HR Tech - Integrated or best of breed?

I've often been asked over the course of my career for my opinion on the age old question - best of breed Vs Integrated Systems when it comes to HR Tech for HR Transformation. So let me just come out and say it. These days I'm firmly in the best of breed camp.

In the early days of my use of HR Systems I must admit, I was in the integrated systems camp, while looking jealously at some of the new HR Tech that was being incubated (we also designed and built some cool tools, but that's for another post!). So what brought about this transformation (pun intended)? Simply put, a renewed focus on the Employee Experience (EX). In the past, best of breed systems while nicely designed, were walled gardens that impacted negatively on the EX. At the same time, integrated systems seemed to be designed as if they forgot that employees do leave the office, go home, and have access to elegantly designed commercial systems. So they knew what good looks like.



Fast forward a few years, and what has changed is the introduction of easy to use API's to integrate systems. Just to be clear, API's are not new. At some of the more innovative companies I worked at up to 15 years ago, some measure of integration was accepted methodology. What has changed is that now API's are easier to implement, and make it more straightforward for best of breed systems to integrate. This means you can provide great functionality through each of these best of breed systems, while providing a great EX for the members of your organisation with the use of a well designed EX layer sitting on top of your best of breed systems. So where does your HR systems landscape fit based on the framework below?