Jim Holincheck

SystematicHR had a post discussing how much it costs to drive up revenue by 1%.The post correctly points out that there are a number of talent management “levers” an organization could pull to help achieve the increase in revenue.  In addition, the post discusses the need to look proactively at how an organization spends its HR budgets.  I would take it one step further.  Organizations need to understand the impact of the various “levers”, they have at their disposal and make fact-based decisions about which ones (or combination) to deploy.  The answers are in the data that many companies are already collecting (or will collect when they finish implementing their talent management applications).  Also, when the data is not there, companies need to learn how to test different levers to understand their potential impact (sort of analogous to marketers test marketing new products in new markets).  In the “Hype Cycle for Human Capital Management Software, 2007″ (Gartner subscription required) I called this Workforce Decision Support.  If you will be at the HR-XML Global Partnering & Integration Summit in Las Vegas on September 27, please come to my presentation where I will discuss this (and more about future trends in HCM software) in more detail.