2025 Fosway 9-Grid™ for Cloud HR
2025 Fosway 9-Grid™ finds Cloud HR adjusting to TA acquisitions, work redesign and skills strategy uncertainty
Fosway Group’s latest analysis of the Cloud-based HCM market, the 2025 Fosway 9-Grid™ for Cloud HR, reveals a market continuing to experience slow growth while its big players encroach further into the TA (talent acquisition) space. The recently announced agreements by SAP and Workday to acquire SmartRecruiters and Paradox, respectively, show the landscape is consolidating, with fewer independent options now available but rising expectations of innovation and scale.
The 2025 Fosway 9-Grid™ for Cloud HR also shows that HR is grappling with a more fundamental change: that of work design. Eminently responsible, the impact of AI and automation is now one of HR’s top priorities, according to Fosway’s HR Realities research 2025. As stated in this year’s 9-Grid™ for Cloud HR report, “AI does not transform a business by auto-drafting job descriptions or inferring skills. The real task is work redesign, deciding which tasks move to AI agents [and] which remain with people.”
This year’s Fosway 9-Grid™ for Cloud HR highlights the continuing disconnect between skills, tasks and job roles. With automation looking set to disrupt all businesses at some level, HR teams must not rely too heavily on external tools to understand the need for redeployment and reskilling programmes; the time for planning is coming to an end – action is needed.
“This year’s 9-Grid™ report shows that Cloud HR is rising to the challenge of AI disruption, even if edge case innovation is still limited,” said Dr. Sven Elbert, Head of Analyst Services and lead analyst for the Fosway 9-Grid™ for Cloud HR. “As basic AI functionality becomes a firm baseline expectation for Cloud HR providers, agentic AI is clearly the new frontier and with that, the prospect of a redefinition of not only HR’s role in reshaping work, but a redefinition of work itself. In 2025 and beyond, standing out from the crowd in an energised vendor environment requires bold action and courageous innovation.”
We are still in the middle of the AI gold rush, but due to a combination of improved baseline expectation and a more prominent governance and regulatory structure (in EMEA at least), differentiation has become harder – and therefore more desirable. One cohort that remains more resistant to reduction in its numbers through AI, and is therefore a hotbed for EX enhancement, is frontline workers. Across areas such as payroll, communications and shift management, deskless and other frontline workers have found themselves benefiting from AI-powered improvements to the employee experience. The progress of this cohort, as with all others, is one that Fosway Group will continue to track as solution providers improve their offerings.
The full 2025 9-Grid™ for Cloud HR report can be downloaded online now.
Fosway’s David Wilson and Sven Elbert will take questions on the research in a live online ‘Ask The Analyst’ session on 14 October 2025. Register for your free place here. Places are allocated on a first come, first served basis.