Human resources (HR)—and more specifically, talent management—is an area that many tier-one enterprise software vendors are trying to break into. People often don't believe that these vendors have the same level of experience as the niche vendors (with best-of-breed solutions) in this enterprise area. The result, they think, is a vendor solution that, while effective in managing the day-to-day needs of the average HR department, may not necessarily have the same level of functionality—which in the end could prove to be detrimental to your business.

Using TEC's ERP Evaluation Center, we compared two such systems: tier-one solution Lawson S3 Human Capital Management 8.1.x and best-of-breed solution Vista HRMS 4.0 from PDS—head-to-head, based on the most recent data supplied to us by the two vendors.

We looked at six standard HR modules. To eliminate any chance of bias, and to ensure a level playing field, all 856 criteria that make up the modules and submodules in our HR Evaluation Center were given equal weight and priority. In other words, no area of functionality was treated as being more important than any other.