Market Watch for Talent & HR- July

Executive Summary

Visier, Eightfold, Gloat, Beamery have found additional funding rounds to support growth, resource planning, market expansion and accelerate product development. This is due to rapid advances in AI as well as clients’ needs to adapt to new hybrid work models, in addition to new talent, roles and skills that are pushing HR technology players to be more innovated. In the same line of action, Recruiter.com, WalkMe and Skillsoft went public announcing its debut on Wallstreet. 

Corporate demand for AI in people analytics, talent matching, new skilling, and internal mobility are creating the opportunity for HR tech players to innovate and improve their offerings, develop new capabilities to source, attract, develop and growth talent at scale. Furthermore, organizations are looking for solutions that offer an end-to-end solution view to enhance moments that matters, accelerate new skilling, understand the drivers for engagement, and enable experiences.

Pymetrics and Skyhive are also reacting to new market and client needs. Pymetrics created a partnership with Hiredscore, combining hard and soft skill matching for talent acquisition. Skyhive was recognized by the world economic forum for its “Quantum Labor Analysis Methodology” and Burning Glass merged with Emsi to provide deeper labor market insights to their clients.

Other players to highlight: Phenom announced the launch of its integration and configuration experience capabilities with other HR systems and Eqtble is growing its engineering team and platform’s machine learning to provide better talent insights to clients.

Market Insights

• Visier raised $125M series E giving this leading people analytics platform a valuation of $1 Billion valuation. Visier will use the funding to extend and accelerate product development and international go-to-market expansion. Furthermore, the company announced that they reached 8,0000 clients target along with signing strategic partnerships with Cedig, People Fluent and Degreed and are having conversations with other players like Gloat. As of 2021, Visier processed over 12 million employee records in 75 countries around the world, with Fortune 500 customers that include Adobe, BASF, Bridgestone, Electronic Arts, McKesson, Merck KGaA, Uber and more. Solutions competing in this space:  Techwolf, intelliHR, Siense, ChartHop, Nakisa, OrgVue, and SplashBI.

  Impact: People analytics is one of the highest priority areas for organizations. Almost every HR technology vendor offers analytics with different level of maturity and sophistication. The main HCM platforms have advanced analytics modules however, organizations are tied to these platforms to make predictions/actions with limited capabilities to aggregate data from other HR tools. Visier and OneModel (built for HR) lead in the space to aggregate data from across multiple sources. This ability to aggregate data is critical for AI and Analytics to work and make predictions due to AI and Analytics reliance on having a solid data foundation. Additionally, the right data strategy, models, and architecture need to be in place for the tools to be able to make accurate recommendations.  See news here.

• Eightfold raised $220M series E giving this talent platform a valuation of $2.1 Billion. This organization has evolved in the last 5 years after starting in recruiting (talent matching) to become an AI talent intelligent platform  (with more than 80 large customers present in 100 countries and available in dozen of languages) that supports, sourcing, contingent worker hiring, reskilling, diversity, mobility and talent marketplace. Furthermore, Eightfold will use this funding for market expansion, enhances in its talent intelligence platform and provide organizations with a single platform for managing the entire talent development journey.  Some clients that use Eightfold include Bayer, CapitalOne, Tata, and Hulu.

  Impact: the HR technology innovation market is evolving constantly with new solutions and offerings. However, the market ecosystem is starting to converge by combining and/or merging different HR niche-solutions to develop talent platforms to address different pain points across the talent lifecycle. Furthermore, organizations are overwhelmed with complex HR stacks and looking for a platform(s) that can help them to manage talent end-to-end powered by AI and machine learning. Other talent platforms competing in this space include Phenom, Skyhive, Avature, Icims, and Cornerstone. See news here.

• Gloat, the leading AI-driven internal mobility platform, has raised $57M in Series C funding. This investment will be used for market expansion, growth of the Gloat team, and enhancement of its platform capabilities to reach a broader workforce. Gloat is reinventing the internal mobility market. They are changing how organizations manage work and careers using mature AI capabilities that dynamically connects individuals’ unique aspirations with business needs, in the form of projects, full-time roles, mentorships, and other opportunities that exist within organizations. They have raised $92 million to date and their clientele list include several Fortune 500 organizations such as Unilever, HSBC, PepsiCo, Standard Charter, and Schneider Electric.

