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Copyright Ventana Research 2012 Do Not Redistribute Without Permission

The Business Case for


Unified Talent Management


Identifying Benefits and Justifying
Investment



Research Perspective
Sponsored by













Aligning Business and IT To Improve Performance
Ventana Research
2603 Camino Ramon, Suite 200
San Ramon, CA 94583
info@ventanaresearch.com
(925) 242-2579
www.ventanaresearch.com

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More than two-thirds of
organizations said it is
very important to have
a comprehensive view
of performance, but
fragmented systems
and processes work
against developing one.
Fragmentation in Talent Management
To retain skilled talent and attract new recruits, organizations must show
clearly that the work these individuals do or will do has value that it will
align with and further the goals of the business. Creating this picture requires
cohesive workforce management processes and easy access to information
about employees work and how they are evaluated and rewarded. Our
benchmark research on managing performance to motivate talent confirmed
that this is important: More than two-thirds of organizations participating in
our research said it is very important to them to have a comprehensive view
of performance. However, fragmented systems and processes work against
developing one.

Most organizations operate with a disparate array of systems to manage
recruiting, compensation, performance assessment, succession planning,
learning, workforce analytics, contingent labor management and other
aspects of employment. This collection of tools, which often work together
only after customization, impedes coherent end-to-end talent management
processes. It also has the potential to undermine employee engagement, As
employees may be frustrated by difficulty in finding information important to
their careers and understanding how their work contributes to business
goals.

Organizations operating with heterogeneous systems for aspects of workforce
management should assess the benefits of migrating to a common platform
that integrates all their talent
management applications and
ensures that all relevant informa-
tion is readily available to every-
one who needs it. Doing so also
can reduce the costs and effort of
managing applications separately
and improve the quality and con-
sistency of data.

In addition, unifying talent man-
agement can make it easier to
introduce new tools to boost pro-
ductivity and encourage talent. This is particularly important with the advent
and increasingly important role of social media. Participants in recent
research said that using social media-based methods and tools to share
knowledge (cited by 49%) and to collaborate (37%) is important to achieving
their workforce goals. A stable platform can enable these tools and provide
the information to feed them; it also will support accessing them through
Web browsers and mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, which
are important to the new generation of workers.

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Keep in mind that
in realizing benefits
from any new
system, users are
the key; they must
be willing to use it.

The Business Case for a Unified Approach
Making a case for investing in a comprehensive approach to talent
management should begin with an analysis of the drawbacks of the current
situation. These typically include inaccurate data or data conflicts across
applications, duplication of effort needed both to use and maintain them,
separate costs for each software license, and wasted time and frustration for
employees. Then determine the benefits you want to gain by bringing
together disparate applications; these will include eliminating issues
identified in current systems, integrating them to share the same sources of
data, establishing a common, easy-to-use interface for all and enabling
interaction among employees and managers. Once these two analyses are in
hand it will be possible to evaluate cost benefits.

The analyses also will enable you to specify with precision your technical and
user requirements for a unified talent management system. Be sure to
validate the ability of the applications to
support the range of roles and technical
skills needed by your organization, both
currently and foreseeably in the future.

To sharpen the evaluation, we
recommend that you create metrics that
will enable you to measure the success
of the anticipated investment. These
should include changes in productivity,
time savings and quantifiable improvements in employee satisfaction. Our
research shows that the top-ranked workforce metric for talent management
activities is employee satisfaction and engagement, according to 69 percent
of organizations.

Throughout the development of the business case, keep in mind that users
are the key to maximizing the benefits projected to be realized from any new
system; they must be willing to use it. Therefore include in the product
identification and evaluation process representatives of all stakeholders
whose buy-in will be necessary for approval and adoption.

Talent Is the Reason for Investment
Smart managers at all levels and in all lines of business know that acquiring,
engaging and retaining the right talent can reduce the risk of failing to
achieve business objectives. Skilled people who are in demand seldom stay
where they dont feel appreciated. On the other hand, employees who
understand how their jobs support business goals and believe they are being
evaluated fairly and compensated appropriately remain satisfied and loyal.

In todays distributed and geographically disparate workforce, communicating
and collaborating are essential to engage and retain talent. Having a unified
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management environment can make this easier to provide and can save
time, improve workforce productivity and contribute to employee satisfaction.
With respect to the most tangible aspect of managing human capital, pay,
more than three-quarters of organizations in our research on total
compensation management said it is important to integrate that aspect with
other talent management applications.

Tighter integration of applications and elimination of the time lost in
navigating across products from multiple vendors make it easier for
employees to feel in control of their work environment to get what they
need to complete tasks and understand the relation of their jobs to the
companys goals. Unified talent management thus can promote stronger
engagement and satisfaction on the part of the people you rely on to improve
business potential and deliver business results.






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