Change the Only Constant in People Management

An Interview With Saba CEO Bobby Yazdani

Can you discuss the importance of people management historically? How has it evolved in management thinking and why are more organizations standardizing their people management processes?

People and human capital management have been key topics for many years, really surfacing post-industrialization with Andrew Carnegie—a leading thinker around the concept of knowledge workers.

Through the years, thought leaders like Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, and many others have all talked about the importance of people management and processes in business, and how the alignment of these with strategy and operational processes can yield organizational performance and excellence.

What's different today are the new trends fueling the discussion around people management. These include: globalization, hypercompetition, new product cycles, talent wars, the shrinkage of workforces in certain developing countries, and the emergence of new workforces in emerging markets. These trends are creating new discussions and are placing a new emphasis on the importance of people and people processes.

What’s enabling us to realize the vision of standardization and create transparency around people processes is, in my mind, the Internet. The Internet has created a venue that offers global access and reach to the individuals who are participating in the people processes across an organization. We are able to reach out to our extended value chain of employees, partners, and customers. The dynamics of our new world, the Internet, and technology enablement, all of these things are creating a new force and a new beginning for this very important topic, people management.

You spend a lot of time traveling and talking with customers and partners around the world. In recent months, what are some of the trends you’re seeing and what are some of the shifts in how companies are approaching people management strategies?

The market we’re participating in is evolving and maturing. The expectations are different, the value that customers need to realize from their projects is different, and the uses and benefits that these technologies and projects bring to businesses and organizations are different. 

We are hearing from customers that high expectations, quality, and usability of technology are at the forefront of their concerns.  We are also hearing that these are systems that really attach to core processes in the business. My question is, “Can you unplug this?” And the answer is, “No.”

People management systems are here to benefit the organization and yield performance. Customers are asking themselves, ”How do these systems provide operating benefit for our business?” These systems are now attached to revenue and operational functions to help lower the cost or expand the margins of operations. They are attached to risk mitigation or compliance processes in the businesses. These systems are intended to service customers and partners, and are also expected to be available in a high-quality fashion all the time. 

We at Saba are listening to all of these voices, agendas, and perspectives. We need to continuously realize that our people management systems ultimately have to provide operating benefit to our customers and help them lower the cost of learning, training, and compliance processes, as well as speed new product introductions, enhance sales excellence, and more. The market is morphing very rapidly, expectations are rising, and this is true on a global basis across all markets.  

What is Saba doing to address what you’re hearing from customers? What are some of the strategic initiatives you see Saba providing?

From my standpoint, what we do at Saba has to be sustainable for the sake of our customers, our employees and our investors. First and foremost, we have to ask ourselves every day, “How do we ensure customer success?” Customer success is not simply technology installation or project delivery—it’s about usage adoption and how data can support decisions. How does technology truly realize and deliver on the operating benefits that our customers are looking for?

One of my key agenda items for Saba is to elevate the conversation we are having with customers to ensure that we can clearly articulate customer success and ensure that we have the plans, capabilities, and tools in place to measure their success metrics, report on those, and have a game plan to achieve the state of success. We have to continue to work not just within Saba, but across the board with our customers and partners to elevate the discussion around customer success and what it means for a particular business or industry. 

Long-term R&D and innovation is crucial to ensure that our and our customers’ efforts are sustainable, so we will continue to listen to our customers, delivering on their requirements, and sustaining our R&D investment over the years to come.

We are spending $15-$20 million a year, and we need to continuously increase that investment to ensure that innovative solutions get delivered that help customers realize benefit from the technology. We also need to keep our investment focused, so it delivers ever-improving usability and quality in an innovative way.

Customer success, sustainable R&D, listening to and delivering on customer requirements, continuously innovating, and running a stable, solid business are the strategic initiatives that together will yield the right benefit for our customers and, broadly speaking, for investors and employees as well.

What are the conversations you would like to be having with customers?

I put myself every day in our customers’ shoes and ask myself whether we are delivering business benefit for them. How can we justify our projects, the expenditure, and our efforts? It’s crucial that what we do at Saba yields operating benefit to the projects and the organizations that we serve, so I would like to see the topic continue to evolve from simply a technology and product implementation discussion to a business discussion.

I also think our customers need to be thinking about their customers. I want to gain visibility into our customers, and I would like to have better visibility into our customers’ collective customers—the end users and employees—who take advantage of these technologies every day. User adoption and the interaction between end users of technology is a really important conversation.

There’s been a lot of discussion around the types of information these systems manage and how over time this information will help people make better decisions. These are important topics for all of us.

> Want to learn more about the latest trends in people management? Register for the first in a series of webinars Saba will be co-hosting with analyst firm Bersin & Associates.