The picking for pure breed Performance Management Vendors got slimmer this week with the acquisition of RTIX from Ultimate Software. Providing LMS and Performance Management Systems, they had replaced Halogen as their preferred vendor about six months ago. In addition, Ultimate also purchased the source code of a talent acquisition software from First Advantage. This will leave them with a very competitive talent acquisition offering to add to the HRIS / Payroll offering. They are definitely the market leaders in the mid market software as a service space. The value of both of these transactions was less than $6 million.
Consolidation in the content space. The major acquisition of Netg to Skillsoft for approximately $280 million was announced this last week. The combination of the two industry giants leaves only two clear players in this space. The other of course is Element K (which was purchased last year by NIIT and predominately focuses on IT training). For leadership training, you can also look to AMA.
Adobe has acquired software company Serious Magic, makers of DV Rack, Visual Communicator, Vlog It, Ultra, and other cool products and technologies.
From the floor of the HR.com Employers of Excellence National Conference:
How can you tell the vendors who are absolutely passionate about the HR space and the needs of their clients? Look in the keynote presentations or workshops for the vendor reps that go to these sessions and actively participate in them. Typically these are the people with the most networking experience but also the most passion for the industry. Unfortunately, the majority of the vendors run to their email or voice mail instead of participating in the high quality keynotes like Ram Charan, Patrick Lencioni or the highly impressive David Ulrich. The messages these people portrayed resonated with any CEO, sales rep or HR Executive.
The highlight of this year’s event was definitely David Ulrich. With the looming promise of a black out in the hotel, David had the entire audience summarize their learnings and truly think about what they learned at the conference that they could implement at their office. We also learned the top characteristics that predict that a couple will remain married, when to look for a new career and to not be afraid to try something you are not good at.
Although this was the first time I have actually seen David live, he certainly lived up to his reputation of the top HR Consultant in the industry. Even after four exhausting days of high quality material, he left the audience wanting more.
With just shy of 400 people in attendance, this was the largest conference we have ever produced. A special thanks to our events team, Michelle Egan and Rachel Gilmour, for all of their excellent work.
For those of you who are wondering which of the five kids in our “When I Grow Up” commercial (crm.hr.com/grow ) are mine, they are as follows:
1) The oldest girl with brown hair (Hailey 13)
2) The blond with braids (Katie 12)
3) The first blonde with glasses (Courtney 9)
4) The blond handing out pink slips (Taleigh 7)
5) The blond boy with the rolling eyes (Riley 5)
