Driven by new management, corporate restructuring, greater global competition, and other factors, many companies are under great pressure to deliver better business results. To deliver these results - higher revenues, enhanced profitability and greater shareholder value - companies are increasingly focused on improving the performance of their employees. While many companies have already made progress in optimizing the return on inventory, financial capital, and other corporate assets, they recognize that improving the return on their investment in people - by managing them more effectively - presents a rich opportunity for significant new gains. These companies view superior talent management as a high priority for their business managers and vital to their success.

In addition to the imperative to deliver better business results, the need for more effective talent management is particularly urgent due to the impending retirement of many skilled workers. In North America and other developed economies, the first wave of baby boomers is already beginning to retire, and companies need effective strategies to replace or retain these skilled professionals.

Over the years, many technology solutions have been developed to assist companies with the task of talent management. The earliest of these solutions was designed to reduce the burden of administrative HR tasks, such as payroll, 401k and pension administration, employee records management, and benefits and policy communications. These solutions have been widely deployed, yielding significant savings and relieving HR departments from much of their administrative burden. In fact, many companies have outsourced these tasks to specialized and highly automated service providers.

As HR departments have been relieved of many of these administrative tasks, they have been able to focus on more strategic functions. To support this effort, technology solutions were introduced to automate individual strategic talent management functions. Over the last decade, these discrete applications to automate recruiting, performance assessment, compensation management, succession planning, and employee development & learning have proliferated (see Figure 1).