Kenexa’s Analyst Day and 7th World Conference – A Winner: Part 2

Gary Bragar, HRO Research Director, NelsonHall

For the last couple of years, Kenexa has been rapidly growing its RPO client base globally and 2012 has been no exception.

Recent RPO wins include BOSCH, FMC, and BT, all of which have been multi-country awards. It also has two additional RPO contracts pending. Reasons cited by the clients for selecting Kenexa for the new contracts include:

• Quality of hire
• RPO experience including engineering and technical recruiting
• Cultural fit with Kenexa
• Global capability
• Flexibility of solution design.

Further information on the pending contracts will be released soon on NelsonHall’s website.

The customer panel at the analyst event included United Healthcare (UHC), AMD, and Fluor.

AMD:

• Issue: AMD’s global salesforce and internal formal training were not meeting its needs.
• Solution: Kenexa implemented its social LMS, which helped employees gain access to experts quickly.
• Result: AMD went from 39 separate websites of products and training to one LMS with Kenexa that is hosted to eliminate IT and technical issues.

UHC:

• Issue: UHC had a decentralized team, poor technology, low hiring manager satisfaction, and other metrics did not exist. It was hiring ~11,000 employees per year and wanted to standardize services and deploy a consistent system, starting with non-exempt hiring for a call center and extending into some exempt level recruitment.
• Solution: Kenexa is using a hybrid delivery model of service center and onsite employees. Monthly and quarterly business reviews are conducted that include reviewing metrics such as on-time delivery within 26 days, acceptance rates, class fill rates, and candidate and hiring manager satisfaction.
• Result: UHC is expanding the contract from the U.S. to include Europe (U.K., Ireland) and APAC (Philippines).

Other developments at Kenexa include:

• A new RPO COE in Raleigh, NC (others are in Shanghai, Dubai, Buenos Aires, Krakow, Vizag (India), and Frisco (TX))
• Fit Compass, which includes an interview guide that the hiring manager receives with custom questions tailored to each candidate based on the outcomes of the Fit Compass Assessment and an onboarding tool, Personal Fit Planner, to ease the transition from candidate to employee. It can also be used for development, career planning, and team building.

With each RPO engagement, Kenexa begins with an analysis of the client’s culture; it then trains its recruiters on educating the candidates and what it’s like to work for the employer. Some clients also include additional services. For example, Whirlpool’s contract also included a career site, social media, employment branding, and marketing.

At the Kenexa World Conference on October 17^th, I attended two sessions:

• Improving Quality of Hire at the Entry Level: A Strategic Application of Assessment, by Home Depot: Home Depot screens hundreds of thousands of candidates each year for hourly in-store positions and needed a more strategic method. It implemented Kenexa’s large library of assessments and Kenexa’s 2x BrassRing to improve the quality of hire and efficiency.
• RPO 2.0: Creating the Hybrid Model, by PAREXEL: PAREXEL’s original five year contract with Kenexa was to end in 2011, but it renewed and implemented a hybrid model. Kenexa’s services include sourcing, screening, and candidate interview management; PAREXEL retained strategy, candidate relationship, job offers, and reference checks. The two companies work effectively side-by-side meeting with hiring managers to understand their needs; outsourcing is transparent to the client and SLAs have mutual accountability.

In sum, it was a fulfilling analyst day and World Conference. I look forward to the next IBM Kenexa Analyst Day, which will include a smarter workforce track.

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Kenexa’s Analyst Day and 7th World Conference – A Winner: Part 1

Gary Bragar, HRO Research Director, NelsonHall

Kenexa’s October 16^th analyst day included:

• A conversation with CEO Rudy Karsan
• Product overviews
• Business unit highlights
• A customer panel
• One-on-one meetings with executives including Rudy and CMO Tim Geisert.

IBM’s acquisition of Kenexa, which is expected to close by the end of the year, could only be talked about in limited discussion. Kenexa employees will be integrated during 2013. Initially, IBM’s RPO business will be integrated into Kenexa’s RPO business and will be named IBM Kenexa RPO. The group will report into Rudy, who will then report into Alistair Rennie of IBM. Phase 1, occurring through 2013, will be business as usual with IBM as a new source of business for Kenexa, a very large channel. Phase 2 will be integration into IBM.

In addition to RPO, key assets Kenexa brings to IBM include SaaS, innovation, and the ability to get big data into IBM’s warehouses (e.g., Kenexa has 100m employee touches a year globally). Kenexa’s 2015 revenue projection will be doubled with IBM’s added social capabilities and analytics (IBM will demo this at its conference in January 2013).

