There is a lot of discussion about the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The catalysts for this revolution, which include AI and Machine learning, will automate jobs, create jobs, and require humans to continuously update their skillset to be relevant. According to Salesforce, 66% of hiring managers believe workforce development programs are necessary. Adepto, the total talent platform, equips companies with a single, accessible view of all available talent, both internal and external. The company’s signature Total talent platform tracks permanent employees, contractors, freelancers, alumni, and recruits, providing deep visibility into specific skills, thus allowing for more informed workforce planning, efficient resourcing, and upskilling. The SaaS platform easily integrates with existing HR/ERP technologies. Adepto has experienced 150% year on year growth since its founding in 2013 and is being used by organisations of various sizes from 1,000 person companies to the Fortune 500.
London TechWatch spoke with founder Chris Milligan about Adepto’s roots, future plans, and recent funding round.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
The latest venture round was led by Conviction Investment Partners (CIP), with Triple Point and other investors.
Tell us about the product or service Adepto offers.
Adepto is a skill-based Total Talent platform providing customers with a single view and access to all the talent available to them, internal, and external; past, present, and future.
Reducing time to hire, direct sourcing, internal mobility, re/up-skilling at scale and visualizing real-time, accurate skills data on who has the right skills to fill a need from across an organisation’s talent pool are a number of reasons why our customers use Adepto.
Organisations from 1,000 employees to the Fortune 500 trust Adepto to facilitate better connections to their workforces, drive flexibility, and create organisational agility.
What inspired you to start Adepto?
Whilst at university in Brisbane, Australia – I began contracting within professional services. Not seeing any of my peers doing similar work, I decided to build a business to help them work in a new way. In doing so, I resigned from the contract I was working on, whilst turning down an offer to be a senior consultant at a Big 4 firm. The early version of Adepto was born – hitting $1.6M in our first year.
As Adepto grew – I realised the biggest challenge facing organisations was the need to manage and gain visibility over the skills of their entire talent pool – their Total Talent. This included their permanent employees, contractors, freelancers, alumni, and recruits. As a result – the business pivoted and the first iteration of Adepto as a skills-based Total Talent SaaS platform was created.
How is Adepto different?
- Adepto is built for the candidate. Reflecting their desire to have different roles at multiple locations – candidates own a single profile that can be carried from project-to-project, organisation to organisation – throughout their careers. As each customer creates a network on Adepto – they invite a pool of candidates to own and populate their individual profiles.
- We take a Total Talent view. Adepto enables organisations to access and engage their Total Talent, including permanent employees, freelancers, contractors, alumni, and potential recruits. All talent and skills data is in one place, reducing time-to-hire from weeks to hours.
- Adepto is skills-focused. Adepto provides a view of all skills within an organisation’s Total Talent pool. This greater skills visibility allows for more informed workforce planning, efficient resourcing, and upskilling.
- Future-proofed architecture. Adepto’s infrastructure allows set-up and build of new customer networks within minutes. Any worker can be invited to become part of an Adepto-powered organisational network – empowering them to build and update their own profile during the lifetime of their career.
- Our partnerships. At Adepto, our aim is to ensure our customers fully leverage their existing technology stack – we integrate with existing HR/ERP technologies. Earlier this year we also established a partnership with a leading LMS provider giving our customers complete visibility, and their workforce, accessibility to current and future skills – with the tools for up and re-skilling across all sectors.
Who do you consider to be your main competitors?
We’re defining a new category: Total Talent. As a result, we’re not seeing any competitors doing what we’re doing around Total Talent, Shared Networks or allowing the candidate to own and manage their profile throughout their career.
Our aim is not to replace existing technology – instead, we integrate with the market leaders across the VMS, ATS, HCM and LMS space to provide our joint customers with the flexibility and agility to remain competitive.
What market is Adepto targeting and how big is it?
Adepto targets organisations that want to better utilise their workforce, with headcounts of over 1000 workers across government, professional services, financial services, IT, engineering, aerospace, and defense. Our clients include AECOM, BAE Systems, Atos and Capita.
What’s your business model?
Adepto’s business model is subscription-based – with a staggered pricing model aligned to the number of workers within an organisation. We have customers using Adepto to view and access their Total Talent, or alternatively for individual use cases: Internal Mobility, Freelancer/Contractor Direct Sourcing, Talent Pooling and Skills Visibility, Resource Matching and Shared Networks.
What was the funding process like?
Very competitive and we’re delighted to be working with CIP and Triple Point – who invest in the fastest growing and best, B2B scalable businesses in the market.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Ensuring we grow and scale our business at exactly the right time. Adepto’s team has doubled over the last year. Finding capital wasn’t difficult – it was building a strong leadership team and hiring the right people across the business to help us scale in-line with demand.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
How we’re different from the market – no one else is doing what we’re doing in our space. This in combination with 150% year on year growth over the last three years and a strong leadership team, with experience across the entire Total Talent space.
This in combination with 150% year on year growth over the last three years and a strong leadership team, with experience across the entire Total Talent space.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We have key revenue and growth targets that we need to hit. We’re expecting the team to have doubled in size again by the end of the year.
What advice can you offer companies in London that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Get your business model right, be clear about why you’re different and ensure you’re constantly communicating how you add value for current and potential clients looking at your solution.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Adepto will continue growing its global presence across Europe, the U.S. and APAC. We’re increasing our capabilities in solutions, sales, customer success and development to better meet the needs and demands from our customers, and the market. We’ll also continue to educate the market on Total Talent.
What is your favorite restaurant in London?
SushinSticks, that place rocks!