  Impact: some of the biggest challenges organizations are facing today is how to mobilize talent at scale, democratize opportunities for people development, and create visibility of skill-building experiences. Talent mobility platforms address these pain points using AI to ingest people and business data, while creating a double-view platform where managers and employees have access to a wide range of benefits across the talent landscape (e.g. acquisition, mobility, management and engagement). Key players in the talent marketplace space are Degreed, Eightfold, Workday, Hitch, 365Talents. See news here. 

• Virti raised $10M in series A to teach soft skills in VR.  It’s an AI-powered virtual human system to enable organizations to train remotely and assess employee skills such as empathy, emotional and communication (soft skills for healthcare). Virti works across mobile or desktop devices, or VR/AR headsets and captures data to analyze, measure and give feedback on employee performance. According to the company, Virti claims its deep learning technology is improving training outcomes by up to 230% and the startups says it has increased revenues by 978%. The main competitors are Strivr and Mursium.

  Impacts: Virtual and augmented reality is growing exponentially in the post-covid area. Many organizations such as Walmart are exploring ways to accelerate and scale learning by creating real-life scenarios that organizations can’t recreate on site in a way that employees can learn in a safe environment. Furthermore, VR/AR allow organizations to introduce new learning programs, focus on technology, process, and human skills.  This technology can also be used to help recruit, train, and retain employees with VR/AR simulations. See news here.

• Phenom, one of the growing leaders in the talent experience space, announced the launch of its integration and configuration experience to accelerate implementation and integration between talent experience platforms, ATS, HCM and other HR systems.

  Impacts: With these new capabilities Phenom is solving back-end data and integration challeneges that HR IT professionals deal with daily. This is due to the explosion on HR innovation tools with different models, data sources and capabilities.  Phenom is an HR technology organization to watch out for due to its employee experience offerings. In the last 2 years acquired My Ally (sourcing & scheduling), Endouble (candidate experience) and Talentcube (video technology) to provide end-to-end recruiting capabilities to market. See news here.

• Pymetrics announced a partnership with Hiredscore to evaluate, guide and manage candidates more effectively. According to the press release, this partnership will enable HR teams to see candidates’ hard skills and soft skills fit by role in a single view. Mutual customers will be able to take advantage of comprehensive talent evaluation, seamless integration, data synchronization, and process automation between the two platforms.

  Impact: this is a strategic move for both companies by combining soft and hard skills for talent matching, assessment, and mobility. Furthermore, this partnership will allow these 2 organizations to enhance their position to compete with other players offering a wide range of talent acquisition capabilities starting from planning, sourcing all the way to selection (e.g. Jobvite, Modernhire, Avature, HireVue, Icims, Censia etc).  The market is converging, and HR technology players realized that silo-focus solutions won’t allow them to meet market trends and solve clients’ pain points.  See news here.

• Beamery, a London, UK-based talent operating system, raises $138M in Series C funding at an estimated $800M valuation. According to Abakar Saidov, Co-Founder and CEO, “this investment will enable us to scale globally with growing demand and build the new category in enterprise technology”. Beamery offers solutions between programmatic advertising, marketing campaigns, CRM, career sites, sourcing, and internal mobility. It currently serves large enterprises ranging from AstraZeneca, Autodesk, Workday, NASDAQ, and DocuSign. Other talent platforms competing in this space include Phenom, Modernhire, Avature, Icims, and Eightfold.

  Impact: The pandemic accelerated the way talent acquisition is reinvented. Technology allowed organizations to plan, attract, source, engage, hire, and onboard talent in a safe way. Furthermore, Covid also changed the way how the HR technology players deliver value and reinvent their offerings to address new clients’ needs.  I personally think this investment will position Beamery as a talent platform solution, powered by AI/ML, accelerate commercial growth, and strengthen its market leadership to help clients meet rapidly changing global requirements. See news here.

