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 »