As I talk to companies about their frustrations around the inability to make progress with their Talent Management initiatives, the reasons center mostly around lack of data, tools, and infrastructure to provide the information they need. When I hear these types of frustrations, I think about The Hackett Group survey results that show quite clearly: best-in-class companies invest 28% more in their HR technology and infrastructure than average companies. One of Hackett’s latest press releases claims that companies can improve earnings nearly 15% by improving their talent management function.

With studies like these, how do we think can we improve our talent management function without investing in the technology to support the effort? We need metrics and tools to support the business case that investing in people enhances business performance.

In exchanging emails with my colleague John Macy about this, he says

“a) The tools are available for executives to use and progress from workforce analytics to predictive modeling. However, the tools need to be populated with the right information and relevant metrics. Too many use the tools to provide useless information.

b) Money needs to be invested in data integrity so there is a higher level of confidence in the information. The HRMS transactional stuff to collect data has been overlooked and processes are not in place to capture information as it changes in many companies. Poor integration of systems doesn’t help either.”

If “people are our most important asset,” as most executives claim, then at some point they need to put their money where their mouth is and invest in the tools and technology needed to effectively support the people-related activities in our business.