A Purchase developer of human resources software will double its work force over the next 18 months and step up marketing for its flagship product using the $2.75 million in venture capital financingit won earlier this month.
HR Technologies will add 25 employees to its current staff of 15 over the next year and a half. Seven new staffers will join the, company over the next three months, with 18 others to join through 2004, said David L. Hain Jr, chairman and chief executive officer.
The software developer will also use its new capital to enhance its marketing of HRScope, as well as develop future applications. One technology for which a patent is pending allows users to access HRScope without logging onto the Internet, Hain said.
HRScope assists large companies looking to predict, promote and measure job performance through data and analysis intended to quantify the skills, behaviors and attitudes of employees and prospective staffers on the basis of corporate goals. HRScope is marketed to companies of 1,000 or more employees at prices of $100 per employee, plus annual maintenance fees.
“What our competency-based strategic workforce management system does is give us the metrics to answer what has been very hard to quantify objectively, namely those performance criteria, – attitude, characteristics, behaviors – that will determine whether I should hire one employee versus another,” Hain said. “This empowers HR managers to evolve into strategic decision-makers for hiring, succession, management development, career development.”
HR Technologies is a relatively small company in the HR software market compared to giants like German-owned SAP and PeopleSoft Inc., a $2 billion-a-year developer in Pleasanton, Calif.
PeopleSoft made headlines in recent weeks by fighting a hostile $6.3 billion takeover bid by Oracle Corp., number-two software developer behind top-ranked Microsoft Inc. PeopleSoft in turn wants to buy another rival, J.D. Edwards & Co., for $1.75 billion.
Applications are increasingly the basis of business hiring decisions once based on gut instinct or who the boss knows, one industry observer said.
“Software and technology are playing a critical role,” said David Shadovitz, editor of Human Resource Executive, a trade magazine in Horsham, Pa. “While there are a few major players, when you look at the complete supermarket of options you will find there are many more players that are best-ofbreed companies trying to solve a specific problem in a given area of human resources.”
Founded in 1996, HR Technologies has attracted as customers several corporate giants. Columbia House and appliance maker Whirlpool have implemented HRScope companywide, while Siemens Building Technologies is rolling out the application to its U.S. team this year.
HR Technologies won its financing in a second round led by three venture funds led by Zon Capital Partners, a private equity fund headquartered in Radnor, Pa. Other investors include Cross Atlantic Capital Partners of Radnor, Pa., and Early Stage Enterprises of Skillman, N.J. Early Stage teamed up with private investors to complete the company’s first financing round of $1 million.
Bill Bridgers of Zon and Darren C. Wallis of Cross Atlantic have been narned to HR’s board of directors.
HR Technologies is the third Westchester business to announce it has received venture capital during the second quarter In May, Acorda Therapeutics Inc., a Hawthorne biotech company, won $55.3 million in a third major round for clinical trials to assess how well a new drug, Fampridine-SR, treats spinal cord injury and multiple sclerosis. Also last month, the White Plains semiconductor company Sandbridge Technologies completed a $19.5 million second- round deal.
Unlike many other, companies, Hain said, nailing down commitments from venture capitalists was not the hardest challenge in raising its latest round of capital.
“It didn’t take us long to get the term sheets. It took us longer to close,” Hain said.
Copyright Westfair Communications Jul 07, 2003
