45: Provade receives additional $3m to total $23m

The Business Journal reports that VMS provider Provade has taken $3m in additional funding, "with the latest funding, total venture investment in the company now exceeds $23 million." 

Provade has always been one of the most interesting VMS to me for a number of reasons:

• PeopleSoft relationships and history - Provade founder and CEO Edward Jackson has a successful track record selling companies to PeopleSoft (Skillsvillage), seems that they have good connections with the software giant
• Focus on services procurement, not just temp labor spend - from where I sit, it seems that Provade was an early adopter of services procurement and aims to support a broad set of labor categories via its VMS
• Ability to integrate directly to the ERP of its large, hiring company clients - Because it is PeopleSoft based, Provdae is uniquely positioned to integrate back into their client's ERP. This is really powerful because Provade clients that use PeopleSoft/Oracle based ATSs can avoid duplicate data entry or job requisitions and candidates, not to mention delays in broadcasting orders to suppliers
• Ability to connect software across the human capital supply chain - even deeper links are possible, ideally the hiring company's ATS it integrated with their production planning ERP so that human capital needs are communicated via the ATS/VMS in a real-time way
• Ability to partner with a variety of large staffing firms

In their press release, Provade explains that the funding is for “This next round of funding should significantly enable Provade’s expansion as a leading VMS provider. According to Provade President and CEO Edward Jackson. “We are increasing the size and frequency of deployments with new customers and program expansions into additional spend categories and geographies,” Jackson said. “As the only enterprise-class VMS in the market, we deliver global capabilities, coPublishmplete integrations, and world-class analytics for nearly 50 companies.”

Provade was founded in 2004, about 5 years after market leaders Fieldglass and IQNavigator. Even with the late start, they have stayed focus, added experienced personnel and grown market share. While I don't quite understand why they need a cash injection at this point in their evolution, the fact is that they have taken on about 1/2 as much VC-funding as Fieldglass and IQ. Definitely a VMS firm to continue to watch attentively, I'll be interested to see what they do with the cash.