Getting Down to Business in Talent Management: The Case for a Unified Solution

Issue #1: Too much to manage. HR professionals are literally (well, figuratively) surrounded by too many separate applications to manage them well or economically. (Bersin by Deloitte research shows that 1/3 of larger companies have over 10 HCM solutions to juggle – a 15% increase since the prior year.1

Issue #2: CHROs are often unable to answer the talent questions their executives ask. Because data about the workforce may be scattered across disparate platforms, analytics is difficult, and reporting often inaccurate.

Issue #3: While HR departments report misgivings around their employees’ engagement and the ability to address attrition of key talent, they may not have the consumer-grade workforce-facing technologies in place to support these issues.

And Issue #4: How do we create the business case for integrating all our disparate solutions to address these other issues?

Today, integrated or “unified” talent management solutions, referred to as talent management suites, are the most rapidly growing area within human capital management (HCM) software, replacing the proliferation of disparate siloed applications that led to those first three issues.2 But how can HR represent the value proposition to their executives to

get the funding to replace the old standalone products or add new talent management applications to their mix?

While there is a great similarity across businesses, sometimes buyers need to consider how to articulate the value of integration to their executives. There are steps to be followed, as shown in the chevron below:

And there are potholes to be avoided: common “gottcha’s” that impede successful results. These can include lack of alignment with corporate goals, lack of a corporate sponsor who believes in your issue and the proposed solution, or the inability to articulate clearly the business benefits if you get what you are asking for.

In an upcoming web seminar entitled “Getting to Yes: Creating a Business Case for a Talent Management Suite,” we will review the key areas to address and the stumbling blocks to avoid in creating the business case to drive investment decisions for unified talent software architecture.

Register here to join me on August 7th at 1:00pm ET to learn the key steps in creating a compelling business case for talent suite acquisition.

1 Investments in Human Capital Management Systems 2014: What Technology Users Have and What They Will Buy in the Year Ahead by Dr. Katherine Jones, Bersin by Deloitte 2014.

2 Talent Optimization for the Global Workforce: The Market for Talent Management Systems 2014 by Dr. Katherine Jones, Bersin by Deloitte 2014.

Katherine Jones, VP, HCM Technology Research, Bersin by Deloitte

Source: Bersin by Deloitte, 2014.