Phenom acquires EDGE to help HR leaders understand ‘depth of talent’

Talent experience platform provider Phenom has confirmed the acquisition of resource management and talent mobility platform, EDGE.

The acquisition aims to further the capabilities of Phenom’s Talent Intelligence Experience platform specifically for professional services clients and global capability centers (GCC).

EDGE is the sixth acquisition by Phenom, following deals for Employee Data Platform (EDP) provider Tydy in July last year to address the ‘onboarding problem’, and similar deals for German companies Tandemploy and Talentcube (2022 and 2021 respectively).

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

Speaking exclusively to UNLEASH, Phenom CEO Mahe Bayireddi says that the acquisition will “expand resource planning capabilities and strategic workforce planning functionality to accommodate companies that have a large variety of roles that they need to fill with internal/external talent.”

“HR leaders struggle to understand the depth of talent they have internally, and waste time and money sourcing externally — either searching for full-time employees or spending excessively on contractors,” Bayireddi adds.

The EDGE functionality being added to the Phenom platform helps address this problem at scale for global capability centers and other professional services organizations that have complex resource planning needs.”The EDGE functionality being added to the Phenom platform helps address this problem at scale for global capability centers and other professional services organizations that have complex resource planning needs.”

Providing more specific and contextual talent where it’s needed

In a challenging talent marketplace, HR leaders require higher oversight of the talent they possess internally – particularly during a time of skills transformation and technology disruption.

GCCs — offshore facilities that larger, multinational organizations often use to manage processes and to provide specific, more contextual talent for organizations — are also experiencing a boom period, particularly in India.

Phenom stated that the acquisition of EDGE furthers the vendor’s ability to deliver solutions suited to different industries’ talent needs, helping companies execute strategic resource planning at scale.

Explaining the rationale behind the acquisition, Bayireddi tells UNLEASH that Phenom’s strategy is based on several factors.

The three most critical of which are: “Does it help further our roadmap in a key investment area? Does it help us expand our talent in key business areas such as development, product, marketing, sales, etc.? Does it help us further invest in a region where we want to build or expand our presence?

“The EDGE acquisition checks all three of these primary factors,” Bayireddi says.

He adds that to date, revenue of companies acquired has grown 365% under Phenom’s ownership.

“Phenom’s proven acquisition strategy to buy vs build when seeing market potential is an effective complement to its innovation strategy for getting new technology into the market faster,” Bayireddi concludes.