Fairsail has announced the completion of a successful 2016. The full year results saw them hit £10 million in revenue (US$12 million). The company has doubled its workforce since 2013 to 135. Based in Reading, UK, it opened its second US office in Chicago, IL, and brought on board Rebecca Foreman Janjic to its advisory board.
Major investment from Sage
2016 was also the year which saw Sage plc invest £10 million into the company. This saw the withdrawal of Stephen Kelly as an angel investor but brought a major strategic partnership. In time is it might see Sage acquire the company completely. Sage People has Fairsail as its core and Sage has also added the Sage sales force to the growing Fairsail numbers. As such this should see a further acceleration of Fairsail growth in 2017, if successful. As such Fairsail now provides the HR solution for Sage Live, strengthen both solutions as well as Sage X3, the flagship Sage ERP platform. Sage X3 last year announced integration with Salesforce to further develop the relationship between Sage and Salesforce.
Fairsail sees marque customer growth
Fairsail is quick to deploy taking days rather the weeks or months some of its larger competitors take. It boasts the addition of 60 customers in 2016 including Paddy Power Betfair, Mitsui, Quest Software, Sage and Trustpilot. It now has 120,000 users across 130 countries, a number that should continue to grow over the next few months. As a private company Fairsail released little detail and certainly did not forecast its growth for the next year. It will be interesting to see what difference the Sage deal makes.
Adam Hale, Fairsail CEO, comments: “Our tremendous growth over the past year is down to the faith placed in our amazing employees and market-leading technology by highly ambitious mid-sized companies. It’s great to work with so many organizations that recognize the vital importance of the HR function and its ability to help them truly understand their people.
“Effective management of people and HR processes crosses borders, cultural divides and different legislative landscapes. Mid-sized organizations are turning to us to help them understand more about each employee and use those insights to deliver amazing workplace experiences. We have a loyal and expanding set of customers who are transforming HR and becoming People companies with a focus on people science.
Conclusion
Fairsail is not only winning customers but it also has a very small churn rate. This is a detail that is not always published by cloud companies. It demonstrates a satisfaction in the product by its customers and stands it in good stead in the future. The Sage partnership is going to be key to its success in 2017. It should enable Fairsail to rapidly accelerate growth with access to a large sales team and existing relationships. This is far larger than the £10 million investment would have allowed them to grow otherwise. Training that sales team and ensuring they can deliver the solution is key to success in the coming year. It will also need to grow the number of its solution partners to cope with the potential growth.
Hale added: “We’re incredibly proud of our 98% renewal rate; once implemented, companies understand that our HR software can help them make people decisions rather than just execute tasks, and ultimately improve attraction, retention, and productivity. The last three years have been incredible but the demand we’re seeing suggests that the years ahead are set to be even better.”
