Nobody likes to hear their candidate experience analytics vendor is merging with another company that is a carbon copy of itself. What’s worse is when you start hearing about moving to a “merged solution.” You didn’t ask for it. Doesn’t sound pleasant. But don’t despair. It could happen to anyone.
We at Survale have prepared this handy guide for organizations going through this uncertain fate to help you make sense of it and turn a potential negative into a positive.
What’s Happening?
Unfortunately, “what’s happening” is difficult to predict for any client whose vendor is merging with another company. No need to panic, but it is good to be smart about it. Typically when two like platforms pledge to “merge their solutions,” this means that one platform will be chosen and, over time, features of the deprecated platform will be brought into the chosen one. In our experience in the HR technology arena, this has manifested itself in cross platform integrations, or “pointing” to rebranded features of the deprecated platform in the short term. And in the long term, these features are written into the chosen platform. The deprecated platform is sunset and clients of that platform will be compelled to move at some point. The worst case is that the combined companies decide to build an entirely new platform. In which case, take the above scenario and double the headaches. Usually in this scenario, you’ll often get multiple features that are now core, but may or may not be what you signed on for.
Make no mistake: Companies do not usually merge with the aim of having duplicative offerings, two sets of service staff, two sets of back office staff, two leadership teams, etc. On the contrary, they are typically looking for efficiencies of scale.1+1=1 at first, then with time, .7 then 1 and then 1.15, etc. There will be a lot of change and it will come in small increments. But if past performance predicts future behavior, it will come.
Potential Pros? Well, you could get some new features if you play the long game and are on the chosen platform.
Potential Cons? Disruption of your service as platforms are combined in the form of bugs, UI changes, unexpected glitches, support confusion – even periods where the system comes to grinding halt.
What Can Clients Do?
The good news is that clients have all the power in this situation. The stated aim of this candidate experience analytics vendor merger is to “clearly position the new company as a global leader in Candidate Experience.” We wish them luck. And clients might want to join them on a chaotic ride as they try to hit that goal. But there is already an alternative available that provides a proven, more robust solution that was built from the ground up as a candidate feedback platform. This platform established the business model both of these companies have been trying to emulate for years.
At its core, Survale pioneered candidate experience analytics and the process of integrating with the ATS and career site to gather feedback from candidates and show clients what’s working and what’s not with their candidate facing people, processes and technologies. We provide the most robust and flexible integrations available because our founders and employees have founded, run and worked for/with ATS, CRM and talent management software companies for decades. Experience simply matters and Survale clients will tell you this shows through our core platform and in the way we seamlessly bring the best of the data from core recruiting systems into our workflows and analytics.
Beyond that, Survale beats this “merged solution” and all the competition in the following ways:
- Benchmark Data. The “merged companies” hope to benchmark a combined 10 million survey responses between the two companies every year. Don’t despair. Survale’s benchmark data is based on over 16 million surveys annually. No merging necessary. In fact, Survale has cumulatively engaged approximately 120 million candidates with nearly 150 million surveys since our inception. AND, we supplement that data with benchmark data from the annual CandE global Candidate Experience Benchmark report. This is easy for us because Survale has been the data platform that supports that program since 2017.
- Pinpoint Problems. And while Survale boasts access to the most robust benchmarking data, that’s only a small part of the story. Survale’s data is not meant to show you how satisfied your candidates are, though it does that quite well. It’s meant to pinpoint what you can do to optimize all the people, processes and technologies within your talent acquisition department. It’s designed to enable better hiring outcomes.
- Analytics. Our clients, including clients that have already moved from these “merged companies,” routinely tell us that Survale’s analytics provide deeper information, are more flexible and more usable. Why? Because we didn’t get into talent acquisition yesterday. We know the vast complexities surrounding how data is gathered and how it is consumed in talent acquisition departments. If you only want basic insights about satisfaction, you might be best served by a lesser platform. If you want to see previously unseen insights about all your people, processes and technologies – and be able to pinpoint problems and opportunities down to the job, location, source, and employee – we have the solution for you.
- Flexibility. Again, because Survale is founded by, run and serviced by talent acquisition experts, it is a system that is able to be configured for just about any hiring process. And it can gather and analyze feedback in virtually any way companies desire. Feedback can be gathered in real time at each stage of the process AND at the end of the process. This enables clients to get fresh insights that are top of mind. And it enables clients to achieve increasing levels of engagement with the candidates that go farther in the process. These are the ones you want to engage and, news flash, they appreciate it. Combine that with data from rejected candidates and you have a heterogeneous view of the good, the bad and the ugly of your candidate experience.
- Awards. Don’t take our word for it. Independent organizations have evaluated Survale and the news is good! Survale was named Top HR Product by HR Executive Magazine, has won multiple Brandon Hall Gold Awards for Best Advance in Candidate Experience Technology and in Survey Technology, and has won the Lighthouse Research HR Tech Award for Best Talent Acquisition Analytics, Measurement and Business Impact Solution.
Survale has put together favorable terms for clients who consider moving from the uncertainty of a slowly developing “merged solution” to Survale. To request a demo of Survale, click here.
