Organic vs Acquired

September 2010

Consolidation and acquisition have been the recent hot trends in the talent management systems market. Vendors are gobbling up other vendors and offering lofty proclamations about how their new, combined systems will change the world. But savvy buyers know that that piecing together different software platforms is never as easy as it sounds in the press releases.

Integrating multiple software tools under the same roof is hard work – it often takes years to complete, and, even then, the combined system is often a patchwork of different user interfaces, data models and customer support options. The lesson? Buyer beware. Ask your talent management vendor some tough questions about their software, their acquisition plans and how it all will affect you.