Retail Solutions: Lawson Is Tackling New Frontiers In HR Management Systems

The Lawson Human Capital Management (HCM) Suite offers deep and scalable functionality in core HR transactional processes, including payroll, and an expanding strategic process capability. The solution is a good choice for companies in North America with more than 2,500 employees. Lawson has a good strategy to move the product capabilities forward in strategic HCM processes and multinational support, as well as a technology strategy that embraces service-oriented architecture (SOA). Lawson is well-positioned as an alternative to the major enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors for companies requiring scalable human resource management systems (HRMS) support.

Lawson recently doubled in annual revenue size to approximately $800 million with its acquisition of Swedish ERP vendor Intentia. The acquisition gives Lawson a platform to internationalize its HRMS product, which has been adopted by more than 1,000 customers, predominantly in the US and Canada. Lawson has seen an uptick in opportunities for its HRMS product since Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft, providing an alternative for large enterprises that don't require extensive international functionality. Within the past year, Lawson added retail giant Wal-Mart to its customer list. Even with the scalability to attract large customers, Lawson also has a good presence within the US midmarket.

Forrester evaluated Lawson's current offering and strategy for HR management systems against approximately 92 criteria. Overall, the Lawson HCM Suite has strong transactional process capability in personnel, payroll, benefits, and self-service along with a promising new performance management application. Lawson lacks a strong time and labor capability and needs to build out strategic talent management and pay-for-performance capabilities.