(By Balaseshan) International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) said it has completed its acquisition of Kenexa Corp., a provider of recruiting and talent management solutions, for about $1.3 billion.
With the closing of this acquisition about 2,800 Kenexa employees in 21 countries join IBM. Consistent with its strategy, IBM will continue to support Kenexa clients and enhance Kenexa technologies while allowing these organizations to take advantage of the broader IBM portfolio.
Kenexa brings a unique combination of Cloud-based technology and consulting services that integrates both people and processes, providing solutions to engage a smarter, more effective workforce across their most critical business functions.
Since IBM announced its plan to buy Kenexa in August, Kenexa has seen continued momentum with customers around the globe. Kenexa has signed sizeable, multiyear contracts with several major companies.
Recently, Cargill, a producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial and industrial products and services, has signed a three-year agreement to use Kenexa to implement, develop and oversee an employee engagement survey to its entire workforce of 140,000 employees around the world.
The adoption of social business technology is further accelerating the growth of big data and the need for analytics in the enterprise. A recent global IBM study revealed that 57% of surveyed CEOs identified becoming a social business as a top priority and more than 73% are making significant investments to capture and draw insights from available data.
The survey also reveals that 70% of CEOs cite human capital as the single biggest contributor to sustained economic value. The combined strengths of IBM and Kenexa provide organizations with unique capabilities that allow them to increase workforce efficiencies and gain insight from their business information.
IBM is trading up 0.28% at $190.02 on Tuesday. The stock has been trading between $177.35 and $211.79 for the past 52 weeks.