HRM Software: Catch The Wave!

Enterprise software may be flying under the radar of most investors, but that appears to be changing—and changing very soon.

Facebook’s initial offering stumble earlier this year may be the reason investors are keeping mum about “cloud-based” service companies. It is also why a small company called Workday filed for an IPO this week with little fanfare.

But don’t mistake silence for disinterest. Workday’s plans represent a coming wave of innovation, something bubbling under the surface of the software-as-a-service market for quite some time–and getting ready to explode.

At the forefront are web-based Human Resources Management systems, estimated as a $7.5 billion dollar market in 2011, with a growth rate predicted through 2016 of a solid eight percent. With its IPO filing, Workday is joining major players like Oracle and IBM in the fast-growing cloud-based enterprise software industry.

Workday provides customizable, human capital management software that requires little infrastructure—making it affordable, flexible and easy to implement. Workday, along with Salesforce.com, Taleo and Ovation, provides talent acquisition, hiring and onboarding for many small-to-medium sized businesses, as well as many other HR services.

Convenience and affordability are the engines running this upsurge of HRM software providers, and the time may be coming to get on board.

For more details on Workday’s IPO filing and what it means for the HRM market, read Rolfe Winker’s article in today’s Wall Street Journal.