2025 Fosway 9-Grid™ for Talent & People Success is now live
October 2025: Fosway Group, Europe’s #1 HR industry analyst, has released its latest Fosway 9-Grid™ for Talent & People Success. The research shows that a challenging economy is making for a cautious talent solutions market, pushing HR teams to reduce costs. And yet, many skills and workforce intelligence solutions are reporting strong growth, and AI continues to dominate vendor roadmaps and disrupt traditional talent management processes. It’s clear that in areas where there is strong business impact, there is still plenty of opportunity for innovation and expansion.
“For most of the Talent & People Success vendors it has been a challenging year. Many vendors have experienced lower growth last year, not because of ambivalence about the people agenda – but because economic headwinds are challenging buying decisions and the market” commented David Perring, Chief Insights Officer at Fosway Group and Lead Analyst on the 2025 9-Grid™ for Talent & People Success, “Skills, tasks, the future work, AI transformation and strategic workforce planning are all hot themes for 2026. HR teams are keen to harness a whole new world of workforce intelligence – in the face of growing pressure from HCMs.”
The 2025 Fosway 9-Grid™ for Talent & People Success incorporates both Talent Suites and Specialists. Talent & People Success Suites provide a range of talent functionality, from talent acquisition through to development, performance and employee wellbeing. Specialists provide a more focused set of functionalities within Talent & People Success – for example, focusing on specific topics such as skills, talent mobility, or employee listening.
Fosway research into Talent & People Success this year also shows that a joined-up tech stack has never been more critical, both for a better user experience and for easier and more effective deployment of AI agents as they become available and embedded. Indeed, as the report states, AI will be ‘the springboard to transform the employee experience’, albeit once market-wide adoption rates rise above a level described as ‘falteringly slow’.
“The Talent & People Success market is experiencing a period of disruption, with HCM vendors now seeking to disrupt the disruptors with M&A and AI-driven innovations. But nevertheless there is growth and market share opportunity for specialist platforms to unlock skills and other critical initiatives,” said David Wilson, CEO, Fosway Group. “AI now dominates near all vendor roadmaps. But our recent Market Assessment papers for both Cloud HR and Talent Acquisition have provided rigorous, data-backed evidence of the stark disparity between live reality and roadmap promises. The equivalent paper for Talent & People Success, available in the next few weeks, is likely to paint a similar picture. For the solution providers who know where the opportunities are, it’s the perfect time to seize them.”
The full report can be downloaded online from 29 October.
Fosway’s CEO, David Wilson, and Chief Insights Officer, David Perring, will take questions in a live online ‘Ask The Analyst’ session on 25 November at 3pm BST. Register here for your free place today.
Find out more about Fosway’s AI Strategic Research Programme here.