Data-Driven Segmentation

When Kronos and Ultimate Software, two of the largest HR technology companies, merged there was an opportunity and need to understand key audiences for the newly formed industry leader, UKG.

The Challenge

In 2020, Kronos and Ultimate Software officially merged and rebranded to become UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group). Backed by decades of experience in Human Capital Management (HCM) and workforce management (WFM) solutions from these two companies, UKG had the opportunity to redefine its current engagements and expand its audiences globally and upmarket. As a result, UKG sought to better understand their purchasers and make the buyer’s journey more seamless and better aligned with the goals and motivations of their audiences.

Historically, Kronos and Ultimate Software had looked at customers based on company size, geography or industry vertical. With this project, however, Nebo was charged with leading a quantitative study that took an unbiased, data-centric approach to identifying what cuts across those demographic lines and unites different audience segments across decision factors, challenges, buying processes and the challenges that UKG can help solve for them.

The Solution

We took a human-centered, research-driven approach to support UKG on its initiative to uncover a richer and deeper understanding of its target audience segments. To do so, we planned and fielded a survey with more than 1,000 HCM and WFM decision-makers across the US and Canada who had strategic or budgetary influence over vendor selection.

The survey was designed to uncover new learnings by probing into:

• Individual Decision Makers — insights about the individuals making HCM and/or WFM Solution Decisions

• Organizational Factors — key organizational context and drivers of decision making

• HR Department — deep dive into team structures, success measures and influence across organizations

• Decision-Making Teams — key roles and responsibilities throughout the purchase/partner selection process

• Buyer Journey — assessment of considerations and priorities throughout the decision-making process (spanning awareness, research/consideration, decision/selection, implementation and post-purchase/advocacy)

• Competitive Context — audience awareness, usage and perceptions of key competitors in the HCM and WFM marketplace

Following the delivery of our overall survey findings, we worked collaboratively with UKG to align on key segment hypotheses to explore based on internal stakeholders’ strategic priorities.

From there, Nebo conducted cluster analysis, factor analysis and applied segmentation models to the audience data to define new attitudinal and behavioral-based segments for UKG based on how each approaches the HCM/WFM decision process. For each unique segment, we then identified key differences and priorities across the buyer journey — from search triggers to internal decision processes that support selection, and ultimately drilling down to how each audience prefers to work with vendor partners, spanning from initial implementation and the ongoing interactions after selection that contribute to loyalty and advocacy.