iCIMS and SkillSurvey announced their partnership yesterday. iCIMS aims to advance its talent acquisition solution by offering its clients access to the behavioral, Web-based reference-checking software developed SkillSurvey. Read the rest of this entry »

Human capital management (HCM) solutions are relatively recent in the software for business market. Lately, several HCM solutions have been consolidated through acquisitions and mergers. For example, in recent months:

• SAP acquired Successfactors, which previously incorporated Inform, CubeTree, YouCalc, Jambok, Nuvosoft, Plateau, and Jobs2Web.
• Oracle acquired Taleo. Taleo had already assimilated Recruitforce.com, WWC, Vurv, JobFlash, Learn.com, WetFeet, White Amber, Cytiva, and Jobpartners.
• Bedford Funding acquired Peoplefluent, which had previously acquired Peopleclick, itiliti, Hire.com, Optimum HR, Criterion Incorporated, PRI Associates, Authoria, Claybrooke & Associates, Advanced Information Management, Inc., and Aquire.

Prior to the consolidation wave occurring during the last few years, most HCM vendors were more or less niche vendors. In fact, the novelty of HCM solutions still permits the emergence of new niche vendors, a phenomenon that does not occur in more mature markets like ERP, where the appearance of brand-new niche vendors is rare. Read the rest of this entry »

Oracle presented new features for its customer experience service platform, RightNow CX Cloud Service. The release allows organizations to engage customers via multiple channels thanks to the newly introduced integration between Oracle RightNow Chat Cloud Service and Oracle Engagement Engine Cloud Service. Read the rest of this entry »

Today Blackboard announced two new mobile applications: an app for users of Blackboard MyConnect (a mass notification service) and mobile student debit accounts.

The former allows users to receive and personalize their messaging options from their mobile devices. This app is targeted at individuals who are or desire to be subscribed to Blackboard MyConnect groups—topic-based subscription lists provided by their institutions. Read the rest of this entry »

Zendesk has revealed new updates for its Salesforce-based product. Zendesk’s goal is to achieve seamless integration between its own customer support application and Salesforce for enhanced customer experience. Read the rest of this entry »

In an analyst webinar, Workday announced Update 18 of its Workday solution, which proposes enhancements for financial management, workforce engagement, performance management, and flexibility. In 2012, Workday had three significant updates demonstrating sustained efforts to advance its product at a fast pace. Furthermore, the update contains more than 100 new items, 60 of which address client feedback that was collected through the Workday’s Brainstorm online customer community. Read the rest of this entry »

IBM announced a new cloud-based solution as part of its IBM SmartCloud for Social Businesses platform. The product includes new social networking features and a new collaboration and document-sharing tool—IBM SmartCloud Docs. The application accommodates the creation, storing, and co-editing of word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents, in real time. Read the rest of this entry »

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) talent acquisition software provider iCIMS launches a new version of its Talent Paltform. Release 12.2 includes a new recruitment CRM application—Connect—along with enhanced Social Apply capabilities and new resume-parsing capabilities. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2001, Computerworld’s Kym Gilhooly wrote that a learning management system (LMS) “goes beyond basic content delivery to offer course administration, registration, tracking, and reporting and skills gap analysis.” This description of LMS underlines the fact that not all that long ago, LMS functionality was modeled around the course entity.

Since then we have witnessed the social revolution, which placed an enormous amount of control into the hands of consumers and unveiled the “-as-a-client” perspective, which permeates many ecosystems:  employee-as-a-client (human capital management), patient-as-a-client (health services), beneficiary-as-a-client (government and non-profit), learner-as-a-client (education), and more. Read the rest of this entry »

One year after Infor and Orbis Global teamed up, Infor acquires Orbis Global. Orbis Global started out in Australia and later moved to San Francisco where its headquarters are presently situated. In November 2011 Infor announced a strategic partnership with Orbis Global to enhance its Epiphany customer relationship management (CRM) suite by integrating Orbis Global’s SaaS marketing resource management (MRM) solution. Read the rest of this entry »

Informal learning constitutes a hot topic these days. Informal learning can be seen as a process of knowledge acquisition that does not follow any one structured learning methodology. Some of the established informal learning structures are: observation, questioning, testing theoretical knowledge in real life contexts, and studying materials that fall outside mandatory learning commitments. Experimental informal learning structures include: social learning, activity threads, or online informal learning communities.

Informal learning is getting a lot of attention as of late, and has spring up as a topic on forums about everything from developing creative thinking to higher education and enterprise training. Why the hype? Informal learning is not a recent phenomenon. However, recent mobile, social, and cloud technologies have triggered an interest in and unveiled the pervasiveness of informal learning in people’s lives. Also, Generation Y’s eagerness to share and exchange facts and opinions has also helped generate the informal learning hype. Read the rest of this entry »

Peoplefluent announced a new version of its Social HCM Software Platform. The release aims to bring a better picture of the organization to human resources (HR) decision makers and help them match their employees’ developmental needs with the appropriate educational resources. Furthermore, this version advances features that support talent management processes such as talent acquisition, compliance, and workforce planning and management while also providing improved analytics capabilities. Read the rest of this entry »

The software provider to the recruitment and staffing industry, Bullhorn, expanded its offering and portfolio of clients by acquiring the software-as-a-service recruitment and staffing solutions MaxHire Solutions and Sendouts. According to the press release, the combined customer base counts over 5,000 recruitment and staffing agencies. Read the rest of this entry »

CallCopy and Vertical Solutions today announced a new partnership, agreeing to integrate CallCopy’s cc:Discover Call Recording and Workforce Optimization suite with Vertical Solutions’ cloud-based VServiceManagement and VContactCenter. Vertical Solutions is known for its field service management platform to which it has added the capability to create a library of customer interaction records. As a result, customers and client-facing employees can now access and reuse knowledge accumulated over time. Read the rest of this entry »

Talent management provider, SilkRoad Technology, and learning measurement provider, KnowledgeAdvisors, joined forces to integrate SilkRoad’s GreenLight learning management system (LMS) with KnowledgeAdvisors’ Metrics that Matter analytics platform. Metrics that Matter offers SilkRoad’s clients a 360-degree assessment of how effective educational programs are by analyzing data collected from GreenLight LMS. Additionally, it can incorporate big data collected from other enterprise systems, such as customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and employee surveys to create a more comprehensive picture of the success of learning and training programs. Read the rest of this entry »