Hi Keith, you’ve mentioned that Visier is at an exciting moment with its product evolution and market timing. Can you elaborate on the current market conditions and trends that make this an opportune time for Visier? Specifically, what economic, technological, or cultural factors do you see as most influential in driving demand for people analytics solutions right now? Additionally, how do you foresee these factors evolving over the next few years, and what strategies is Visier implementing to capitalize on these trends and maintain its leadership position in the industry?
Thanks so much for the question!
My favorite book right now is “The Coming Wave” by Mustafa Suleyman. He’s CEO of AI over at MSFT. His book begins with some basic data that is more macro economic, but has material impact on companies and People Analytics. Specifically:
- Population growth decline = severe impact on nation states / talent scarcity. We’ve watched this in Japan for decades, and then Western Europe, and now the USA / Canada / etc. Why was Japan a pioneer in robotics interacting with humans? Because of population decline and resulting talent scarcity (and an innovative culture, not just one factor drives anything of course!).
- Productivity mandate: The natural consequence of declining populations is the desperate pursuit of innovation to bring efficiency / productivity, so as to mitigate economic collapse. In Japan, this was robots. This is all being discussed publicly, with Canada’s bank being very explicit about the risk: Canada has a productivity crisis. Here’s how we can get back on track: Jon Hartley in the Toronto Star | Macdonald-Laurier Institute. The promise of AI/GenAI is productivity, so even if countries/companies are anxious about AI, given population declines and their economies they’ll have to adopt it. And since AI/GenAI automates mundane/repetitive work, we’re going to see whole classes of jobs evaporate, and dramatic shifts in the workforce and definition of work.
- Cost of Capital: Not really a focus of Suleyman’s book, but due to the high cost of capital, efficiency demands [measured as free cash flow / margin] rises in prominence. This exacerbates the demand for innovation/productivity gains, and again accelerates adoption of GenAI / AI.
- Decreasing immigration / rise of nationalism: Again, not a major theme in Suleyman’s book, but it exacerbates talent scarcity and undermines stability. Being an American, I cannot fathom why American politicians want to limit the immigration of people to grow the country’s workforce, especially the amazing talent we are refusing to accept from India and China.
So, why am I ranting about this when you asked a question on why this might be an opportune time for Visier? Because I think that we’re going to see in the next few years a transformation in work and the workforce. Employees with a growth mindset will be constantly learning/evolving, no surprise that Accenture bought Udacity, they probably are thinking, “how do we help our clients grow their employees in a talent scarce environment where the alternative to adaptation is irrelevance?” I worry we’re going to continue to see layoffs and shrinking opportunity (and as a father, this scares the hell out of me, that the world my kids are growing up in likely will have less to offer them). We’re going to see the emergence of digital employees working alongside biological employees. And that means we are all going to need to continuously change the composition of our companies, evolving what roles we need, what roles have become redundant, and ideally compassionately investing in our employees to grow and evolve them as rapidly as the world outside. And this is going to be hard.
A responsible company will realize the complexity of change in front of them, and want to intentionally drive that change. Companies deploying digital employees will necessarily perform people analytics on those digital employees (what’s the customer satisfaction of interactions with these employees, what is the employee satisfaction of working with these new digital employees, how will my digital employees need to grow / evolve?). I recently read an article about a Japanese factory having their humanoid robots perform exercises with their human employees, to improve robot/human relations. This is happening now.
So, more concisely, what does it mean for Visier? That Visier needs to help companies create and maintain increasing efficiency in concert with maintaining/growing their workforces (digital and biological). I think the next 3-5 years are going to be a tornado of change, and hopefully we’ll be a positive force that helps companies navigate that change and their path.