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The Morning Signal v1

Writer: Caleb Fullhart
Caleb Fullhart
3 days ago
2 min read

Updated: 1 day ago

As the "data guy," I’ve learned to love math—so I’ll just state that 75.4% of this new blog series is based on my last 20 years in the trenches.


I took a rather non-traditional route into HR Tech (landing in tech and coding straight out of HR/TA). But before we dive too deep into anything else, let’s never forget the golden rule of business: Labor costs are, and always have been, the top expense category for companies. (Keep that in mind next time you look at a P&L, forecast, or workforce plan.)


Throughout 98% of my HR Tech (Workday) projects, I’ve had a Key Stakeholder sitting firmly in HR—much to the absolute chagrin of the IT organization.


You see, IT often views HR tech as just another bill to pay—a glorified database used to push people data around. But having lived on both sides, I’ve spotted 4 classic misconceptions IT organizations hold about HR tech:

  • "HR Tech is a self-contained silo"

    • The Myth: It’s a closed-loop system owned entirely by the CHRO—something you spin up, provision licenses for, and leave alone.

    • The Reality: Modern HR tech is woven directly into the enterprise fabric. Talent data feeds security, IAM, data lakes, and BI pipelines. Treating it like an island creates massive bottlenecks.

  • "HR data doesn't need enterprise-grade security"

    • The Myth: Because it isn't customer-facing financial data, it escapes rigorous governance.

    • The Reality: HR systems house the heaviest PII in the enterprise—compensation, performance reviews, and banking details. A misconfigured API is an invitation for disaster.

  • "HR systems don't need real-time data pipelines"

    • The Myth: Nightly flat-file SFTP drops are totally fine.

    • The Reality: In a hybrid enterprise, day-one provisioning and immediate access revocation require instant, event-driven architectures (hello, webhooks).

  • "It's just an administrative system of record"

    • The Myth: It’s a static database for payroll and compliance.

    • The Reality: Today’s HCMs are basically composable ERPs, complete with workflow automation and skills ontologies that directly drive operational agility.

 

A quick housekeeping note: I am a flawed human working off personal experience, so these are opinions, not carved-in-stone facts. Anyone who has worked with me knows I am fluent in run-on sentences, which is why I run my words through AI to make them sensible. (Typos are my absolute kryptonite).


Moving on! Over the next few months, I plan to cover a few core themes (though I reserve the right to change my mind based on market trends, because after all, it’s my post):


  1. The Death of Siloed Systems: Integration, data pipelines, and cloud-dominant, API-first models.

  2. Talent Analytics & Data Lakes: Moving past historical reporting to real-time predictive workforce modeling.

  3. Workflow Engines & Agentic AI: Orchestrating complex enterprise processes across IT, HR, and finance.

  4. Employee Experience (EX) Platforms: Embedding experience directly into collaboration suites like Teams and Slack.

 

Alright, that’s the intro out of the way. Till the next post, take care and have a great week!


 

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