Looking back at July, there were lots of big names, big dollars and big news in headlines. Here’s our attempt at making sense of the all the big numbers.

It’s no secret — there has never been as much merger and acquisition activity in the human capital management technology segment as there is right now, today, at this minute. Even so, small strategic acquisitions continue to be overlooked. Same as it ever was.

Is there really a need for another HR tech conference? It’s a valid question. We have watched $15 billion in VC and PE money flood into HR technology investment since 2014 and companies such as LinkedIn, Ultimate Software, and Qualtrics have commanded premium prices in acquisitions over the past few years. It’s not surprising that event promoters have followed the money.

Part 1: How Drake impacts HCM (no, really).

The Top-line Context Jobvite picked up an investment of $200 million and is using it to acquire three smaller companies: Talemetry (recruitment marketing) RolePoint (employee referrals and in-company moves) Canvas (a text-based conversational screening bot) Post-acquisition, the combined company will have north of 2,000 customers. No valuation was disclosed in this deal. As noted by TechCrunch, the last valuation of Jobvite is pretty old — September 2014 — and was around $150 million, although the company has never confirmed that.

The Top-line Context The hits keep on coming. Ultimate Software, a leading HCM cloud provider, got acquired for an approximate aggregate value of $11 billion, meaning shareholders received about $331.50 per share in cash.

  2018 InfluenceHR Speakers: Josh Bersin, Virgin Pulse, Oracle, Zenefits, and more!

In 2017,  we bet the farm on digital and developed tons of great content specifically for the digital marketing and HCM tech industry innovator. You all responded with thousands of downloads, hundreds of shared social messages, and hours worth of geeked-out conversations centered around HCM technology and enterprise software.

Most websites have been using the http protocol for many years without issue. The protocol used to access a website is rarely something most users consider or understand. Which is understandable, since the onus is on web developers to determine the protocol used when someone types in a website URL. For instance, the user types in “google.com” and the developer chooses to redirect to www. and also https instead of the default http.

Quick Videos for HCM Marketers Who Missed Out We’re a week removed from this year’s InfluenceHR, and two things are clear:

It’s Time to Rethink Your Trade Show Strategy We’re in the wake of the summer trade show season, and that can only mean one thing for HCM enthusiasts: InfluenceHR and the HR Technology® Conference & Exposition are just around the corner. Are you prepared?

Be Recognized. Impress Your Friends. This year at InfluenceHR, we’re shaking things up. We’ll recognize the campaigns of the mad marketers who’ve achieved the highest level of creative excellence in HCM tech marketing in the areas of brand, advertising, and promotion. Oh, yes, those marketers will have their day in the sun.

This Is the Way the HCM Marketing Revolution Begins It’s here. Finally. Gaze upon the InfluenceHR 2017 agenda in all its majesty.

I wanted to take a moment to let you know what we’ve accomplished in digital over the last year, and why you might care. In short, we have built the only Digital Group in the world exclusively for human capital management (HCM) technology vendors.

  Holy Smokes! $400 Off InfluenceHR Registration? Surely You Can’t Be Serious?

If your public relations agency is reluctant to set measurable objectives and demonstrate ROI, they probably don’t know what’s important to your business from a marketing and sales perspective. PR is often prone to feeling like an outsider because they don’t think like an insider. PR can and should be measured in alignment with marketing and sales objectives.

Being a B2B CMO can often feel a lot like this:

In a world where facts are fake and truth is desperately needed, we need to shine some light on what a brand truly is. Let’s get the basic vocabulary out of the way so we’re all on the same page.