January 2018 has been a very busy month for HR tech globally. One of the biggest announcements in the space or what could potentially disrupt the healthcare market came at the end of the month when JP Morgan Chase, Berkshire Hathway, and Amazon announced that they are coming together to form an independent healthcare company for their employees in the US. While very little details about their plans have been disclosed, the industry is already abuzz with various possibilities this alliance throws up to disrupt the age-old models of serving healthcare to customers.
So while January ended on this note, the beginning of Jan 2018 saw a host of announcements of industry players forging alliances and partnerships. A few of these alliances, acquisitions or partnership deals are highlighted in this article. In 2018 and beyond, we expect more such deals in the HR tech space as companies will increasingly look to collaborate with each other to stitch together unique, blended and integrated solutions for the customer.
Some of the notable announcements are:
- Ottawa Ontario based BetterU Education Corp, entered into a 5-year partnership with Swift e-learning services Pvt Ltd, an Indian e-learning development services company. This partnership will support in managing an online e-template marketplace that will include both BetterU and Swift’s library of content development e-templates.
- In another deal Cayenta, a North American leader in ERP and CIS technology announced a strategic partnership with TalentQuest, a leading provider of talent management software. This partnership will ensure that Cayenta’s clients can now have access to an integrated HCM solution including payroll, learning, performance and analytics capabilities.
- Paycor announced a partnership with Employee Navigator, to simplify benefits and payroll administration. Paycor today has more than a dozen integration partners that allow its customers to create unique solutions using Paycor technology platform.
- PeopleStrong, India’s leading HR solutions and technology company, announced the launch of AltRecruit and AltOne platforms. It also announced the acquisition of referral hiring and matchmaking platform, GrownOut few weeks later. Thus confirming to the global trends of collaboration, integration, and consolidation in the HR tech space in India.
- ClearCompany, announced partnership and integration with Checkr, thus enabling customers of both companies to have a seamless experience across ATS and Background verification applications brought together by this partnership. This brings the total partner ecosystem of ClearCompany to more than 50 different integrations in close to dozen different categories.
- One of the biggest investments in HRTech in the benefits and wellness category came when Susquehanna Growth Equity, LLC (SGE) investing USD 43 million in Evive, a leader in enterprise benefits management.
- Virgin Pulse acquired national corporate wellness provider Preventure, to extend its leadership as world’s largest SaaS provider of employee well-being solutions.
- In a move that heralds the rise of HR Technology tools to manage the “gig economy” ADP announced its acquisition of WorkMarket, a workforce management solution that allows companies to build and manage integrated workforce across multiple types of workers.
- In news that can have some implications for HR Tech industry the following two stand out in January:
1) SAP acquired Callidus Cloud, a leader in cloud-based Lead to Money (Quote to Cash) solutions. The announcement is significant for the HRTech industry because Callidus cloud Sales performance management (SPM) solutions include sales compensation and learning solutions like “Litmos.” This may also mean that HRTech solutions may increasingly become more functionally aligned.
2) The other news is significant for HR tech because it signifies the importance of industry context-aware HR tech solutions. PeopleAdmin and PerformanceMatters will combine to form first comprehensive K-12 talent management suite. Though the announcement belongs to EdTech, it has implications for HR tech for aforementioned reasons.
With HR technology space continuing to evolve, newer categories are being created and explored by multiple players, thus creating a plethora of point solutions. As per some estimates; there are about 20 or more subcategories within the HR tech space with an estimated 2000+ companies in these categories. This puts enormous pressure on HR tech buyers to select the right tools and more importantly provide a seamless user experience to its employees across multiple applications.
This is the reason we expect to see more such integrations, partnerships, and acquisitions in the HR tech space in coming years. As the industry matures and looks to solve specific business problems this is good news for HR tech buyers as the pre-integrated solutions are likely to save time and cost while improving user experience and adoption.