As everyone tries to fill out their product suite, merges and changes names I was lucky enough to have this video brought to my attention from Jim Bowles at Cingular. It made me think… what are HR Executives really thinking about the vendors in this space?

I think I need to work on this video and call it “The Changing Landscape of the Talent Management” … oops … sorry, the Talent Continuum …

So here goes …

Plateau: Acquires Nuvosoft Feb 20th - Now has learning, succession planning and compensation. Good acquisition for both firms as they have a similar client base, it deepens their product footprint and is a quicker way to market for performance - which is often coupled with compensation.

Gevity: Acquires HR America – Gevity is intent on building out local providers as well as investing in the technology as they expand their product suite and offerings to their client base. Probably one of the best run HRO players for the SME market.

Equifax: Buys TALX…. UM… for $1.4B. The credit people selling to HR executives will find this interesting. Good news for Previsor, as how does assessments fit in this strategy? Also good news for anyone who wants to go into the employment verification industry. These guys had it cornered and executed so perfectly. As with any acquisition, this opens a window for new players, especially if Equifax loses some of the key players from TALX. The reality is there are not too many players left in the employment verification business as TALX had bought most of them.

VURV: Acquires PBN (People Business Network) adding dashboards, internal mobility and a very cool tool that can help companies via downsizing, mergers and acquisitions and much more. VURV also adds lots of new senior management and lays off a bunch of people to try to get to profitability. A good move for executives and the company long term…not so good for those laid off.

SumTotal (SUMT): Acquires Mindsolve. Now has learning, performance management and light compensation. A good move with a top 3 performance management vendor and one of the top LMS players.

Ensemble Workforce Solutions acquires Chimes. Another staffing firm entering the talent continuum space.

Pearson Performance goes private: Spins out of a large mother firm enabling them to focus on pure HR deals. I can only imagine the pain of working within a large publishing firm.

Korn Ferry (KFN): Acquires Leadersource (and last year Lominger) …. Sounds like 1999 again when the executive search firm thought they should diversify their business …. Has anyone succeeded in this?

Jobster: Gets the Face book deal becoming the job board behind the leading social network site for people age 16-24 … Very nice demographics; the question is, do these guys even know what a resume is? So a very good fit for Jobster. Jason and his team of 50+ developers continue to do the most innovative work on the effective utilization of Web 2.0 tools and community for the jobseeker.

Monster is aggressively going after the newspaper industry to build local content, and add a much needed sales channel for the papers. With the recent deal of the New York Times, and Boston Globe as well as the Philadelphia Inquirer, this will help Monster build traffic. But more importantly, it offers incredible value for the recruiter. Now a single posting will appear on both networks if the job is local to that city.

Bond International Software: Acquires Gowi Group for £8.9 million and creates global powerhouse for specialist Recruitment, HR and Payroll solutions. They now have VMS, agency management software and talent acquisition.

Ultimate Software: With the acquisition of RTIX and source code from First Advantage for recruiting … now they have pretty well everything except learning.

ADP: With their acquisition of Employease (On Demand HRIS system) and Virtual Edge for recruitment, can the industry giant really keep the innovation and research and development required to grow these products or did they just open more doors for the best-of-breed providers like Workday and Deploy or Peopleclick?

Stepstone: Acquires Executrack. A strong European Recruiting vendor entering the Talent Continuum space …. who actually owns Europe (excluding SAP) - it is a very fragmented market.

So as Nicole Stata (Deploy CEO) says …. “Who isn’t in the water? No one is left on the island, we are all swimming with sharks.” I love that line…

Here are some opportunities that I think could be of value to the right acquirer.

Captiva for mid-market Talent Acquisition. Publicly traded on the Vancouver exchange, they are currently profitable and trading at 1X sales. A steal. Their software must scale as they do have some major clients such as Mazda and EMC on it.

Pilat. Publicly traded on the AIM exchange. Wide breadth of tools and good consultants. Also gets you access to an offshore development team. It’s still way undervalued.

GeoLearning. This software-as-a-service LMS is privately held but VC backed. They have a number of major clients (lots of government) and in this model they touch many desktops daily with annual recurring revenue. The chances of making it as a standalone LMS are slim to none so they need to merge with another suite player sooner than later. They should be in very high demand as the majority of the suite vendors have not touched the last frontier --- learning.

Doublestar. I like these guys for two reasons. They hit two key markets - HR Metrics and Dashboards and RPO. Both are growing segments. No one has the complete dashboard/data warehouse system that resides behind a firewall like they do. As they move their product to a SaaS model they will run into INFOHRM - another hot property in the dashboard space. Privately held and growing, as they move to SaaS look for a lot of traction.

Peopleclick. With the recent departure of Steve Sassor (CEO) and David Russo (CPP), we suspect their VC’s are not willing to invest in the technology or sell the business for what it is currently worth. It’s not like they don’t have industry multiples to look at with the recent Virtual Edge, BrassRing, Webhire and Unicru deals closing in the last 12 months. If someone could figure out how to deal with their investors it could be a great acquisition.

Workstream … Yep, it’s about time. With the stock at a low point, it’s cheap revenue to buy. It would be a great buy for Kenexa who needs compensation, or an HRO player who needs a base to build from. It’s also a good buy for someone who needs compensation, recruitment and performance … Think SABA or maybe WorkDay.

Looking for Talent Acquisition Software alone? Talk to HRSMART, First Advantage or even Brainhunter. All are willing to sell or licence you source code to build out your product line.

Here are some predictions about market opportunities.

1.       I think Kronos is in a very good place to add a strong Talent Continuum vendor. Look for a large acquisition from them as they strive to reach $1B in revenue in the next three years.
2.       Watch for an IPO from Successfactors. Reaching 1,000 clients is a huge milestone for any vendor in this space.
3.       Expect Kenexa to add several additional acquisitions to their product line.
4.       Look for SAP and ADP to make a major acquisition in the Talent continuum space.