Today SuccessFactors announced plans to acquire InfoHRM (renamed Inform Business Impact) - a small but very well established leader in the area of HR and Talent Analytics and Workforce Planning.  We believe this acquisition is very significant for the talent and HR systems marketplace: it now establishes SuccessFactors as the emerging leader in the broad and important area of delivering actionable talent and HR measurement and analytics. Consider some of the most important yet difficult questions all companies face: how many employees do I have on the payroll today? What is my retention rate for high-performers? Which managers are driving the highest levels of performance (or retention or leadership growth)? What are the characteristics of the most successful new hires we bring into the organization?And consider some of the even more strategic workforce planning questions organizations have: what is the impact of the potential reorganization or merger we are considering? What are the biggest gaps in our talent pipeline as we move into China, Brazil, or another emerging market? How will the aging baby boomer affect our professional workforce in the next three years? Where in our talent mix do we have the greatest risk?These questions, and many more, plague business leaders in all functional areas: CEO, Sales, Customer Service, Operations, and even internal groups like Finance and IT. Read the Full Article

This week I had the opportunity to keynote the largest learning conference in the UK, the UK Learning Technologies Conference (developed and run by Donald H. Taylor, one of the most knowledgeable professionals in our industry). The title of my presentation was “Informal Learning: What, Why, and How – and what it means to You. Read the Full Article

One of the most daunting talent management challenges in organizations is something we call "talent mobility" - the ability of an organization to enable and direct the movement of people from role to role.  In today's business environment this includes lateral movement, upward movement within a role, movement into leadership, movement into international assignments, movement into functional specialties, movement into developmental or exploratory assignments, and often movement from part-time to full-time or vice-versa. When we launched our High Impact Succession Management® research in 2009 we noted that one of the most common attributes of high-performing, enduring organizations is what we call "Transparent Talent Mobility. Read the Full Article

Last week Bedford Funding announced its acquisition of Peopleclick and the immediate combination of Peopleclick with existing portfolio company Authoria, creating a combined talent management systems company with more than 2,000 customers and $100 Million in revenue. The combined company (named Peopleclick Authoria) is now a significant player in the talent management systems market. History and Analysis of this Merger. Read the Full Article

As we recap 2009 and look ahead to 2010 in the market for talent management software, two gorillas have emerged: Taleo and SuccessFactors. While together these companies make up less than 20% of the total market, their size and growth has made them companies to watch as this market continues to grow and mature. In October, SuccessFactors announced plans to raise an additional $180 Million through public sale of stock at a price around $15 per share. Read the Full Article