HR Tech News – March 2019

The month of March has reported more than a double number of deals than Jan and Feb. This month is now the highest of Q-1-2019 with an estimated USD 467 Million invested in various HR Tech ventures. If we exclude the USD 11 billion deal of Ultimate in February, Q-1-2019 has closed on a healthy USD 1 billion in reported investments in HR Tech space.

This month also saw interesting acquisitions by Ceridian and Alight. Read on to find out details.

Half a Billion Dollars in about 10 deals

The boundaries are increasingly getting blurred in what we can call as HR Technology. This is one deal where I got confused is this workplace tech or HR tech or is it both. But given the size of this deal, I decided to cover it here. Workfront, an enterprise work management application platform, received USD 280 million as a strategic secondary investment. Its unique value? Its an enterprise application platform for knowledge workers. It helps in automating processes, manage content and most importantly acts as a collaboration platform.

Employee benefits, particularly health and wellness received a lot of attention this month. We have two USD 25 million deals across two geographies that underline the future of benefits. Artemis Health, a North America based benefits data analytics company, raised this amount as Series C. In Another deal, Singapore based, CXA Group raised the same amount of money to further strengthen its presence in Asia. Once again data and technology coming together to create value.

Ease Central, an HR and benefits solution for SMB’s, insurance brokers and insurance carriers, announced raising USD 19 million in Series B. Peerfit, which specializes in connecting employers and employees to health clubs and studio brands via insurance carriers and self-funded wellness dollars, raised USD 18 million via private equity investment.

The diversity within the world of HR technology solutions is evident this month too. Hibob, a new age HR technology platform, designed as management platform first, received USD 20 million in Series A+. Performance management reimagined as an enterprise strategy and results management in Workboard. This innovative HR technology company received USD 23 million in Series B investment. If you thought to manage the mobile workforce was easy, think again. Skedulo, specializes in managing such “deskless” workforce across multiple industries. It has raised USD 28 million in Series B this month.

Providing more flexibility to wage payments in North America and Canada markets, Zayzoon is a unique offering in the payroll and benefits market. It announced raising USD 15 million in financing this month. Financial wellness is an important aspect of wellness services offered via employers. This is where once again boundaries between FinTech and HRTech start to blur.

Not a month passes by without news of investment in talent acquisition space. This month JitJatJo raised USD 11 million in Series A. This platform focuses on providing an on-demand workforce for the hospitality industry. We see an increasing trend of industry-specific talent acquisition solutions in the market.

The Big Guys

HR Technology space now has some multi-billion-dollar enterprises with diverse interests. In this month, we saw some action from some of these companies.

Alight Solutions announced that its acquiring Workday and Cornerstone OnDemand business of Wipro for cash consideration of up to USD 110 million. This indicates the increasing interest in global HR services businesses and growing partnerships between global players and Indian IT majors.

Oracle HCM’s innovations announced in March indicate areas in which the large HR technology players are moving. In these innovations, one sees a lot of focus on self-service and voice and chat assisted help desks. The company seems to be working to provide user experience from multiple viewpoints, by creating candidate focused recruitment solutions. The updated HCM design studio allowing HR to configure user experience without any coding is a great step.

Google is a synonym for search, and it has created an impact in the talent acquisition space via a variety of its offerings primarily enabled by its unparalleled search capabilities. This month it announced two new features wherein people searching for jobs can even look for jobs they can walk or cycle to. This comes with an addition of 100 languages for job search, Google is clearly leading the job search market.

Summary

The month of March sums up a great quarter for HR Technology in 2019. This has clearly set the tone and the pace for the months to come.  We have seen continued focus on Talent Acquisition, while we see a strong emergence of Wellness and Benefit as a very serious category of its own.

With billions of dollars being poured by investors and buyers alike in this market, the HR Technology journey has really reached a place of no return. Today, no one questions the role of technology in HR. The question remains how much is too much and solution providers and buyers will continue to struggle with these questions till this hyper growth and innovation phase continues.