Below is an overview of Kenexa’s new products and services that were presented by the respective product manager. The presentations also included videos and a one-page user-friendly brochure.

• RapidHire: 2x BrassRing’s high-volume hiring module (ideal for the retail, restaurant, and hospitality sectors)
• 2x Onboard: used in ~50% of contracts (including many global deals for cost savings and compliance), improves the employee experience (with mobile access available) by:
  • Making introductions before the employee’s first day
  • Helping new hires understand the culture
  • Conducting employment eligibility verifications for new hires
  • Providing new hire surveys, which can be scheduled at any time
  • Assisting internal employees and contractors who have been transferred
• 2x Perform: includes performance, succession, and compensation management
• Learning: includes a new social LMS, content management, and Hot Lava to develop content on all mediums (i.e., tablets, mobile devices, and PC’s)
• Engagement: highlights include a mobile feedback application that can be used for immediate feedback from meetings / events, employee surveys, and 360 degree feedback
• Global Talent Management: clients include Shell, Exxon Mobil, Walmart, BP, Yum (in China), and Huawei (in China); 2012 sales included the suite of recruitment, learning, and performance management; EMEA sales grew 40%, mostly from competitor conversions
• Compensation Management (part of 2x Perform): added ~500 new compensation clients YTD 2012 including Ernst & Young, Cox Enterprises, and Cracker Barrel.

For more information on these products and services, please see my prior blog entries, Kenexa’s vendor profile, and the NelsonHall database.

Kenexa is also continuing to develop its survey, assessment, and leadership development capabilities with recent contract awards including Amazon, Campbell’s, and Cargill announced October 16^th.

Stay tuned for part 2 later this week, which will include RPO highlights.

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HR Tech Another Success: Part I

Gary Bragar, HRO Research Director, NelsonHall

HR Tech was again a very worthwhile investment of my time. Here are some highlights of the new Outsourcing Track presentations I attended:

• Cisco Uses RPO to Help Hire Up to 15,000 a Year:Using a hybrid co-ownership model, the Randstad Sourceright recruitment team works alongside the Cisco recruitment team to provide services including sourcing, recruiting, and onboarding. Services provided are primarily in the Americas, but may expand into EMEA and possibly Asia where Randstad Sourceright has a presence. Using the hybrid model, Cisco has been able to cut its $120m talent acquisition spend in half.
  • Mark Hamberlin, VP HR Global Staffing, Cisco
  • Rebecca Callahan, President RPO, Randstad Sourceright
• Ericsson Outsources Global Payroll in Manila:Ericsson issued a RFI to 25 vendors, then created a short-list of 5, and ultimately selected Talent2. Managed payroll services provided by Talent2 for Ericsson in Southeast Asia and Oceania include 4,500 employees in 12 countries, which prior to outsourcing had 12 different payroll processes. Manila is the shared service center. Major benefits obtained by Ericsson thus far include: reduced risk management, minimized complexity of dealing with local tax laws, and ease of expanding into new countries.
  • Mark Howes, HR Director Asia Pacific, Ericsson
  • Mary Sue Rogers, Global Managing Director, HR Managed Services, Talent2
• Whirlpool Leverages RPO to Transform Talent Acquisition:Pre-RPO recruitment was decentralized and lacked consistency and methodology in its sourcing approach. Business partners were also spending a lot of time doing transactional work including screening and reviewing resumes. Kenexa’s RPO services include: sourcing, screening, administration, candidate management, creation of employment value proposition, and management of the candidate experience primarily in North America with some testing in Europe. KPI’s include: time to fill, quality of the candidate slate, diversity slate, and end-user satisfaction.
  • Lynanne Kunkel, VP of HR, Whirlpool North America
  • Rudy Karsan, CEO, Kenexa

Here are highlights from my RPO meetings:

• Pinstripe and Ochre House: Pinstripe has won 12 new RPO contracts YTD and its partner Ochre House continues to win new contracts in EMEA including North Africa and the Middle East as a result of its acquisitions of TAAHEED and Carmichael Fisher in early 2012.
• ManpowerGroup Solutions: New contract wins YTD include 40+ RPO deals globally in 20 countries. It has also expanded existing clients into new geographies including a U.S.-headquartered firm that expanded into China and Southeast Asia and a Spanish-headquartered firm that expanded throughout Europe and Latin America.
• Randstad Sourceright: Currently with ~100 RPO clients, it won 18 new contracts YTD. Four of its new wins are global deals as a result of the merger of Randstad and SFN Group, which was completed in September 2011. Its fastest growth has been in the mid-market.
• The RightThing, an ADP Company: Total RPO client count is at 80+. YTD wins include several enterprise and mid-market clients with ~50% as new clients and ~50% as existing ADP clients that added RPO services.
• WilsonHCG: Primarily serving large and mid-size clients, WilsonHCG also has small clients with <500 employees. The company has a 94% satisfaction rating with candidates and hiring managers across clients.

