Taleo: Empowering The Extended Enterprise

I have written several pieces on the Enterprise 3.0 and the Extended Enterprise trends. In this article, I am going to cover a company that aligns the Extended Enterprise phenomenon with its Talent Management services.

Taleo (Nasdaq: TLEO) is a leading provider of on-demand (SaaS) solutions for talent management. It helps organizations align talent management with their business objectives. Candidates are also notified in real-time whenever a position is available that matches their skills. Taleo essentially brings candidates, hiring managers, and recruiters together across the walls of the enterprise, a characteristic of the Extended Enterprise trend.

Taleo has solutions catering to large enterprises as well as small and medium businesses (SMBs). Taleo Enterprise Edition is ideal for large organizations that need to manage talent across many countries or divisions. Taleo Business Edition is ideal for SMBs, standalone departments of large organizations, or staffing companies.

Taeo has been featured three consecutive times since 2004 on Deloitte Technology’s list of 500 fastest growing companies. It also made it to the Baseline Magazine’s list of 50 Fastest-Growing Software Companies for 2006.

In the first quarter of 2007, Taleo acquired JobFlash to strengthen and expand its solutions for high-volume hiring for large enterprises. JobFlash’s interactive voice response [IVR] and interview scheduling capabilities have been incorporated in its latest Enterprise edition.

Talelo’s business model consists of subscription revenues and consulting services. The significant exposure to subscription services of Taleo meant that recouping investments in infrastructure (data center and operations) and setup capabilities would be a long-term process, and as a result, they have lost money for a while.

However, in Q1 2007, Taleo posted a small profit of $0.9 million translating into an earning of $0.04 per share. In the corresponding quarter last year, the company had incurred a loss of $0.5 million. 2006 revenues are at $97 Million, and they have 1000 customers, touching 60 Million candidates worldwide.

Interestingly, Taleo also aligns with the Web 3.0 and Online Jobs boom, and is yet another undiscovered Internet stock that is likely to make a lot of money going forward!