Absence Management Software are designed to streamline the management, recording, and analysis of employee absences, replacing outdated manual methods such as paper forms and spreadsheets. They automate leave processing, allowing employees to choose from multiple types of leaves and submit absence requests, and allow managers to approve them through customizable workflows tailored to company policies and compliance requirements. It includes features such as real-time tracking, notifications, and mobile accessibility for managing requests on-the-go. These platforms also provide detailed reporting and analytics, delivering insights about absence trends to help organizations optimize workforce efficiency and plan resource allocation effectively. Additionally, they seamlessly integrate with existing HR systems and provide calendar integration, ensuring data accuracy and aligning leave data with organizational calendars to boost visibility and facilitate planning. Employees can also access their remaining leave balances through a self-service portal, promoting transparency and self-management. These solutions are utilized by human resources departments, managers, and employees.
Benefits management software is a tool that helps HR teams to manage and automate employee benefits programs. This includes designing, implementing, communicating, and administering benefits plans, such as health insurance, retirement plans, and other employee benefits. Benefits management software also helps employers manage their compliance with government regulations, such as the ACA, ERISA, and HIPAA. Additionally, its analytics and reporting feature helps employers analyze their benefits costs and make informed decisions about their benefits programs, while integration with other systems ensures that employee data is up-to-date and consistent across all systems.
Capital Investment management software is a type of enterprise resource planning (ERP) tool designed to help organizations manage their capital investments efficiently. This software aids in planning, tracking, and analyzing investments made in capital assets like machinery, equipment, buildings, and technology. Its primary goal is to ensure that these investments align with the company's strategic financial goals and contribute effectively to long-term growth. It allows users to set financial targets for capital projects and forecast associated future costs and revenues. It also helps to identify and manage risks associated with these investments, ensuring that potential issues are addressed proactively. This software is vital for companies that need to optimize the deployment of substantial financial resources into physical assets, ensuring maximum return on investment and alignment with business strategies.
Gartner defines a service-centric cloud ERP solution as a suite that is marketed and sold as an integrated product that provides at least three of the following: Financial management system (FMS) functionality, including general ledger, accounts payable (AP), accounts receivable (AR) and financial planning. Order-to-cash (O2C) functionality, ranging from configure, price and quote (CPQ) to cash collection activities. Source-to-pay (S2P) functionality, which must cover at least e-sourcing, contract life cycle management, e-purchasing, AP invoice automation, supplier management, collaboration and payments. Human capital management (HCM) functionality, which must cover at least administrative HR capabilities, such as core HR data management, employee life cycle transactions and position management. Other administrative ERP functionality, to support typical service-centric activities, such as extended planning and analysis (xP&A), project management (for project-centric capabilities), service procurement and real estate lease management. In addition, Gartner defines the market for cloud ERP for service-centric enterprises as serving organizations that typically focus on service (nonproduct) industries, including: Professional services Healthcare Software Media Financial services Telecommunications Nonprofit sectors Real estate
Cloud xP&A is a platform-centric enterprise planning strategy to extend financial planning and analysis (FP&A) with multidiscipline planning capabilities that are packaged, marketed and sold as an integrated operational planning solution. xP&A solutions must include a cohesive, composable, data-harmonized vendor platform that can accommodate emerging technologies, horizontal functional and vertical-specific solutions for their target market(s)
Gartner defines cloud HCM suites for 1,000+ employee enterprises as cloud application suites that deliver functionality for attracting, developing, engaging, retaining and managing employees. Cloud HCM suites for 1,000+ employee enterprises are designed to support transactions and/or analytical processing for more than one of the following use cases within a single integrated solution
Corporate learning technologies help organizations train, develop, engage and analyze their learners. They help organizations with compliance, certifications, onboarding, talent development, upskilling, collaboration, coaching and mentoring, sales training, partner education, and customer training.
Diversity Equity and Inclusion technology tools help organizations promote diversity and inclusivity in the workplace by providing data-driven insights, promoting diverse candidate sourcing, eliminating unconscious biases, and automating diversity initiatives. These tools include reporting and analytics capabilities to track diversity metrics and monitor progress over time, promoting diversity in the hiring and recruitment process, employee engagement programs, D&I training, and automated compliance tracking and reporting for diversity-related laws and regulations. The goal of these tools is to help organizations create a more diverse and inclusive workforce culture and ensure compliance with diversity and inclusion-related laws and regulations by integrating artificial intelligence, data analytics, and other advanced technologies to support these objectives. Predominant users include HR managers, recruitment professionals, hiring managers, and Human Resource departments looking to promote DEI initiatives in the workplace.
