Advanced acquires performance management and employee engagement software company Clear Review to extend best of breed HR solutions

Com­pa­ny makes third acqui­si­tion in 2020 and sev­enth in last 18 months

19^th Octo­ber 2020 – Today, Advanced announced that it has acquired Clear Review, a glob­al per­for­mance man­age­ment and employ­ee engage­ment soft­ware com­pa­ny whose cus­tomers include Vir­gin Mon­ey, RICOH, Café Nero, Harper­Collins and Waltham For­est Coun­cil. This is Advanced’s third acqui­si­tion of 2020 and extends its Human Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ty cen­tered around Cloud HR which now sup­ports the entire employ­ee life­cy­cle from recruit­ment to retire­ment. The acqui­si­tion fur­ther sup­ports the company’s ambi­tion to become the num­ber one provider of busi­ness soft­ware solu­tions in the UK while expand­ing its glob­al reach.

Clear Review, which was found­ed in 2016 by Sony’s for­mer Inter­na­tion­al HR Direc­tor Stu­art Hearn, has built a strong rep­u­ta­tion over the past four years for its inno­v­a­tive Con­tin­u­ous Per­for­mance Man­age­ment plat­form. It offers Soft­ware-as-a-Ser­vice peo­ple per­for­mance man­age­ment and engage­ment soft­ware tai­lored for today’s remote work­ing envi­ron­ment with a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly backed well­be­ing mon­i­tor. The soft­ware is used by man­agers and employ­ees at 300 mid-mar­ket and large cus­tomers glob­al­ly (UK, US, Europe and APAC). 

Clear Review was named top of the ​‘EU Start Ups to Watch’ list by eu​-star​tups​.com in 2019 and has been recog­nised for its com­mit­ment to cus­tomer ser­vice – win­ning this year’s TIARA Tal­ent Tech Cus­tomer Ser­vice Award and Tech ​‘Cham­pi­on of Cham­pi­ons’ Award. 

Advanced’s acqui­si­tion comes six months after the acqui­si­tion of Tik­it, a glob­al legal, account­ing and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices soft­ware busi­ness, from British Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Group plc (BT), and just days after its acqui­si­tion of Mitre­finch, a glob­al work­force man­age­ment com­pa­ny. It is the fourth trans­ac­tion since the firm received an invest­ment from funds advised by BC Part­ners and Vista Equi­ty Part­ners to accel­er­ate growth in August 2019. The two most recent acqui­si­tions have both been com­plet­ed dur­ing the glob­al pandemic. 

Gor­don Wil­son, CEO of Advanced com­ments: ​“Covid-19 has forced over half the UK’s work­force to work from home – some­thing that is like­ly to con­tin­ue as our nor­mal — and so the abil­i­ty for man­agers to con­tin­u­ous­ly devel­op and improve their people’s per­for­mance remote­ly is para­mount to the suc­cess of every organ­i­sa­tion. Vital too is that organ­i­sa­tions can ensure they have engaged work­forces and that their well­be­ing is sup­port­ed. Clear Review’s tech­nol­o­gy gives man­agers the tools to do all these things whilst being extreme­ly com­ple­men­tary to our exist­ing Human Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment solu­tions which is an area of pri­or­i­ty for us. For both our exist­ing and new cus­tomers this acqui­si­tion enhances their abil­i­ty to empow­er man­agers to accel­er­ate their tal­ent man­age­ment strategies.”

Alex Arun­dale, Chief Peo­ple Offi­cer at Advanced com­ments: ​“It’s crit­i­cal employ­ees feel sup­port­ed and engaged, par­tic­u­lar­ly as work­forces nav­i­gate the chal­lenges of remote work­ing. Tools which deliv­er trans­par­ent real-time feed­back, dri­ve employ­ee engage­ment and give indi­vid­u­als a deep­er under­stand­ing of their role and devel­op­ment in turn builds high­er per­form­ing teams — regard­less of their location.”

Stu­art Hearn, Founder and CEO of Clear Review, says: ​“We’re extreme­ly proud of the suc­cess of our Clear Review plat­form and its role in improv­ing busi­ness per­for­mance and devel­op­ing tal­ent around the world. The acqui­si­tion pro­vides a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to accel­er­ate Clear Review’s growth as well as inte­grate with Advanced’s HR solu­tions, help­ing organ­i­sa­tions retain their best tal­ent and increase performance.” 

About Advanced

We are the third largest British soft­ware and ser­vices com­pa­ny in the UK. We help organ­i­sa­tions cre­ate the right dig­i­tal foun­da­tions that dri­ve pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, insight and inno­va­tion – all while remain­ing safe, secure and compliant. 

We enable our cus­tomers to achieve increased effi­cien­cies, sav­ings and growth oppor­tu­ni­ties through focused, right-first-time soft­ware solu­tions that evolve with the chang­ing needs of their busi­ness and the mar­kets they oper­ate in.

Our solu­tions for both com­mer­cial and pub­lic sec­tor organ­i­sa­tions sim­pli­fy busi­ness chal­lenges and deliv­er imme­di­ate val­ue, pos­i­tive­ly impact­ing mil­lions of people’s lives.

We have a strong track record in help­ing our cus­tomers jour­ney to the Cloud. We man­age pri­vate, pub­lic and hybrid Cloud envi­ron­ments as well as deliv­er sec­tor spe­cif­ic Cloud-based solu­tions and ser­vices. We are cer­ti­fied part­ners with Ama­zon Web Ser­vices (AWS) and Microsoft, and have achieved the high­est lev­els of accreditations.

Our Cloud solu­tions are used by organ­i­sa­tions of all shapes and sizes includ­ing High­ways Eng­land, Per­form­ing Rights Soci­ety (PRS) and Aspire Furniture

www​.onead​vanced​.com

For fur­ther media infor­ma­tion, please contact

Clare Homer, Fire­work PR – email: clareh@​fireworkpr.​co.​uk or call: 07825 744134

Clare Wall, Fire­work PR — email: clare@​fireworkpr.​co.​uk or call: 07974 161127