Cytiva Shines at SHRM Conference

By Ian Alexander

A group of about six Cytiva staff recently met in Chicago to exhibit at the SHRM Annual Conference and Exposition. I have to say that the conference itself was about as good as any SHRM I have attended (I’ve attended pretty much every year since 1994).

Why? Well, from the exposition floor, there were several factors that made the show good for Cytiva. The first being the fact that so many clients and prospects came by our booth. Cytiva clients are the best because they are our most vocal supporters. We constantly say it because it's true: Cytiva clients LOVE their software and they LOVE the service that comes with it. Ask them, they’ll tell you.
Our recent appearance in the Gartner Magic Quadrant backs that up, because they noted that the feedback from customers was very good.

Second, I did not hear one person I talked to mention the economy. Projects are happening and people are evaluating vendors and there was ZERO talk of concern about funding or economic conditions threatening funding for projects. Cytiva is in the midst of closing what may end up being a record 2nd quarter for sales, so this bullishness fits with what we are seeing in general.

Third, SHRM members seem so much more tech savvy these days. As recently as last year in Vegas, a good portion of the members I would talk to would view software as something that was separate from what they do in their job. Or something they would love to learn about. This year in Chicago, the overwhelming majority of attendees I spoke with were confident software users and evaluators. Based on Chicago, technology is clearly an entrenched part of the modern HR practitioner’s world.

Finally, with the addition of our SonicPerform employee performance management software and stand alone SonicOnboard onboarding software products, there was no shortage of attendees that were highly interested in Cytiva solutions. Last year, we offered our SonicRecruit applicant tracking product and our add-on onboarding module. This year we had more solutions and prospective clients were everywhere. And, with so many happy clients dropping by, we had several opportunities to have our clients help us sell the product to prospective clients.

It was a little sad that Vurv was conspicuously absent from the floor (they pulled out at the last moment). I spoke with some Vurv sales reps who said they were encouraged to bring any prospective clients to the Taleo booth since the Vurv booth was scrapped at the last minute. Rumor only: from what I'm hearing a lot more people are being offered jobs at Taleo than I would have guessed, so that is good news.

It was nice to catch up with former colleagues from KnowledgePoint, CCH, Administaff and other companies.

I spoke to many on the expo floor that were completely creeped out by the PeopleClick fairy. Imagine Danny Divito (minus the sense of humor and warmth) in a pink fairly costume screaming at passers by. Not sure of the thinking behind that one.

I have to give props to SHRM for the bus service. It was the most efficient deployment of hotel shuttles I have ever seen at an event ever. Bar none. Busses ran every 5 minutes or so to the main hotels non-stop. Perfect.

At the end of it all, I’d say Cytiva shined because the SHRM Expo shined. It was a positive event with plenty of optimism about the future and positive energy from the attendees, clients and prospective clients. And when people love your software, the SHRM conference is a great place to be.

Cytiva SonciRecruit and SonicPerform Involved in Two New Industry Reports

Before we head off to Chicago to exhibit at the upcoming SHRM Annual Conference and Exposition, two new reports from leading industry analysts have hit the street.

The first one is the Gartner Magic Quadrant for eRecruitment. Cytiva has not appeared in this particular study in the past. Gartner took a look a look at the top applicant tracking vendors and published a paper positioning them in their “Magic Quadrant.”

Gartner is pretty picky about what we allowed to divulge about the contents of the paper, but we were very pleased with how they ranked Cytiva’s SonicRecruit in all the individual areas they evaluated, however, this year, Gartner is not including in the paper how each vendor scored on the individual criteria that made up the overall positioning in the Magic Quadrant. This makes it difficult to see the specific strengths and weaknesses of each vendor. I would recommend that organizations approaching the Magic Quadrant use it as a general guide to the top vendors and work with Gartner and/or the vendors to get insight into each vendor’s products and client satisfaction.

The criteria for inclusion in the report was that companies had to have more than 100 clients having more than 1,000 employees, or over $25 million in revenue. In my opinion, this excluded some of the smaller vendors and made it easy to focus on a select group of solid companies (Cytiva’s SonicRecruit being one).

I believe Cytiva’s near 50% 07 growth rate and the strength of our cash-flow positive financials made it possible for us to be featured in the report. In the past, Cytiva has not worked closely with analysts and research organizations and, consequently, our awareness among certain types of organizations has been lower than it could be. Over the last two years, we have been actively briefing analysts and researchers and as a result we are getting more visibility in reports like the Gartner Magic Quadrant.

In May, Cytiva underwrote a new study by Aberdeen called “Managing Employee Performance.” The goal of the report is to determine how companies are adopting and adapting performance management strategies in order to increase retention, maximize talent and gain insight into their organizational strengths and weaknesses.

The research reveals that while less than one-half of Best-in-Class organizations currently utilize an automated employee performance management (EPM) system, organizations that do are achieving greater average performance gains across all key performance indicators that end-user organizations assigned to employee performance management. This includes more than 600% greater improvement in employee time-to-productivity and more than 700% greater increase in employee retention than organizations with a manual EPM system.

There is a ton of great stuff in the report if you are looking at what steps you need to take to improve the results of your performance management efforts. The report can be downloaded free for a limited time here.


With the release of SonicPerform, Cytiva’s new employee performance management application, we are actively trying to promote the sharing of best practice knowledge surrounding this key talent management function. The Aberdeen report can be augmented with Cytiva’s white paper “Six Key Steps to Successfully Select and Implement a Performance Management System,” which can be downloaded here.