If you’re an HR professional looking for a Talent Management System, you have lots of options to choose from.  Our team has been in the industry for over a decade and we’ve learned a lot about how vendors position themselves in the market.  

We thought you would appreciate a comprehensive list of talent management system companies.

Talent and Performance Management Point Solutions

Kapta Systems - Headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, Kapta Systems focus is purely Employee Performance Management. Billed as the Anti-Suite, Kapta does one thing and does it well. Kapta provides an easy to use and implement Saas technology to help companies streamline the Performance Management process from start to finish.

Sonar6 - Provides an employee performance management solution for small and mid-size companies. With Headquarters in New Zealand, early clients were located in the Australia/NZ markets. Now with over 4,000 clients, Sonar 6 has a US office and has been expanding its North America presence.

Rypple (now a part of SalesForce.com) - Provides an employee performance management solution designed to encourage collaboration and peer recognition amongst co-workers. Founded by two Talent Management industry veterans, Rypple was recently acquired by SalesForce.com and will be rolled into a new product called "SuccessForce" (yes, really). This product appeals to organizations looking to combine a performance management and recognition platform delivered as a SaaS solution.

Work Simple - From San Francisco with operations in Minnesota, Work Simple builds social goal management software. A cool feature is that you can share your daily work goals with your network on LinkedIn.  Like most new companies, their offering is 100% cloud-based.  Work Simple also publishes a great blog called The Modern Worker.

Talent Management Suites

Cornerstone on Demand - After starting out as a content provider in the late 90’s, CSOD has evolved into a successful Talent Management suite provider headquartered in Southern California. For many years, this solution was an LMS geared towards the financial services industry (the founders came from this background and had a firm understanding of the solution requirements in that vertical). Recently, this Saas solution has expanded to provide a Talent Management suite especially appealing to companies with 5,000-20,000 employees.

Halogen - This Canadian based company was an original Performance Management solution provider appealing to small companies and government organizations in North America. In recent years, the solution set has expanded from on premise to Saas and modules for eLearning management and Applicant Tracking have been added.

NetDimensions - A Hong Kong-based company that has competed against larger vendors by providing a more straightforward, easier-to-implement system.  While mostly focused on Learning Management and assessment tools, NetDimensions now offers performance and goal management systems to round out their offering.

Kenexa - Headquartered in Wayne, PA., Kanexa’s roots are in recruiting and staffing solutions. As this global solutions provider grew, assessments and onboarding technologies were added to its suite. With well over a dozen acquisitions in the companies history, Kenexa sells solutions worldwide to large companies looking to improve recruitment, onboading and employee performance.

Saba - Founded in 1997 in Silicon Valley, Saba was the first LMS vendor to go public in 1999. A strong relationship with IBM has opened doors around the world for Saba and they have added both internally developed technologies and acquisitions to provide a wide reaching Talent Management suite. Recently the organization has tried to break into the social media vertical with the release of Saba Social, but the core of this company is Learning. Many feel the best LMS on the market, while the jury is still out on the other modules.

SumTotal Systems - Headquartered in Gainesville, FL, after starting out as a classic Silicon Valley venture back software company in the late 90’s. The SumTotal suite is now a collection of over half dozen companies in the HR space (Docent, Click2Learn, Softscape, GeoLearning, Accero) that have been acquired in the past few years. Owned by private equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, SumTotal offers both SaaS and traditional behind-the-firewall solutions.

Silk Road - Hailing from Winston-Salem, NC and Chicago, IL, Silk Road is building a suite of HR applications by acquiring small technology companies.  The solution includes recruiting, performance and learning modules and Silk Road mostly sells to small and medium-sized companies. The company has an international presence with offices around the globe.  Raised $40 million in venture funding in early 2011.

Ultimate Software - This is a 1,200-person public company  that sells “Unified Human Capital Management SaaS Solutions for Global Business” and has products for companies with 300 to 999 employees and over 1,000 employees.  What happens if you have less then 300 people in your company?  That’s not entirely clear.  Yes, their website looks like it was born in the ‘90s, but so what?

HR Smart - Headquartered in Dallas, TX, this company provides “Unified Talent Management” tools (sound familiar?) which includes recruiting, learning and performance.  HR Smart has been listed on the Inc 500 for five consecutive years and has been profitble since 2001. You can also read the Ten Facts their competitors don’t want you to know.

PeopleFluent - With Headquarter offices in North Carolina and Massachusetts, PeopleFluent bills itself as a business intelligence and analytics solution provider that utilizes HR data to help companies make better business decisions. This company was created with the merger of PeopleClick and Authoria in a transaction that some analyst questioned in January 2010 when consummated. The organization that exists today is the result of 9 company mergers that combines technology for talent acquisition and talent management.

Lumesse - Formerly known as StepStone, Lumesse has its global HQ outside of London with offices around the world. This organization offers talent acquisition and talent management solutions to a global client base and is mainly targeting large multi-national companies, across multiple verticals. Stepstone has made numerous acquisitions over the years and concentrates on selling these different solution modules via its global partner network. Mostly known as a recruiting tool, although that is changing.

HR in the Cloud - A new take on the Value Added Reseller (VAR) business model, this company has integrated 4 different Talent Management vendors to offer a SaaS suite solution. MyStaffingPro, BambooHR, CRG EM Perform and ED by Strategia provide the modules to cover a companies HR needs from pre-hire to retire.

ERP Companies

SuccessFactors/SAP - Now being acquired by SAP, SuccessFactors is a classic Silicon Valley enterprise software company. Providing both Saas and on-premise solutions (the recently acquired Plateau Systems is primarly a on premise LMS solution provider and SuccessFactors has committed to maintaining their behind-the-firewall code for 5 years), SuccessFactors offers large organizations the complete Talent Management suite.

Oracle - Oracle announced in February 2012 that it was buying Taleo and incorporating it into its HRM practice. Taleo was oiginally providing an on-premise Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) under the brand RecruitSoft, and expanded its Saas solution offering with an in-house developed Performance Management system and the acquisition of a small-company learning management system provider, Learn.com.  Stay tuned for how the integration goes.

Workday - After Oracle acquired PeopleSoft, Dave Duffield and team soon started work on the Silicon Valley based Saas provider of HR and Talent Management solutions. Loyal following amongst the many cult-like Peoplesoft customers around the world. Geared towards Fortune 500 companies, Workday’s message is simple. The 90’s are over, if you liked PeopleSoft then, this is the next logical step for those companies that want a Saas solution that leverages Web 2.0 technologies.

Lawson - Headquartered in Minnesota and recently acquired by Infor, Lawson has a long histroy of providing HRIS systems to mid-size companies and a suite of HR applications to the Health Care market. Prior to Infor’s acquisition, Lawson bought Enwisen to expand its HR offering to more vertical markets. Enwisen’s solution provides on-boarding solutions to Fortune 500 companies and Lawson hopes this tool will enhance its ability to sell Talent Management solutions to a more diverse client base.

Did we leave anyone off the list of Talent Management System vendors?  Shoot us an email and we’ll correct it.  Or start a conversation with us on Twitter or Facebook.

If you’re looking for best practices on how to implement and make use of any of the talent/performance management tools listed above, take a look through our free ebook, “Kick Ass Talent Management.”