Gartner defines financial close and consolidation solutions (FCCS) as applications that enable corporate controllers and their teams to manage the organization’s group close, consolidation and reporting processes. The FCCS market equips organizations to (1) manage and drive financial control across their close cycles through configurable workflows and dashboards that support collaboration and provide a centralized auditable view; (2) execute financial consolidation across multiple legal entities (LEs) and geographies; (3) meet accounting standards for currency translation, intercompany elimination and top-side adjustments; and (4) generate reporting that adheres to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and regional compliance.
Gartner defines financial planning software as the key tool that enables better decision making and resource allocation by supporting planning, budgeting and forecasting processes. It connects relevant operational and driver data to profit and loss, balance sheet and cash-flow financial statements. The software offers enhanced decision support and analytics that can be customized to unique planning requirements through data integration, data modeling, workflow and reporting capabilities. These capabilities all enhance a user’s ability to effectively manage the planning process and financial performance.
A government budgeting and planning solution provides a government-focused platform that encompasses the entire budgeting process from budget planning to budget adoption. It helps in gaining transparency across all departments to report on budget allocations and expenditures, along with in-depth and insightful reports to enable data driven decision making. Such solutions help in creating an integrated and expansive approach, by creating efficiencies and decreasing the length of time of the budgeting process. The system provides transparency to the users throughout the year to evaluate budget to actuals and program expenditures. Government Budget Owners, Program Managers, Finance and Accounting team are the predominant users.
ERP applications for government support and automate a range of administrative and operational business processes, including line-of-business, customer-facing, administrative and asset management aspects of an organization. Across governments, definitions of ERP can vary substantially in scope to include a broad portfolio of discrete line-of-business applications. Government-specific core ERP applications encompass automation for financial management, budget planning and management, human resources, payroll and procurement. Many government organizations have specific requirements that include contract, asset and grant management, and cashiering as part of the core capabilities they expect from these solutions. This Market Guide focuses on core ERP solutions for government.
Gartner defines catalog and curriculum management solutions as the systems of record for degree and nondegree program requirements. These solutions automate and augment the procedures and processes used by higher education institutions to create, update and manage course catalogs, educational programs, course descriptions and curriculum structures. Catalog and curriculum management solutions support workflow around course design, proposal review, approvals for course, program and curriculum information. They track key attributes and dependencies (such as prerequisites) and map courses to curriculum, documenting and enforcing institutional governance and quality assurance. They create and synchronize the course catalog for display on the institution’s website and support curriculum planning and course logistics for degree and nondegree programs. Functionality may also support course, program and institutional assessment and accreditation.
Gartner defines the student information system (SIS) as the core system of record for higher education institutions that serves as the central hub for storing, organizing and processing student academic and administrative activities. The SIS supports student, faculty and staff-facing functionality, including management of information assets, while also supporting back-end administrative functionality. Current market offerings vary in size, scope, regionalization, functional capability and delivery options. Serving the students, faculty and administrative staff, the SIS provides a chronology of individual business transactions, academic activity, advising interactions and educational outcomes. Additionally, it manages vital student assets, including course offerings, course catalogs, course registrations, financial aid, grades and transcripts throughout the student life cycle. Offerings can range from individual components to enterprise wide integrated solutions, or they may be part of a larger administrative ERP application suite.
Gartner defines integration platform as a service (iPaaS) as a vendor-managed cloud service that enables end users to implement integrations between a variety of applications, services and data sources, both internal and external to their organization. iPaaS enables end users of the platform to integrate a variety of internal and external applications, services and data sources for at least one of the three main uses of integration technology: Data consistency: The ability to monitor for or be notified by applications, services and data sources about changes, and to propagate those changes to the appropriate applications and data destinations (for example, “synchronize customer data” or “ingest into data lake”). Multistep process: The ability to implement multistep processes between applications, services and data sources (for example, to “onboard employee” or “process insurance claim”). Composite service: The ability to create composite services exposed as APIs or events and composed from existing applications, services and data sources (for example, to create a “credit check” service or to create a “generate fraud score” service). These integration processes, data pipelines, workflows, automations and composite services are most commonly created via intuitive low-code or no-code developer environments, though some vendors provide more-complex developer tooling.
