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By Theresa J. Rice, Talent Management Strategist

Define a Clear Path to Your Talent Management ROI

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Define a Clear Path to Your Talent Management ROI

Abstract

The investment you make in a Talent Management solution can solve a variety of employee and business is-sues. In this paper, we discuss typical business problems encountered when an organization tries to evaluate the quality of its employees and talent by pulling data from a variety of systems, and how an integrated solution helps solve these challenges. The goal is to not only articulate what the vision of integrated Talent Management is, but also what the business case is for implementing it.

To that end, Return on Investment (ROI) is more than understanding program costs, time cycles or completion rates. It’s using those internal measures to evaluate how a technology—such as a Talent Management system—adds value to a company, and helps achieve your goals, both internally and externally with clients or customers.

In today’s business climate, all technology investments are looked at cautiously, and they should be. Budgets are limited, people may already be stretched to their maximum production capacity, and the risk of failure—not receiving the necessary ROI—cannot be ignored. Organizations that deploy new technology with a clear understanding of the company’s goals and objectives, and that are willing to accept change, craft detailed action plans that greatly reduce the chance of failure. With robust planning, desired business outcomes are achieved in minimal time, and with minimal risk. Forward-thinking organizations seek to clearly understand how they can implement a new Talent Management system to receive the maximum long-term benefits from their short-term technology investment. Today, it’s more imperative than ever to make sure the realized gains of implementing a new Talent Management system far outweigh the costs associated with the implementation, and more significantly, the costs of continuously hiring new people or potentially losing top performers.

Research clearly points to the fact that we need to build systems and processes to serve business outcomes and talent “results,” and integrated software can help contribute to these outcomes. Talent Management software is no longer just about making HR processes easier; it is also for managers and employees to collaborate and manage themselves and to understand how the organization is measured by the talent marketplace. The technology allows us to gather sufficient data to make key business decisions to increase alignment between employee and company goals, which in turn increases performance and employee engagement.

Below, are four top business objectives that can be achieved through your Talent Management tools:

1. Top line revenue

Challenge: An organization aspires to create an agile organization by identifying and mobilizing pivotal talent to accelerate critical growth initiatives. The allocation of talent in the right roles and retention of top performers are priorities. The combination of unplanned turnover and long time-to-productivity are causing pain.

Solution: A talent profile delivers unique visibility into the employees of your organization, including: formal performance ratings, competency data; education and training; personal insights around career aspirations and experiences; feedback on the value and contributions of your talent from individuals across your business network creates a motivated and a more secure and more prepared work force. Gaining the right insight into your workforce is a foundational requirement for any employee-performance initiative intended to increase the performance of even the highest-performing employees.

Challenge: The organization is potentially missing up-selling and cross-selling sales opportunities due to mishandled critical customer interactions.

Solution: By leveraging collaborative, talent-driven learning, goal alignment, skills analysis, performance management and career development with unified processes, an organization’s customer-facing professionals will experience enhanced performance. Customer interactions will be handled with quality and consistency which increases up-sell and cross-sell success rates, and boosts top-line revenue growth. Forrester Research and Bersin & Associate studies suggest that “companies that implement strategic employee processes, supported by employee system technology, produce more revenue per employee.”1

Supporting ROI metrics/statistics: Top line revenue• Reduction to operating costs associated with

voluntary turnover• Shorten time to market (new product training,

talent identification for new assignments, product launch)

• Reduce cost by promoting internally (filling open positions with internal candidates)

2. Cost optimization

Challenge: The lack of integration of pre-defined employee processes slows implementation of new ideas and increases costs.

1 Bersin and Associates Research & Forrester Research www.bersin.com or www.forrester.com.

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Define a Clear Path to Your Talent Management ROI

Solution: An integrated solution provides a single talent platform to power comprehensive and unified performance, and compensation and learning processes connected across functional requirements. The end result? Fewer managers need to get involved, which reduces actual work time spent on projects, and ultimately speeds up the implementation itself and time-to-benefit. Highly integrated and business-focused Talent Management strategies lower operational costs.

Challenge: Redundant, disparate systems create an ineffective cost structure.

Solution: An integrated talent platform is the technological foundation for all of your performance, learning and compensation capabilities. Think of it as a connection that creates a unified user experience, a common data dictionary and a consistent view throughout the talent profile. In addition, an integrated cloud-based platform reduces costs by eliminating redundant and disparate systems, as well as eliminating IT maintenance and support of an on-site system.

Supporting ROI metrics/statistics: Cost optimization• System consolidation (converting multiple siloed

processes to one system of record)• More administrative efficiency (easier to create,

deploy, track employee records)• Reduce training-related travel costs

3. Productivity gains

Challenge: Excessive costs associated with automated, but siloed, employee Talent Management processes are negatively affecting the organization’s overall operational efficiency and productivity.

