Talent Management solutions promise to provide strategic talent information it seems information tracked is historical activity. Taleo recently rebranded from “talent management” to “talent intelligence” perhaps suggesting that capturing and reporting on historic metrics does not provide the whole picture and needs to change and be upgraded.

It may also indicate historical, activity based metrics are difficult to tie to business strategy, prompting a move towards solutions that add “intelligence” to talent data. To our view, this may be simply a “re-packaging” of the original talent management approach and still fails to address the root of the problem, which is a lack of talent data that ties directly to the organization’s business strategy.

Should companies pay millions of dollars for software capturing activities that don’t easily link to strategic business objectives? Maybe – if all they need to do is capture activities.  No – if they think they can easily turn a rear view of tactical data points into forward looking information that can help a business reach it’s objectives.

Using Team At-A-Glance in Advisor helps managers visualize trends.

Talent analytics software is the next evolution for businesses searching for ways to easily capture and visualize talent information.  Talent analytics measures the talent themselves – what they want and do best.  It’s a visually stunning way for business leaders to incorporate talent information into strategic decision-making – dare I say treating their talent asset like an asset.

Instead of historic, activity data such as headcounts, turnover, and other tactical information, management can view entire teams, cross functional teams, entire organizations at-a-glance and spot trends ad patterns. This results in action and can make teams more efficient and productive.  Consider one idea.  If a strategic initiative is to dramatically increase customer satisfaction scores – wouldn’t it be valuable to quickly look at the customer service team to see if the people you are counting on to achieve this stunning goal love giving customer service or not.  If you found out that only 4 out 25 customer services reps were at all altruistic – what would you do differently than if you knew that 19 out of 25 customer reps were altruistic and loved providing great service?

This is a great example of talent analytics helping a company achieve their strategic business goal.

The best part is the data collection process is collected easily and quickly (less than 1/2 hour per person) online via a powerful SaaS platform. This painlessly allows managers to gain important insight about their personnel while still getting their work done. They are able to focus on the understanding, analyzing and fixing rather than data collection.

Leveraging talent analytics will allow companies to more efficiently align resources to their overall strategy. Finally, a company’s talent becomes truly strategic in helping a business achieve it’s objectives. That’s the whole point, right?