As the result of the merger, lots of big customers will be looking for new providers. Some of them will be from the Vurv base, some of them will be from the Taleo base. You’ll see stepped up advertising and lots of attention to little slips in customer service.

Now, I am decidedly not saying that Taleo is a lethargic company. They have managed to build a near monopoly in the Fortune 500 enterprise software environment. Their idea is to cement that position. Their customer service is strong and disciplined. They’ve provided our industry with needed stability.

But, the raw functionality of their software is nearly unchanged since its first iterations. Lots of attention to managing the customer software configuration problem mentioned above took all of the energy away from meaningful improvement.

A strong focus on customer feedback and benchmarking as a method for building  new functionality has left them stranded. You simply can’t follow customers into a leadership position. You have to lead. Great customer service and mediocre product innovation equals vulnerability.

Over the coming weeks, I’m going to take a close look at the real requirements for Recruiting software.