What do customers get?
According to IBM one of the reasons that they looked at Meteorix rather than other companies is that Meteorix has a history of not just implementing solutions but of staying close to customers and delivering continuous improvements across their HRM and Financial solutions. This culture of delivering continuous improvement to its clients is one that would appeal to IBM.
Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president, IBM Global Business Services commented in the release: “The planned acquisition of Meteorix can make IBM one of the leading, most qualified and experienced Workday service providers in the world.”
“It deepens the quality of service to existing Workday clients and dramatically expands our reach to new clients. Meteorix’s Workday implementation experience combined with our industry and transformational expertise as well as the industry’s foremost business analytics capability and leadership in cognitive computing will unlock next-generation employee engagement and productivity while accelerating financial performance.”
It is Sam Spector, CEO of Meteorix who comments on the acquisition and states “We owe Meteorix’s rapid growth and success to the dedication and customer focus of our team as well as our strong commitment to Workday. Once part of IBM, we’ll strengthen our unwavering commitment to customer success while adding global scale, deepening industry and business transformation expertise and tapping IBM innovation,”
“The combined expertise of IBM and Meteorix will enable clients to rapidly implement and maximize the value of Workday while transforming their finance and HR capabilities for the future. That’s a win for everyone.”
Conclusion
This acquisition places IBM Global Business Services unit at the forefront of Workday efforts to win corporates to its HR and Financial software suite. It will be interesting to see how this is balanced with SAP Successfactors that IBM also host and support as announced earlier this year. Whether this places IBM in a stronger position to push the Workday solution because of the increased number of consultants and whether they will do so only time will tell. It may be interesting to see if IBM make a similar purchase amongst one of the SAP service providers.
There is no doubt that this is strong acquisition by IBM and will put them in an excellent place to leverage the growth of Workday. That this announcement is important to Workday as well is confirmed by Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and CEO, Workday commenting in a canned statement “The combination of IBM and Meteorix will bring significant added value to our customers.”
“Meteorix’s deep Workday experience together with the industry expertise of IBM gives our customers a global strategic partner to help them put their finance and HR operations in the cloud and transform their businesses for future growth.”
It will also be interesting to see how IBM intends to strengthen its workday presence in other regions.
