Where is Talent Management Technology Headed?

By Posted in - Talent Management on January 26th, 2011 0 Comments

According to Towers Watson’s HR Service Delivery and Technology Survey, “the most pressing HR issue in 2010 remains putting new or improved talent management technology systems in place.”    However, the market is moving very slowly.  Josh Bersin commented in a recent blog, “For all the seminars, workshops, and books on the topic out there, organizations are still fairly early in this journey.  Our research shows that around 20% of all organizations have a mature strategy and talent leader in place … but almost half the companies we survey have little or no strategy yet.”

This means that HR leaders will probably continue to approach talent management technology in a piecemeal fashion, focusing on solving the most pressing current priority.  This will allow both niche players and large platform players to continue to grow in the near term future.    However, there should a tilt toward full platform providers as organizations realize that consolidated data on a single platform enables a much richer level of reporting and analytics.  There should be an increasing rate of full platform sales.

The Talent Management market is still relatively immature with different components at different stages of maturity.  Applicant tracking is arguably the most mature.  Performance Management is probably in the middle stages of maturity and workforce analytics is in early stage.  As the market matures, there will be continued consolidation among the technology vendors.  We are seeing this consolidation occur today at a fairly rapid pace as vendors leverage acquisitions to fill white space.  One of the most gaping holes is the lack of predictive measurements, rich content, and well-designed analytics.   Platform providers will need to fill these holes to move technology from an efficiency play to a focus on talent management effectiveness.

In summary, I predict the future of talent management technology will be characterized by three major trends:

  1. Slow but increasing adoption rates of full platform solutions
  2. Continued consolidation among technology vendors
  3. Greater focus on providing data that matters (data that is reliable and predictive of job success) with insightful analytics (reports that leverage the data to both inform and drive talent management decisions)
Patrick Hauenstein, Ph.D.

About Patrick Hauenstein, Ph.D.

Patrick Hauenstein is the President and Chief Science Officer for OMNIview. During his free time Pat likes to cook. He is particularly fond of traditional southern cuisine. Pat is also an animal lover ...
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