ARLINGTON, Va., March 18, 2014 – Corporate Executive Board (CEB), the leading member-based advisory company, announced it has acquired KnowledgeAdvisors, the pioneer and leading provider of analytics solutions for talent development professionals, for approximately $52 million.

By combining KnowledgeAdvisors’ extensive learning benchmarks and analytics platform with CEB’s insight, best practice and predictive analytics on talent acquisition, assessment and development, the company is uniquely positioned to help senior executives optimize investments that drive development ROI and ultimately corporate performance.

Corporations spend an estimated $145 billion annually on training initiatives, but more than half of those dollars fail to result in tangible returns, with performance gains from learning investments estimated at less than 10 percent. The KnowledgeAdvisors Metrics that Matter® analytics platform with more than one billion comparative benchmarks, coupled with robust reporting and deep science around learning measurement methodology, allow Chief HR Officers and Chief Learning Officers to drive substantial returns on their massive investments in development and training.

Talent-focused organizations already see immediate value in linking CEB’s depth on what competencies drive performance with KnowledgeAdvisors’ ability to measure the effectiveness of employee development.  “Being both a KnowledgeAdvisors and a CEB customer, we see powerful synergies coming to fruition for us.  For example, the pairing of CEB insights and KnowledgeAdvisors’ analytic capabilities and learning benchmarks will be a powerful package for organizations like ours looking to make high-impact leadership development decisions in a data-driven manner,” said Alex Brody, Head of Learning Analytics at Southern California Edison.  

“We’ve long prescribed that companies must apply the same rigor to managing their people as they do their balance sheet, and making investments proven to build workforce competencies can have a material impact on bottom-line results,” said Tom Monahan, CEB chairman and CEO. “This acquisition accelerates the groundbreaking work we have done to provide HR leaders withactionable solutions to measure the effectiveness of their development and talent management strategies, select and develop great teams, and build critical workforce skills.”

The acquisition of KnowledgeAdvisors extends CEB’s investment in analytics that equip corporate leaders to apply rigor and discipline to talent investments for greater business return. This investment, along with the industry’s most robust talent measurement platform, a strong slate of organically developed new products and the recent acquisition of Talent Neuron, solidifies CEB’s leadership position in the emerging talent management space.

“We’re proud of the Metrics that Matter platform and the business value it allows our customers to derive when it comes to L&D investments” said Kent Barnett, KnowledgeAdvisors CEO. “We know that by aligning with CEB we’ll be able to become an even more strategic partner to those organizations by more tightly linking outcomes to talent insight and best practice. We’re excited to continue serving our more than 500 clients around the world and to introducing our analytics to the more than 16,000 senior executives in the CEB network.”

About CEB

According to research by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), the sales interaction itself is over 53 percent of what drives the customer loyalty required to sell more products, to sell at a higher margin, and to sell to customers more frequently. Across all behavior sets naturally appearing in this sales environment, only one type of sales professional is able to successfully drive the customer loyalty through creating more value for customers. This rep, The Sales Challenger(TM), is 4X more likely to be a high-performer in the complex selling environment. Sales Challenger(TM) is a comprehensive sales training program designed for the new and complex selling environment. Leading organizations are currently deploying this training program to:

•Create a differentiated sales experience

•Build critical skills to improve sales rep performance

•Accelerate results by advancing coaching capabilities of managers

•Sustain skill development over time to provide measurable ROI

•Align marketing and sales to improve commercial outcomes