Stay tuned for my next blog where I will discuss additional meetings I had with Patersons, IBM, Hogan Assessments, SHL Assessments, Secova, ADP, Equifax Workforce Solutions, HireVue, and JobVite.

In the meantime, NelsonHall just published its fourth global RPO market analysis.

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The Parable of IBM and Kenexa: Part II

Linda Merritt, HRO Research Analyst, NelsonHall

It’s common for major HRO announcements to be followed by a conference call, and sometimes one-on-one briefings are also offered for analysts as in the case of the IBM and Kenexa deal.  Naturally, the NelsonHall HRO team including myself, Gary Bragar, and Amy Gurchensky took advantage of both opportunities.  

IBM’s Own View

The initial announcement was largely from the perspective of the IBM Social Business group that will add Kenexa’s HCM capabilities to its combination of social media, content management, and analytics. IBM believes that this creates value through the application of social technology to front office processes and generates ROI by creating social networks of expertise that leverage analytic insights to improve business processes. In sum, a “Smarter Workforce.”

It is the Whole Elephant…

In Part I, I compared the various views of the IBM and Kenexa news to the analogy of the blind men and the elephant. The answer is that all of the following interpretations are rationales of the deal:

• Builds upon IBM’s social media, analytics, and professional services including BPO
• Brings valuable software, HRO expertise, as well as talent management capabilities
• Increases competition and cross-selling to both IBM’s and Kenexa’s base of Fortune 500 customers
• Delivers value to C-suite executives, HR executives, and the whole value chain of management and employees.

…and Much More

The IBM Global Process Service’s HRO team was involved from the start and will be deeply involved throughout the integration process. RPO services will be combined creating an even bigger global footprint with new service centers including three in the U.S. Kenexa’s learning platform will be reverse engineered to support IBM’s learning services. There are also other parts of Kenexa that can be kept or spun off such as compensation services, behavioral sciences surveys and assessments, and middle market customers.

Kenexa will be a wholly-owned subsidiary for the first year to allow time to determine the best options for unleashing the full value of the deal. Kenexa brings innovative and collaborative intellectual capabilities and a portion of the value is greater than the “stuff” that can be divided up. Even with Kenexa’s leadership intact, the decisions will be many, with lots of players due to the matrix nature of the services and opportunities adding to the normal M&A complexities.

IBM’s Smart Workforce incorporates the concept of the boundary-less enterprise that works across the “whitespace” between processes and organizational silos. IBM wants to make human capital management an integral part of business operations by enabling people to unleash their talent when, where, and how it is most needed to create measureable value.

We each see the world through our own lens of experience and expectations, and sometimes the truly new and innovative “elephant” is harder to see. IBM and Kenexa can create the truly new and we should all hope they do. HCM, HR, HRO, HR tech, IT, social media, and more will have to raise their game to benefit from the new technology, services, and consulting opportunities. And that is a good thing!

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The Parable of IBM and Kenexa: Part I

Linda Merritt, HRO Research Analyst, NelsonHall

I have not seen such a range of varied opinions from members of the HRO and HR tech communities as those about IBM’s acquisition of Kenexa. The commentary showed that many were taken a bit by surprise and weren’t sure how to analyze the news that IBM was acquiring Kenexa for $1.3bn.

IBM Bought Kenexa?

The surprise was not the purchase of Kenexa, which was foreshadowed by the acquisition of Taleo by Oracle and SuccessFactors by SAP. It was more about the fact that IBM was doing the purchasing.

A few  thought that ADP might make such an acquisition since it had already expanded its benefits capabilities with Workscape and SHPS and its RPO capabilities with The RightThing, so wouldn’t talent management make sense? Speculation continued, perhaps Mercer, Ceridian, or even ADP would be the target of an acquisition or merger.

IBM itself was considered likely to continue its acquisitive ways with something more in the talent management / HCM space. Likely targets mentioned included Cornerstone OnDemand, SilkRoad, SumTotal, Saba, with a few suggesting Halogen, Peoplefluent, and others. In short, someone is going to buy something else.

