Smart SaaS

Company:             Lumesse

Started:                  2003

Located:                Guildford, UK

Geography:          Global

Market:                  HCM, Integrated Talent Management and Learning 

Products:              Lumesse TalentLink and Lumesse Learning

Key Customers:  Siemens, Heineken, Levi Strauss & Co, Nike, GlaxoSmithKline, Tommy Hilfiger

Website:                Corporate Website

Blog:                      Voice of Lumesse

Recent News:

Learning made easy – Lumesse ETWeb v11.1 introduces award-winning learning management system Lumesse named ‘Best Talent Management Software Provider in Greater China’ for the second year running Lumesse ranked #1 for customer satisfaction in HRO Today’s “2012 Baker’s Dozen” survey of talent management vendors

I asked Andrew Roadaway, Lumesse’s Director of Communications a few questions about his business and his view of the SaaS market in 2012.

Did you start out as a Software-as-a-Service company?

Lumesse was created initially in 2003, as Stepstone Solutions, as a division of an European Internet Job-Board business. So our roots are in online service delivery and our first products were Internet-delivered offerings, really before it was called SaaS. So SaaS is in the DNA of the company from day one, and it continues to be our key delivery mechanism.  We also offer some limited on-premises and Lumesse-hosted solutions, to meet the needs of customers who are not ready to go to SaaS.

Why do your customers buy from Lumesse?

Our SaaS products have substantial depth of functionality and they are highly configurable, both in terms of overall functionality and individual user experience, so we can closely meet our customer’s unique requirements. We have a strong focus on global requirements, both within our products and in our approach to sales, service and support, we have 23 fully-staffed offices in 17 countries, so we can deliver against even the most complex international project requirements, but still with a lot of local market knowledge and support.

We also develop our products to meet local legislative, regulatory or best-practice requirements.  For example, we support the ISO270001 Information Security requirements and support for over 50 languages. Finally, we have a strongly customer-centric culture with a long-term focus on customer success, we measure customer satisfaction formally four times a year across our entire customer base and it’s a major input to our business strategy.

What do you see as the key trends emerging in the SaaS industry?

There’s little doubt that multi-platform delivery (PC’s, tablets, and smartphones) is increasingly important as well as greater interactivity and personalization in the user experience. Our products are designed to give end-users a more social-network-friendly, collaborative user experience.

What is your outlook for the balance of 2012?

There’s obviously a lot of turbulence in our market, with two major players, SuccessFactors and Taleo, currently in the process of being acquired. In the short term we think this will benefit vendors like Lumesse as the high degree of roadmap uncertainty these type of transactions create will make many customers wary of commitments by such vendors. We expect the market to be healthy and anticipate another year of solid growth, especially as we bring several new products and versions to market.