defecting accounts from PeopleClick, Recruitsoft and BrassRing with some ease. By simply softening their near term growth objectives, they've positioned themselves for a banner year in 2003. The folks at Webhire understand that system-wide prioritization of 'good ideas' is an investment that must be nurtured and fed solid resources. They learned through experience at a time when the marketplace wasn't as competitive. It's a hard to quantify value of having a supplier with 20 years of experience.

Workstream Recruiting Systems - Make the right choice!