Training Industry Magazine - November/December 2017 - 62

CLOSING
D E A L S
INTEGRATING HR AND LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES:

TECH DEALS REFLECT GROWING DIGITALIZATION AMONG SMBS
BY TARYN OESCH

At many companies, especially small and
medium-sized businesses (SMBs), human
resources and learning and development
are managed in one organization. These
processes include recruiting and hiring,
onboarding, managing benefits and
payroll, performance management,
and training. As businesses look to
become more digital and efficient, HR
and training technology providers are
developing offerings that integrate HR
and L&D processes on one platform.
Recent funding reflects this trend. In
January, Namely announced the close of
its $50 million Series D funding round,
bringing its total funding to $157.8
million. This funding round was the
largest venture capital round in core HR
technology in the past year. In October,
Personio closed a $12 million Series
A funding round, which it plans to use
to improve its product solutions and
expand across Europe. Its goal, according
to CEO and co-founder Hanno Renner,
is "to become the central platform for
human resources management around
all digital HR processes."
Both Namely and Personio were
founded by leaders who felt that the HR
tools used at their SMBs were inefficient
and disengaging. "As a manager," says
Matt Straz, CEO of Namely, "I realized
that employee data was not in one,
easily accessible spot ... I wanted to
create an all-in-one platform to help
companies make better decisions about
people. Beyond that, I wanted to create
a platform that employees love to use
- one as simple and intuitive as social
media platforms."
Along those lines, Namely's platform
manages payroll, benefits and talent
management
processes
such
as
performance reviews and ongoing
feedback. With its Series D funding,

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Namely has also introduced time
management, managed services and
analytics offerings. Straz says Namely's
platform helps its more than 900
clients with employee engagement,
organizational culture, and, "most
importantly," making strategic decisions
using data and analytics.
Personio's platform, similarly, manages
recruiting, HR management and talent
development
processes,
including
onboarding, feedback and individual
performance goal tracking. When HR
and performance management systems
are integrated on one platform, Renno
says, managers in those departments
are able to save time by reducing or
eliminating administrative tasks and
focusing on other work.
THE BENEFITS OF
INTEGRATING PLATFORMS
Straz says that mid-sized businesses,
Namely's target audience, "are some
of the fastest-growing companies in
the country, working on incredible
things." They need platforms that will
streamline HR processes and scale their
infrastructure as their workforce grows.
They also "need to provide a best-inclass employee experience," which Straz
believes can't be done using the current
average of over eight HR systems.
Personio focuses its product on
companies with 10 to 1,000 employees.
Renner says businesses of that size "are
still served by outdated and disparate
systems" and typically have small people
management teams. Instead of having
experts devoted to recruiting, payroll
and talent development, they tend to
have more generalists. Because of the
diversity of their tasks, Renner says,
these HR managers "want a system that
combines all these tasks in one."

"Business is digital," Straz says, "and HR
should be there as well." Employees -
including L&D and HR employees - are
increasingly digital people, and the
platforms they use should meet their
technological expectations. It should
also be easily accessible, which is why
Namely has developed a mobile app and
experience. By going digital, organizations
are also able to be more transparent,
Renner points out. Instead of having
paper files under lock and key, employees
can access their information online.
ENABLING BETTER ANALYTICS
In a June article for Harvard Business
Review, Peter Cappelli, professor of
management at the Wharton School,
wrote that "for most companies, the
challenge in HR is simply to use data
at all - the reason being that the data
associated with different tasks such as
hiring and performance management,
often reside in different databases."
Cappelli's
recommendation,
after
managers have usable data, is to
start by looking "at the big picture -
graphs plotting outcomes across the
organization and then over time." Then,
examine that data frequently. Finally,
identify the relationships among the
data; how are the hiring criteria you use
related to performance, for example?
Having employee data in one place
means it's easier to access and analyze
these data. Depending on the platform,
some of the analysis might be done
automatically, as well. Then, it's up to
the learning leader to use that analysis
to make more informed talent decisions
that will improve business results in the
short and long term.
Taryn Oesch is an editor at Training Industry,
Inc. Email Taryn.
https://www.trainingindustry.com/press-release/outsourcing/namely-raises-50m-adds-time-management-to-help-mid-sized-companies-nationwide-better-manage-their-workforces/ https://www.hbr.org/2017/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-big-data-in-hr
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