It has shied away from selling applications such as human resources software.

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Asana is used for a wide variety of applications, such as project management, software bug tracking, human resources application tracking or a light-weight CRM system.

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The Justice Department told the court that the Oracle-Peoplesoft merger would eliminate one of only three big suppliers of auditing and human resources software in the US, hampering competition.

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Worse yet for BrassRing, PeopleSoft, the king of human resources software, has developed a program that competes with BrassRing and in one year has scooped up more than 400 customers.

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Workday is a provider of human resources software to companies, part of a class of software-as-a-service (SaaS) that in recent history have proven to be far better bets for investors than flashier counterparts aimed at reengineering how consumers shop, interact and communicate.

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The trick, says human-resources-technology consultant Elaine Orler of Talent Function Group, is building software that can predict a good fit between candidate and employer.

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But since real-estate professionals tend to be salespeople at heart and the market for sales aces is growing, making a switch to sales roles in other, more robust industries such as insurance, pharmaceuticals and computer software, is usually possible, says Jay Hargis, founder and managing partner of Talent Insight Group, a human-resources consulting firm.

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