Insights on Corporate Talent, Learning, and HR Technology
Remember the dot.com bubble of 1995-2000? I do, and it’s back again. But this time it has a new face, it talks about SaaS, highly connected social applications, mobile apps, and talent management software. 
Talent management software? Yes, SaaS-enabled talent management apps have become one of the hottest investment areas in enterprise software.
The proof ... Read more»
This week SuccessFactors announced the acquisition of Jambok, a small platform company with an innovative and powerful solution for social learning and knowledge sharing.
Jambok was the brainchild of Karie Willyerd and a small technical team at Sun, where Karie was the Chief Learning Officer and pioneered knowledge and video-sharing with the Sun Learning Exchange ... Read more»
The ever-changing market for Learning Management Systems (LMS) continues to evolve. Last year, Taleo, the largest provider of recruiting software, spent $100 million acquiring mid-market LMS vendor Learn.com. The company’s strategy, which we supported in earlier blog posts, is to expand across all elements of the talent management domain and develop an offering which ... Read more»
This 
year is our fourth annual Learning and Talent Management Research Conference, IMPACT: The Business of Talent® (April 26-29 at the Renaissance Vinoy Resort in St. Petersburg, Florida) and it is going to be the best conference ever!
The theme this year is “Building the Borderless Workplace” – how organizations can build modern, high-performing talent, ... Read more»
This week we introduced our 2011 Corporate Learning Factbook 
(a “must-read” for any HR or training leader).
This report, which we labor over each year, details spending on corporate training in the US and around the world. For the first time in nearly two years, corporate spend on training is growing – demonstrating business confidence ... Read more»
One of the most complex and fragmented parts of the talent management market is the world of employee assessments. 
Today two of the industry’s largest companies in this space, Previsor and SHL Group, announced a merger, creating the largest global player in this very large, very fragmented market.
Background:
There are many types of ... Read more»
One of the hottest issues in human resources is the need to develop high levels of employee engagement and satisfaction. 
We all know that organizations with happy people have lower turnover, deliver better customer service, and tend to be more innovative and responsive. But can we translate this into stock price or financial results?
Bersin ... Read more»
Today another major shift takes place in the talent management systems market: SumTotal Systems announced the acquisition of GeoLearning.
Background:
SumTotal Systems is the largest provider of learning management systems today (and also a major provider of integrated talent management systems). In our LMS 2011 research we show that before this acquisition SumTotal had ... Read more»
I spent this week in Europe (nice Siberian snowstorm here), attending a client meeting in the UK and the Online Educa Berlin (OEB), the largest e-learning conference in the world.
This conference, which has more than 1,000 attendees, brings together learning and academic professionals from businesses, educational institutions, and governments throughout Europe. The event is ... Read more»
One of the privileges I have in my role is the opportunity to meet some of the great world leaders in corporate learning and development. In the interest of helping our industry understand the changing role of corporate training and talent management, I would like to talk about the changing role of the Chief Learning ... Read more»
Today we begin the introduction of a major new source of research, information, and support for HR and L&D professionals, the Bersin & Associates Lexicon®.
The Lexicon is a new, online resource designed as the first-ever consolidation of definitions, examples, case-studies, and research on all the major terms and processes in the broad areas ... Read more»
Today SumTotal Systems, the 
largest provider of learning management systems, announced the acquisition of Softscape, the pioneering software vendor that started the market for integrated talent management software. This move, another in a wave of consolidations taking place, creates a “gorilla” in the market for end-to-end talent management software. (Recent acquisitions include Authoria’s ... Read more»
Today a shoe dropped in the Learning Management Systems Market: Taleo announced plans to acquire Learn.com.
Let me discuss this announcement from three perspectives: first, the impact on the market; second, the impact on Taleo and Learn.com customers; and third, the impact on you as a prospective LMS buyer.
(ps. Kenexa also announced the ... Read more»
Despite the uptick in business optimism from our mid-year TalentWatch® report, the US economy continues to be slow. This month we learned that there are 14.5 million Americans looking for work and 1.4 million of them have been out of work for more than two years. And the Labor Department just revised last year’s ... Read more»
Over the last several months I have been in many meetings with HR and L&D professionals talking about the enormous power of formalized informal learning. As we walk through out enterprise learning framework and talk with people about the need to expand their concept of training, I am reminded of the work we did back ... Read more»