Ezekia and BoardEx Form Strategic Alliance

August 12, 2020 – Innovative executive search software platform Ezekia and BoardEx, an advanced enterprise solution connecting users with an exclusive network of global business leaders and decision makers, have partnered to offer recruiting firms a solution that will enable them to access their BoardEx account via Ezekia. The integration will be operationally ready in the last quarter of this year.

Established in 1999, BoardEx is a global technology and data solution provider. The company delivers relationship intelligence and people data on over 1.9 million organizations, and the 1.4 million individuals who lead them. The platform helps companies leverage their known and unknown connections to drive business development activities while also utilizing the firm’s proprietary data. BoardEx, led by CEO Cameron Ireland – one of the company’s original founders – is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Euromoney Institutional Investor.

Founded in 2015 (and rebranded Ezekia in 2019), Ezekia is a CRM and assignment management software platform focused on servicing executive search firms. Ezekia is cloud based, intuitive to use and is customizable by the clients themselves.

“Ezekia was created to fill an urgent need in the executive search market,” said Joseph Blass, CEO. “The search systems from existing providers are often overly complex. The Ezekia system is designed to be simple, easy-to-use and customizable, yet at the same time retaining all the essential functionality that search firms need to manage their business.” As the global pandemic rages on, said Mr. Blass, every search firm is seeking an edge “and we provide it.”

“Our customers, who until recently were on legacy systems, tell us that the biggest difference between their old systems and ours is that they actually use Ezekia because they want to and not because they feel compelled,” said Mr. Blass. “It is good to have developed services that are simultaneously helping both executive search firms and senior executives.”

People Intelligence Partnership to Benefit Executive Recruiters

In this brand new episode of ‘Talent Talks,’ Hunt Scanlon Media host Rob Adams is joined by chief executives Joseph Blass of Ezekia and Cameron Ireland of BoardEx. Here, they discuss their recent strategic alliance, why they chose each other and the benefits this newly integrated service will provide to their global clients and customers. Listen now!

“Software is there to makes one’s life easier; there’s no point offering software that can do a lot, but requires weeks of training to learn how to use,” said Mr. Blass. “Despite being one of the most sophisticated systems available, Ezekia is designed to make life simple for the busy executive search user and improve their productivity. It is easy to transition from legacy systems and upgrade to Ezekia and it requires only minimal training to get up and running.”

“Where Ezekia can help, especially with search firms that have many global offices, is by greatly improving collaboration between far-flung offices on business development, streamlining compliance and reporting,” Mr. Blass said. “While some software providers might offer a ‘large’ number of client reports, Ezekia provides the search firm with tools to easily design their own bespoke reports that meet the precise requirements of that firm. This is just one example which is typical of how we think – even though all of our clients are executive search firms, each one has slightly different needs, so rather than impose a ‘one size fits all’ policy, we allow a great degree of customization so that each firm’s experience suits exactly to their needs.”

Mr. Ireland and Mr. Blass recently sat down with Hunt Scanlon Media to discuss the offerings and how this new collaboration will benefit search firms. Following are excerpts from that discussion.

Joe, as a CRM, your firm has to constantly prioritize which services to integrate into your system. The choices are endless. Why did you select BoardEx?

Blass: At Ezekia, we work with top-end retained executive search firms. Our customers have very high standards in all aspects of their business, so everything about our service, including the third parties that we work with, are also required to have very high standards. Therefore, even though the choice of potential integrations is endless, we have to be very selective. First, we need our partners to have a great product; that is obvious. Second, the combined service with Ezekia must benefit our customers. And lastly, and this might be less obvious, it is very important that we need to be on the same wavelength as our partners. So, we only want to work with partners that evolve their technology, are responsive and are easy for us to work with. BoardEx meets all of those requirements – they have a great product, our customers like the product and want it, and BoardEx is a pleasure for us to work with.

Cameron, there are many CRM software systems, why did you choose to partner with Ezekia?

Ireland: BoardEx has over the years become a “must-have” product within a number of sectors but none more so than executive search. Part of our success has always been to embed our solution into our user’s workflow and ensure that they have access to their information whether it be from a CRM, or web solution, and our people and relationship intelligence data. When we saw Ezekia, we were extremely impressed with its functionality, user experience and the ease in which BoardEx data could be embedded within the system, and more importantly used by our mutual clients. We always strive to put our customers first and ensure the solution is the right one – we believe that Ezekia has the same values as BoardEx and this has been demonstrated by the success we have had almost immediately in moving forward in our partnership.

What are the benefits for customers created by the integrated service? 

Blass: The search firms have a complex task because the requirements of their clients are based on a complex set of criteria. At Ezekia, we view our job as helping the search firms to both ease and shorten the search process. For that reason, we put a big emphasis on making Ezekia aesthetically pleasing and generally very intuitive. Now, where does BoardEx come in? BoardEx also helps the search firms by making the search for company and personal data relevant and quick. Adding in the rich and comprehensive data of BoardEx and the BoardEx set of tools further eases the work for search firms. Therefore, the combined Ezekia / BoardEx service can be greater than the sum of its parts.

“When we saw Ezekia, we were extremely impressed with its functionality, user experience and the ease in which BoardEx data could be embedded within the system, and more importantly used by our mutual clients.” 

Ireland: BoardEx has been designed to overlay onto a CRM. Ezekia has made this seamless and ensures that users of both systems can immediately gain access to both highly detailed and accurate people intelligence from BoardEx combined with proprietary information stored within Ezekia. The overlay of the relationship mapping functionality within BoardEx ensures that any “call to action,” in other words a significant business development can be recognized within the combined solution and then executed via the relationship mapping tools all within the same workflow. The additional data sources that Ezekia pulls in complement the data from BoardEx and that provides the best possible solution.

Are either of your companies looking to roll out any new services or features?

Blass: There are many plans for mutual development, but just as an example, on Ezekia, customers can customize their own fields for candidate and company data, so each company can customize the data that they’re tracking. Therefore, it will be possible using BoardEx and Ezekia to easily track data around diversity, where permissible.

Why is it important for search firms to have an innovative, easy-to-use software system to manage its workflow with clients?

Blass: “Easy-to-use” means you and your team actually use the system. In turn, the more you use it, the better the data becomes and this becomes a virtuous circle. Easy to use also means saving time and “time is money.” An intuitive system helps firms to save overhead costs and produce more results in the same time frame. Lastly, while innovation usually is related to technology, I would also suggest that innovative firms are more responsive in all aspects of service, such as support and training.

Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media