ServiceNow has announced plans to acquire Hitch Works (Hitch). The new AI-powered platform helps companies plug the talent gap by aligning existing employees’ skills with new roles and training opportunities across the company.
The announcement comes as businesses across the industrial spectrum battle a growing skills gap and talent shortages, driven by trends such as the so-called “great resignation.”
With pre built integrations for applicant tracking systems, learning management systems, human capital management (HCM) systems, LinkedIn, online survey tools and more, Hitch offers mapping and analytics for skill supply and demand, career planning and mentoring. Leaning on machine learning, Hitch automatically interprets data across project work, job postings and people profiles, then makes recommendations; this could involve matching an employee to new training courses, internal job posts, short-term projects that are understaffed and so on. Hitch has amassed a fairly impressive roster of enterprise clients in its five years in operation, including Allianz, Bosch, and GE Digital.
“If skills are the new currency for business, insight into these skills is critical to driving talent retention and adapting to evolving business needs. But skills management has historically been siloed, with numerous point solutions and fragmented processes that don’t work together. With Hitch, ServiceNow will streamline skills intelligence on a single platform to help business leaders match employees with meaningful work,” said Gretchen Alarcon, VP and General Manager of HR service delivery, ServiceNow.
ServiceNow has been bolstering its core Now Platform, recently aligning itself with the burgeoning hybrid work movement with new indoor mapping functionalities procured from its Mapwize acquisition. ServiceNow will set about integrating Hitch’s skills insights into the Now Platform and look to bridge the existing skills and talent management data silos that often don’t move beyond their native HR software systems.