Solution: A Performance Suite is designed from the ground up to deliver a unified approach to all your employee processes, such as: reviews, goal planning, career planning, succession planning, leadership development and workforce planning. As a result, organizations can manage change more quickly, motivate employees more effectively, create better employee retention strategies, and mobilize pivotal talent beyond divisional boundaries, increasing efficiency and productivity.

Supporting ROI metrics/statistics: Productivity gains• Productivity gain for accurate dismissals

ensuring the right employee are in the right job • Alignment of employee tasks with corporate

goals• Minimizing lost productivity costs associated

with voluntary turnover • Employees provided with instant feedback

about projects, problems & opportunities• Increase in customer satisfaction scores

4. Risk management/workforce safety/compliance

Challenge: An organization needs a way to ensure compliance with key policies, as well as a consistent process to onboard and facilitate the procurement of company equipment.

Solution: Implementing a Talent Management system that manages the tracking of equipment provided to a new hire, and recalls that equipment when off-boarding, helps control an organization’s costs, and also ensures that your meeting compliance requirements. Additionally, by sharing corporate standards for ethics, harassment and code of conduct early in the employee’s introduction to your firm, an organization can reduce potential risks and issues down the road.

Challenge: An organization needs to optimize certification and regulatory compliance efforts.

Solution: When a Talent Management system is built on a common talent platform, it provides a compliance and certification solution to help organizations keep pace with the changing regulatory environment. It not only minimizes the negative effects of non-compliance, but also helps your workforce focus on outputs that contribute to business results. Studies suggest that companies can get as much as 70% greater productivity from certified resources.2 This statistic alone provides a compelling reason to optimize your certification and compliance efforts.

2 McKinsey & Company: Resource Revolution: Meeting the world’s energy, materials, food and water needs.

Supporting ROI metrics/statistics: Risk management, safety and compliance• Meeting local, state, federal, global and industry

regulations reduces fines due to non-compliance• Validated training reduces compliance costs by

reducing or eliminating potential audit risks and resulting fines.

• Secure, company-controlled environment for sharing information

• Inventory equipment and collection of inventory on exit.

In summary

A well-managed, properly trained and incentivized workforce is the biggest asset for any organization. Forward-thinking organizations are implementing strategic talent processes that more closely align their workforce to business objectives and goals. Many organizations are using the technology platform to drive this transformation from a compliance and automation focus to a strategic focus.

Studies prove that “companies that implement strategic employee processes supported by employee system technology drive better business results. From retailers that have gained efficiencies in their hiring process with an online recruiting systems to handle the flexible staffing needs during peak seasons; to healthcare institutions that have implemented strategic pay-for-performance initiatives; and financial institutions that keep pace with the ever changing regulatory environment with their learning systems.”3

Integrating talent processes requires sharing data across systems. An employee’s skill set, competencies and work history should be stored and readily accessible in an integrated recruiting, performance management and learning management system. Talentmgt.com also points out that 60 percent of companies have two or more separate talent systems in addition to an HRIS or employee data warehouse. Most of these companies report that the sharing of data between these systems is poor or nonexistent.

3 www.talentmgt.com/articles/view/keep-your-eyes-on-the-performance-management-market/

Without proper integration between HR systems, the goal of attaining a holistic view of your employees is difficult, if not impossible.

An integrated Talent Management system helps you manage talent by creating accurate profiles that allow you to understand the needs and growth potential of your most valuable assets: your employees.

Real ROI is achieved when an organization’s talent performs at its potential, which makes your organization more efficient and drives profits to your bottom line.

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Define a Clear Path to Your Talent Management ROI

About the Author

Theresa J. Rice Talent Management Strategist

Theresa J. Rice is a talent management Strategistfor Ciber’s Infor Practice. She is a Global HumanCapital leader with significant accomplishments andover 15 years of experience with strategic expertisein Talent and Program Management. She holds aBachelor’s in Organizational Communication and herMaster’s in HR Management. Theresa has always beenpassionate about TM Strategy, Process Improvementand deployment and development of solutions. She hasworked in key TM roles for firms like Taleo, TeleTech andSaba and has familiarity with several of the TM Softwareproviders in today’s marketplace as an end user,consultant and evaluator of tools.

Theresa is also a regular blogger for ciber.com on thesubjects Human Capital Management, and Infor/LawsonTalent management. Please visit our blog on ciber.com toread her regular entries.

About Ciber

Ciber is a global IT consulting company with some 6,500 employees in North America, Europe and Asia/Pacific, and is approaching $1 billion in annual business. Ciber partners with organizations to develop technology strategies and solutions that deliver tangible business value. Founded in 1974, the company trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: CBR).

For more information, visit www.ciber.com.

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