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Author: Jim Lundy
Topics: Collaboration, Social HCM
Issue: Who are the collaboration providers and how will they evolve?
Issue: How will the social HCM market evolve?
Summary: On Wednesday April 24th, 2013, Peoplefluent announced the acquisition of video content management (VCM) provider KZO Innovations by Bedford Funding.
Event: Peoplefluent announced the acquisition via press release. No other details were made available.
Analysis: With video poised to become pervasive in multiple business settings, including recruiting and learning, Peoplefluent made a strategic move in acquiring KZO. This move will put significant pressure on other talent management and social HCM providers that don’t yet offer this level of video capture, management and collaboration capability.
Peoplefluent can now deliver video-enabled business applications (VEBAs), which leverage video in specific business use cases. Coming on the heels of its 2012 acquisition of SocialText, the acquisition of KZO demonstrates that Peoplefluent is not standing still. These moves give them significant opportunities to disrupt the staid existing talent management space.
KZO VCM – A Closer Look
While KZO is not very well known in VCM, it has a solid offering that allows an enterprise to capture, manage and deliver video content to users. Its key differentiating VCM capabilities include:
- Video search
- Video collaboration and discussion
- Video capture and authoring
Video Collaboration Is a Game Changer
The video collaboration capabilities could be game changers. KZO lets users collaborate with each other at multiple points in a video. For example, when they play back a video, they can tag it with comments at any point where they choose. It is important to note that this capability is available now.
Video in Talent Management / Social HCM
This acquisition gives Peoplefluent immediate opportunities in three areas: Learning, recruiting and social.
Social Learning and Video
In a survey that Aragon Research conducted in 2012, one of the most requested learning features was the ability to do more with video. As the demand for simple video tutorials grows, learning vendors will need to respond. With KZO, Peoplefluent can appeal to business owners or learning and development managers who want to create video tutorials.
Video Recruiting
Another major opportunity is in video recruiting. With KZO and SocialText, along with its ATS offering, Peoplefluent can now offer a powerful recruiting solution. It would be one of the first talent management providers to branch into video recruiting, a market that now features standalone players like HireVue, Wowzer and others.
Aragon Advisory
- Enterprises should develop a robust collaboration architecture that includes video as part of its design.
- Enterprises need to prepare for an explosion of video-enabled business applications (VEBAs).
- Enterprises can now add Peoplefluent to their evaluations of enterprise video solution providers.
Bottom Line
The acquisitions of KZO and SocialText allow Peoplefluent to significantly expand its market focus and the scope of its offerings. Adding video to its portfolio gives the company valuable new capabilities that other talent management vendors will be challenged to match.
Related Aragon Research
- Get Ready for a new Wave of Video Enabled Applications
- The Five Priorities of a Social HCM Strategy
- The Aragon Research Globe for Enterprise Social Software