Staffing firm software provider Bullhorn acquires rival Erecruit

Bullhorn, a leading (and perhaps now the largest) provider of comprehensive software for staffing/recruiting agencies, announced this week it had acquired Erecruit, “a provider of applicant tracking and pay and bill solutions and a leader in candidate experience for the staffing and recruitment industry,” according to a press release. Bullhorn reports in the press release that it has more than 10,000 customers globally, while Erecruit reported on its website having 2,100 customers.

Until now, Bullhorn and Erecruit — both based in Boston — had been rivals in the category.

The acquisition represents another step in the consolidation of the providers of comprehensive (ERP-like), fit-for-purpose, SaaS solutions to staffing/recruiting firms. And while the sector is vast in terms of numbers of staffing firms and there are other providers that provide similar solutions, none have the scale of Bullhorn (nor a higher market share among larger staffing firms).

According to the press release, the acquisition comes after the “successful June release of Bullhorn One — the first start-to-finish staffing solution.” And Bullhorn considers the acquisition of Erecruit “one that will help Bullhorn further enhance its vision of delivering a ‘unified’ solution to firms looking to leverage the power of automation to streamline operations and drive business growth.”

Art Papas, founder and CEO of Bullhorn, said in the release that “staffing firms face enormous pressures from investors, clients, candidates and employees to digitize their businesses while simultaneously facing historically low unemployment. The timing has never been better for a unified team to address these challenges head-on for our customers.”

Since we believe contingent workforce buy-side practitioners will likely have at least some interest in what is happening upstream in their supply chains (technology-wise and otherwise), we plan to take a closer look at this acquisition — and what can be learned from it — in a separate PRO research brief.