The Meaning of the Deal?

What does this mean we all asked, much like the tale of the Blind Men and the Elephant as was suggested by the leading light Naomi Bloom. Early viewpoints on the acquisition included:

• Continuing IBM’s move into social media and analytics
• Continuing IBM’s move into professional services including strengthening RPO
• Disrupting the HCM market and becoming a talent management player
• Delivering value to the HR executive
• Delivering value to the C-suite and bypassing HR
• Primarily being a HRO deal with some software attached
• Primarily being a software deal with some HRO attached
• Upping competition with SAP, Oracle, Salesforce.com, and even Workday
• Selling into Kenexa’s IBM-like customer base of Fortune 500 clients.

IBM’s news crossed many markets including HRO, HCM, HR tech (software, platform, cloud, etc.), BPO, social media, talent management, and financial and market analysts. Each commenter viewed the same information through the lens of their personal perspective and professional interest, much like the blind men touching different parts of the elephant.

With so many options before it, including IBM’s own announced intentions for the addition of Kenexa, the opportunities are new and exciting. Given the inherent complexities, IBM will face many risks as well. Look for more on The Parable of IBM and Kenexa coming in Part II.

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IBM Accentuates its RPO and Talent Management Offering by Acquiring Kenexa

Gary Bragar, HRO Research Director, NelsonHall

Although a bit smaller than the $1.9bn Oracle paid for Taleo (coincidentally at $46 per share as well) and the $3.4bn SAP paid for SuccessFactors, I believe that IBM’s acquisition of Kenexa, a cash transaction at $46 per share or ~$1.3bn and closing in Q4 2012, will have a much more immediate and larger impact than the aforementioned acquisitions.

Both Taleo and SuccessFactors were specifically acquired for their talent management (TM) technology. Beyond the strength of Kenexa’s technology, however, is the provision of TM services including:

• Consulting
• RPO
• Employee engagement
• Leadership development.

According to an IBM study conducted earlier this year, 71% of respondents cited “human capital” as the leading source of sustained economic value, above products and services innovation and significantly higher than technology. Kenexa, as a HCM and TM provider, will compliment IBM’s TM offering, which focuses on the full TM life cycle of attracting, developing, rewarding, and retaining talent. Specifically, IBM’s TM offering includes:

• Recruiting
• Learning
• Performance management
• Compensation
• Succession management.

In addition to its multi-process HRO (MPHRO) offering, which includes TM, IBM also specializes in providing workforce strategy transformation, social technology, and analytics to predict and measure performance.

While RPO is part of IBM’s MPHRO offering, it also provides RPO on a standalone basis to GM. Kenexa’s RPO capabilities, however, will accelerate IBM’s RPO market share, making it one of the largest RPO providers globally with clients headquartered in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Kenexa also delivers RPO services in Latin America including South America in ~25% of its contracts.

Kenexa’s BrassRing technology is one of the two most widely used applicant tracking systems in RPO contracts. Kenexa also brings its Kenexa 2x Recruit platform, which in addition to recruiting and learning contains the following performance management modules:

• Goal setting
• Competencies
• Performance appraisals
• Compensation
• Career development and pathing
• Succession planning.

NelsonHall estimates that Kenexa has more than tripled the size of its RPO business since 2006 with brand name clients including Ford and multi-regional contracts with Baker Hughes and Eli Lilly.

IBM’s price of $46 per share is a 42% premium over Kenexa’s August 24^th close, but it will be well worth it. IBM is getting much more than software technology; it is getting assets, including human talent that can make a HCM difference. IBM’s plan is to combine its approach to social business, analytics, and TM to transform business processes to create smarter workforces with measureable business results. Given Kenexa’s record of growth and IBM’s experience with integrating acquisitions, this sounds like a good plan and a great business opportunity for both companies.

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Kenexa and Aon Hewitt New Product Offerings Help Clients Hire, Engage, and Retain Talent

By Gary Bragar, HRO Research Director, NelsonHall

Kenexa’s RPO business has been growing, including globally as evidenced by its five year RPO contract with Eli Lilly to provide services in Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Americas.

Kenexa has been expanding its business with new service offerings including those focused on talent management. Two new product offerings that help clients hire, engage, and retain talent include:

• Fit Compass
• Career Bull’s Eye.

Kenexa calls these offerings Performance Accelerators.

