I’m fresh off of the June 5 joint-briefing from SAP/SuccessFactors’ Mike Ettling and IBM Smarter Workforce/Kenexa GM Debbie Landers. Almost one month ago to the day the two vendors announced cloud-to-cloud integrations of their HCM offerings with the stated goal in the title of their PR to “transform talent management.” The actual release read to be more of a standard integration announcement — linking IBM BrassRing Talent Acquisition directly to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, and linking SAP Success Factors Learning Management System (LMS) directly to IBM Kenexa’s Learning Content Management System (LCMS).

Last week, I spent a day and a half with Ceridian at its annual “Analyst Day” event in San Francisco. Ceridian understands the value of analyst relationships where most other vendors relegate it to an analyst relations process. Managing analyst relations and having analyst relationships are two different things. Ceridian gets this.

We released the 2015 HCM Vendor Brandscape Report^TM last week to great anticipation after a huge team effort. Here at The Starr Conspiracy Intelligence Unit (TSCIU), we know we offer a new perspective on the market. But, this being the first in a series of brandscapes, I was curious about how it would be received. We couldn’t be more pleased.