BC Business
Vancouver-based Visier acquired Yva.ai to offer its customers collaboration analytics.
A company is like a machine with many moving parts—a single chink in the armour can bring everything to a grinding halt. By identifying which parts of a company aren’t performing as well as they could be, Vancouver-based tech unicorn Visier, which has some 500 employees around the world, seeks to help businesses reach their potential using people analytics.
“We offer organizations meaningful insights into their people data,” says CEO and co-founder Ryan Wong, who graduated with a degree in computer science from UBC. “Our software is used for everything from improving diversity, equity and inclusion, to reducing retention and burnout, to charting career paths and equitable pay structures.”
In a move to beef up its services and incorporate collaboration analytics, Visier acquired the technology assets of Yva.ai, an AI-based employee experience SaaS platform. The assets, made of data sourced from corporate tools like Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Slack, mark Visier’s first acquisition ever, 12 years after the company’s launch.
“Data that is automatically collected from systems is overlaid with insights from individuals,” notes Wong. “It provides deeper insight into work and well-being, and also provides a rich understanding of the hidden truths inside an organization.”
READ MORE: People analytics leader Visier becomes latest Vancouver firm to reach unicorn status
The CEO, who grew up in Singapore, has seen the business raise US$215 million in funding, serving 15,000 organizations to date. The acquisition is an opportunity to tap into how people and teams work together, giving companies a clearer idea of employee well-being and how to improve interactions, collaboration and performance. The coolest part? Collaboration analytics can uncover hidden leaders within an organization.
“We believe that the winners of the next 25 years will be companies that best understand their employees,” maintains Wong. By combining business and people data, he thinks organizations can gain a holistic understanding of their operations, which is becoming more and more important in light of the pandemic as workplaces continue to offer flexibility.
“Companies that will be successful now and in the future will be organizations that understand how to directly tie business outcomes to people data, and that’s the direction we’re taking our organization.”