Fit Compass: helps clients determine the quality of the hire by providing managers with an interview guide to help probe for candidate strengths, work styles, and challenges of how they would fit into the culture of the organization. Fit Compass can also be used for employee development and career planning, team building, and team effectiveness.

Career Bull’s Eye: determines an employee’s level of engagement by assessing their purpose, passion and pay. It then helps business leaders identify where in the organization they need to focus by finding out causes of disengagement so it can make improvements and reduce turnover. It can also be used when onboarding new hires to ensure that they are engaged to avoid turnover. Results are shared during quarterly business reviews with the client. Both products are available as standalone services or can be bundled with other RPO service offerings.

Aon Hewitt provides RPO as both a part of its HR BPO offering and as a standalone service. Aon Hewitt’s RPO business has been growing globally as well. Examples include its HR BPO contract with BP where it provides RPO in North America and EMEA, and its recent contract award with a professional services company to provide RPO as a standalone service in EMEA and North America. Aon Hewitt has two new products that help organizations transform their hiring process:

• SourceSprint
• Digital interviewing capabilities.

SourceSprint: keeps applicants in a talent community for possible placement with other opportunities. Often when an organization fills a job requisition, other applicants are lost after the new hire comes on board. While the applicants may not have gotten the job they applied for, they may be good candidates for other opportunities. But, finding them again is problematic. SourceSprint changes that by using social media, optimization of search engines, and mobile communications to keep these prospects in a talent community. It remembers how applicants were originally found and their preferred communication.

Digital interviewing capabilities: improves the efficiency and experience of the hiring process for both candidates and hiring managers. Through its partnership with HireVue, Aon Hewitt clients can use the HireVue Digital Interview Platform to ask candidates scientifically validated questions that will ensure consistency and objectivity across interviews. Candidates then use a webcam to record their answers. Since it is not a live interview, candidates can respond from anywhere at their convenience, and hiring managers can watch and share the recorded interviews with colleagues anywhere.

Given these types of continuous innovative offerings, it’s no surprise to me that RPO has been rapidly growing as clients seek to attract, engage, and retain talent, while improving the efficiency of the recruitment process at the same time!

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A Double Dose of Kenexa

Last week, Kenexa announced Q3 revenues and held its annual analyst relations meeting. Revenues for Q3 2011 were $75.7m, up 59% year-over-year. Subscription services were up 38% to $55m, professional services increased by 102% to $22.2m, and RPO was up 26% at $20m.

The top 80 customers averaged $1.6m in annualized revenues, up $.4m over Q3 2010. Sixty new “preferred partner” clients were added during the quarter (each with over $50k in annual spend), up 50% Y-o-Y. Three large client deals closed in the quarter including Baker Hughes and a life sciences company, all of which Kenexa won against multi-vendor partnerships with its breadth of talent management services available from a single vendor, a differentiating factor.

In addition to increasing its revenues and client base, Kenexa is integrating aquisitions, setting up new partnerships, and doubling down on the pace of new service developments and introductions. The integration of Salary.com is ahead of plan and some of the largest compensation deals in Salary.com’s history were just signed. Its new alliance with SkillSoft provides an enriched option for learning as part of an end-to-end talent management solution, adding to its coverage of one more key talent management base.

The latest “2x” service, Kenexa’s 2x Perform, was launched for early adopters. It is an integrated, enterprise-level performance management, succession, and compensation planning system. The new SaaS service joins the likes of 2x Brass Ring, 2x Onboard, and 2x Mobile. In 2012, 2x Perform will be expanded to all markets and 2x Assess will add to the growing survey and assessment product line. The feature and function basics are also a development priority with enhancements to the user experience underway.

We also heard live from several clients and while each had very different recruiting and talent challenges, each saw the same strengths in Kenexa. The right technology and service bells and whistles are there, but as one client said, “the technology makes you productive, the relationship makes you successful.” And it was the relationship aspects that each client highlighted including a focus on client success from the executives to the account teams.  Part of Kenexa’s high revenue growth is coming from an increase in the number of services sold in new contracts and service additions by existing clients. How do you really know you have great customer satisfaction? When they trust you with a greater share of their wallet.

With good news on all fronts, the management team mood was expansive and the conversations wide-ranging at the analyst event. From the presence of four generations in the workforce and the shortage of talent when and where needed, to the global impact of the economic crisis in Greece, talent management ties in one-way or another to much of what we see happening around us. Expect to see Kenexa there, on the front lines, helping clients around the world create improved business results through the many elements of talent management.

Linda Merritt, Research Analyst, HRO, NelsonHall

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