Internal talent marketplaces are worker-facing platforms that use AI-enabled skills management to match people with experiential development opportunities, thereby democratizing access to development and mobility. Opportunities in the marketplace include gigs, projects, stretch assignments, mentoring or full-time roles. The marketplaces provide personalized recommendations that align with workers’ unique skills, experiences and aspirations without the involvement of HR or managers. Internal talent marketplaces enable talent agility, mobility and experiential learning by providing skills insights to match people to opportunities. They provide valuable insight into available skills and provide workers with equitable visibility into growth opportunities.
Gartner defines the invoice-to-cash (I2C) applications market as cloud-based applications that enable corporate controllers to automatically manage collections and apply customer payments to invoices. I2C applications typically gather, disseminate, track and analyze data from and to internal and external sources. They make I2C processes more efficient and effective, including managing and monitoring deductions, disputes and credit risk. They also typically can ensure invoices are delivered to customers and that customers have options to pay them. I2C applications enable I2C transaction processing across multiple ERP systems. Organizations use I2C applications to collect and apply customer payments to open invoices, perform credit and collections activities, manage deductions and disputes, and deliver and present invoices to customers for payment. I2C applications are cloud-based tools that provide organizations with a standard way of processing across ERPs, while creating flexibility for buyers in how they receive or access invoices as well as pay and dispute them. I2C applications allow an organization to connect and exchange data with multiple ERP systems and other operational tools, such as customer relationship management tools, as well as with partners such as credit and collections agencies, logistics providers, banks and payment service providers. They use data to determine credit risk, automate collections and cash applications activities as well as help manage the resolution of deductions and disputes. Such activities result in faster collection of cash, improved visibility to cash flow, an improved customer experience and reduced process cost.
Strategic sourcing application suites are a set of related, integrated solutions that support upstream procurement activities; in other words, the strategic work the procurement team does for planning, assessment and performance management. Strategic sourcing application suites are used primarily by companies with $800 million or more in annual revenue that, typically, have the necessary critical mass of spend. The strategic sourcing application suite delivers four primary capabilities. Most vendors offer these capabilities as separately licensable modules: Spend analysis is a software- and service-based solution for cleansing, enhancing, classifying and analyzing spend data. It features rule-based data cleansing, automated category-level classification, analytics and decision support. Automated spend analysis is used in procurement and sourcing to quantify spend by supplier, category and part, and to identify opportunities for cost reduction and supply base resizing.
Talent acquisition (TA) applications have traditionally focused on an applicant tracking system (ATS) to track, post and automate the requisition-to-hire process. However, as the TA function in organizations has expanded to compete for talent, TA applications have evolved to cover a broader set of activities such as recruitment marketing, candidate relationship management (CRM) and onboarding. As a result, TA applications are on the market today in a variety of packaged suites that offer combinations of functions beyond applicant tracking. These combined platforms are called talent acquisition (TA), talent management (TM) and human capital management (HCM) suites.
Talent analytics tool helps in tracking the performance of HR processes and program investments in conjunction with business performance. Talent analytics tool provides HR professionals and business leaders with a more data-driven approach to managing talent and making informed data based decisions about workforce planning, talent acquisition, development, attrition, and retention. By leveraging data and advanced analytics techniques, organizations can gain a deeper understanding of their people metrics and identify areas for improvement, leading to increased efficiency, productivity, and overall business performance. Talent analytics tool offers data visualization in various forms of data representation for better insights and understanding. Advanced analytics help to predict future outcomes based on historical data and workforce planning helps organizations monitor the workforce and plan for future workforce needs through forecasting and scenario planning. Predominant users include HR managers, recruitment professionals, hiring managers, and Human Resource professionals.
A talent management (TM) suite is an integrated set of modules that supports an organization’s need to plan, attract, develop, reward, engage and retain talent. The modules offer functionality that includes the areas of workforce planning, recruiting and onboarding, performance appraisal, goal management, learning management, competency management, career development, succession and compensation. The functional modules align with the key human capital management (HCM) processes of: • Plan to source • Acquire to onboard • Perform to reward • Assess to develop A boost to demand in the TM suite market has resulted from the delivery of functionality to improve workforce engagement and collaboration. Further, growing demand for greater analytical capabilities and predictive insights to improve decision making in relation to workforce actions has improved the market’s general health.