The world of Work Tech and HR Tech is brimming with technologies but this very huge number of technologies has also become a pain point. Fragmented enterprise technologies have become the bane for today’s organizations and instead of adding to productivity, are killing business productivity. It is this very challenge that Brightfox, an end-to-end talent experience platform that enables companies and their employees to accelerate their growth and evolve culture through engagement, feedback, and performance aims to address. 

The platform founded by Deena Fox, a former Hugo Boss, Amazon, Jet, and Oscar HR executive, unifies vital point solutions and delivers an intuitive talent experience for startups to mass enterprises, across industries. The company which recently landed a seed-funding round of $1.1 Mn aims to use technology to support the employment journey, with seamless transitions from one stage of the talent life-cycle to the next and in the process reduce the data isolation, administrative burden, and high financial cost associated with current point solutions on the market. End result-one cohesive platform generating cohesive sets of data and analytics for companies for all stages of talent life cycle-be it employee engagement, continuous performance feedback, or learning. 

In an exclusive interaction with People Matters, Deena Fox sheds light on her journey from commerce to HR Tech and how technology will shape the talent experience space in the years to come. 

You are a former Hugo Boss, Amazon, Jet, and Oscar HR executive, what made you take the plunge in building a talent experience platform. What was that tipping point?

Over nearly two decades, I’ve led the HR function for some incredible companies in various stages of growth, including Amazon, Jet, Hugo Boss, and Oscar. What I experienced very consistently is that agnostic of the size and industry, companies are essentially facing the same set of challenges related to company culture and employee engagement. Like many other HR professionals, I turned to the HR technology market for solutions. I found that the market lacks a unified platform that directly addresses the needs of both the company and the employees. HR departments find themselves implementing a number of different “point solutions” that were designed to solve a single or small set of problems—which is not only costly for companies but a fragmented and confusing experience for employees. 

“I wanted to create the first talent experience platform, enabling companies to gather the valuable data and insights to evolve culture, while delivering a better user experience for employees, at a lower cost and administrative burden.”

How exactly does Brightfox help companies attract, develop and retain talent with seamless technology?

Brightfox enables people to take an active role in their own performance, development, and learning while creating a sense of community and belonging. The platform is built on a foundation that drives social interaction, so employees engage with each other, celebrate milestones together, build internal networks based on common interests, and have a direct link into the company to contribute to innovation, feedback, and culture overall.

How has the traction been for Brightfox since its founding? How many customers does Brightfox have? How do you monetize the platform?

We launched with a range of clients across industries including Oscar, whom we beta tested with prior to launch. We are an enterprise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) with a subscription model based on the number of users. We market and sell our product directly to HR professionals or other key executives within companies. 

What differentiates Brightfox from competitors that offer similar end to end solutions?

Brightfox is the first software company that built technology to support the overall employee experience rather than trying to solve one or two problems. We designed Brightfox to support all critical milestones in the employment journey from onboarding through exit, with a curated set of features that allow people to play an active role in accelerating their own growth and development. Companies now have the opportunity for the first time in this market to select and implement a single platform that provides data and insights necessary to evolve the culture and drive better business performance at a fraction of the cost.

 What are going to be your future plans as far as product and expansion are concerned?

Currently, our plans are to focus on offering Brightfox to companies of all sizes, across all industries, within the US market.

How do you see technology changing the talent experience space in the coming years? What will be some of the trends? What do you see are some of the challenges in this space?

I see the talent experience space growing exponentially. At this point, it’s really in its infancy—current technologies in the space tend to focus on a single or small set of problems at a time. For example, a company may have one tool for messaging, another one to measure employee engagement, and yet another for continuous performance and feedback. 

The future of this space, starting with Brightfox as the first to arrive in this new category, “talent experience platforms,” is going to be focused on more complete technology to support the employee experience—from job candidates to alums—optimizing all of the steps in their talent journey on a single platform. 

Brightfox delivers a rich feature set and superior experience, at a fraction of the cost and administrative burden of using multiple point solutions.