In a great move by ADP, they finally got their hands on a great talent acquisition system. Truthfully, they have been on the hunt for several years, but the deals seemed to keep falling through. This time though, ADP struck gold with a TAS that has great technology, great functionality, and is priced better than many similar competitors. Add to that the fact that ADP has arguably the largest HR salesforce in the world and Virtual Edge should take off.
The only warning I would have for potential customers is to be wary of extended implementation times. If ADP provides the right incentives to Virtual Edge and their own sales reps, you should see Virtual Edge subscriptions jump significantly. VE may not be quite ready to implement the virtual flash flood of clients that are coming their way.
I think that with this pruchase, VE should also be positioned to threaten any of the other large talent acquisition vendors. The power of the ADP salesforce is jut too much and since it’s a great product, the likes of brassring, taleo, vurv, et al should be on the lookout.
3 responses to “ADP Acquires Virtual Edge Talent Acquisition”
Do you find it interesting that ADP uses Taleo internally…and not Virtual Edge?
Sean: Great to hear from you.
I’m not terribly surprised. I’ll guess that they’ll implement Virtual Edge in the next few years, but they’ve been looking at different talent acquisition vendors for a few years and finally made one work. There was probably a low likelyhood that the acquisition was going to be Taleo, or that they could convert prior to the acquisition. All in all, seems like a good move regardless of what they use internally. I’ll be surprised if 2009 rolls around and they are still on Taleo though.
Then again, they may not want to convert to their own system (Virtual Edge) for something as sensative as responding to job openings, particularly for internal movement. EEs sometimes get skiddish when they think that co-workers or current supervisors might have the ability gain access to what they hope is a confidental process.