• Skyhive, the leading workforce reskilling solution in the market, has been selected by the World Economic Forum as Technology Pioneer for 2021.  According to the press release “SkyHive was selected for its application of artificial intelligence in helping organizations and global economies close the skills gap and future-proof their workforces”.

  Impact: Job and skills are evolving constantly, and organizations are currently assessing talent, adapting employee’s skills, and creating new roles and ways of working to deliver new services and business models. Furthermore, technology innovation for talent and HR can be leveraged to identify skills and jobs they will need in the future as well as gaps to tailor personalized learning pathways. Skyhive brings a unique Quantum Labor Analysis methodology to collect and analyze millions of real-time labor market data points, to provide insight on jobs, skills, training, and labor market intelligence. Other talent platforms competing in the labor market analytics include Burning Glass, One Model, Ensi, Talismanic, LinkedIn, and Claro. See news here.

• Eqtble, a platform that uses data analytics to unlock diversity, equity, and inclusion, raised $2.7M in series B funding to grow its engineering team and its platform’s machine learning, visualization capabilities, and user acquisition. According to the press release “Eqtble platform can collect data from more than 100 sources (including Workday, ADP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Qualtrics and Culture Amp, to name a few), and deliver insights and visualizations about four main areas: talent recruitment, workforce, engagement (including attrition, or when workers quit) and compensation”. See news here.

• Burning Glass announced its merger with Emsi to create a leading labor market analytics firm. According to the press release, “the combination of Burning Glass and Emsi will bring together two premier, complementary sources of labor market data to provide insight into the changing workforce for clients”. See news here.

• Wellthy, a digital care concierge platform that partners with employers to find affordable, high-quality care for employees and their families, announced that it has raised an additional $35 M in series B funding to support the company’s international expansion, including in the U.K. and Canada, and enhance the platform’s recommendation engine. See news here.

• ChartHope raised $35M in series B valuating the company between $300 million and $400 million for its internal org chart and people analytics platform. See news here.

Organizations Public Debut:

• WalkMe, a leading digital adoption platform, went public giving the company a market value of about $2.4 Billion. According to the media, WalkMe has around 2,000 total customers and boasts about 35 million users in more than 42 countries. See news here.
• Recruiter.com, is a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq (NASDAQ: RCRT). Furthermore, it acquired Uncubed, an online marketplace for sourcing, screening, and candidate engagement. See news here.
• Skillsoft, a global leader in corporate digital learning, debuts on Wallstreet. Furthermore, it acquired Pluma to expand leadership development capabilities. See news here and here.

Relevant Articles

• Deloitte published: Could your best teammate be a computer?
• Forbes published: Bridging The Digital Divide Is The New HR Imperative
• Harvard published: How to Set — and Meet — Your Company’s Diversity Goals
• Bloomberg published: Same Job, But the Woman Makes $200,000 Less
• CNBC published: Uber will ask employees to return to work 50% of the time
• Josh Bersin published: Building A Skills System Of Record: EdCast Releases Skills Studio
• The Wall Street Journal published: PwC to Spend $12 Billion on Hiring, Expanding Expertise in AI, Cybersecurity
• LinkedIn published: The Most In-Demand Jobs Right Now

Events

• Global Skills Day; Jul 20. Register here.
• Fuser Universal: “Welcome to the new search technology set to change L&D”; Jul 21. Register here
• Udemy: “The unlikely story behind revel systems’ robust learning culture”; Jul 27. Register here
• Furhat: “Conference on social robot interactions”; Oct 14. Register here

Art of the Possible

• Flying to space onboard Virgin Galactic: See video here
• Soft bank has stopped producing its Pepper robot; reported by Reuters. See news here
• Robot Taxis are here to stay; reported by TechCrunch. See video here
• Flying car completes test flight between airports; reported by BBC. See video here
• The Robots Are Coming: is your firm ready?; reported by Knowledge Wharton. See news here

Note: All views expressed on this article do not represent the opinions of any entity whatsoever with which I have been, am now, or will be affiliated. My opinions are my own.