ATS to ERP

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Having started my online recruiting days only 9 years ago (a lifetime in Internet terms) when 'best of breed' was a key sales message when selling against Oracle, Peoplesoft and SAP, it's interesting to see how a number of the ATS (Applicant Tracking System) vendors have started to move away from 'BoB' and more towards a cross functional, module based proposition in order to focus on Talent Management rather than E-recruitment.

So where does this leave who and where?

I will use the UK as my example but am sure the same situation will repeat itself across most developed countries.

Initially when e-recruitment was 'new' the BoB vendors could generally beat the ERP crew and in the very early days it was Peoplebank who were quickly overtaken by iGRasp. Since then we have had the major US vendors enter the UK (and most other countries!) which include Taleo, Peopleclick, Vurv (previously Recruitmax) and Brassring and start to take market share. We also have the UK vendors such as Jobpartners, iGRasp (now Stepstone), Mr Ted, Bond Talent and many more very small UK focused players.

Since the early days which were dominated by iGRasp, the market has now moved on.  Oracle and SAP have a better sales message and slightly better products.  The bigger ATS vendors: Taleo, Vurv, Brassring (now Kenexa), Jobpartners and Stepstone are all offering the full Talent Management suite which puts them into the ERP type position; thereby losing some of their BoB proposition potentially making it easier for the likes of Peopleclick and Bond Talent to win based on specialism, and the ERP vendors to win - because they are better at being big and diverse!

Being in the middle is always the worst place so it will be interesting to see how the market pans out over the next few months but here are a few thoughts.

Stepstone do not have the technical platform to support Global projects whereas Brassring so.  Kenexa, who own Brassring have a limited sales footprint but do have a Global product.  A merger could work?

Taleo have a strong proposition all round and are best placed to serve most markets without needing any kind of acquisitions.

Jobpartners and Vurv are both middle players; a merger makes sense based on footprint but who would be the daddy?  I don't think they could make it work so don't see this happening which leaves one or both up for grabs by maybe Taleo to consolidate their position further.  Vurv could then look to acquire a few smaller technology vendors across key sectors to increase market share.

Bond Talent are making headway into the corporate market with a solid agency base behind them which could make them interesting for someone like Taleo or Kenexa.

Peopleclick have one of the most recent code bases which someone like Vurv or Jobpartners could utilise but probably can't afford and no doubt think there product is superior!

Ultimately, it really depends on who is going to try and lead the market and in what format; TM Specialists or E-recruitment Specialists.  If, and it is a big if, the US vendors can ever get their products localised really well, then we may see some of the UK vendors disappear over the next few years; probably at about the same time the US Government get out of Iraq!

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