Executing Integrated Talent Management (ITM) – Step 7: Sustainability

HRchitect has been involved in approximately 2000 HR technology related projects for hundreds of companies of all sizes and industries across the world. We have gained tremendous insight that we love to share with you so that you can benefit from the experience, and the lessons learned from others. With 18 years in business behind us in working with many of today’s leading companies, let us best position your company for a successful future with Human Capital Management Systems!

Successfully executing the ITM concept requires a holistic approach that includes embracing ITM as a philosophy, developing a strategy, applying science & measurement disciplines, breaking down process barriers, selecting and implementing enabling technology, and sustaining the new solution over time.

Seven previous posts around this subject have given you an overview of our seven-step process for a successful approach to ITM and covered the first six steps – Philosophy, Strategy, Science & Measurement, Process, Technology, and Implementation. Now we move on to the final step, step #7, Sustainability.

Step 7 – Sustainability

Fundamental question:  How do we maintain and evolve the solution to adapt to changing business and HR needs?

So, the new solution is live – Hooray! However, you can’t afford to rest on your laurels, because your business is not standing still. The pace of change is ever increasing, and now the issue will be determining the best way to keep moving forward – how to optimize processes, drive user adoption, and increase the ITM solution’s impact on business results. HRchitect recommends the following to enable Sustainability:

• Plan and budget for the evolution of the solution on a regular basis – if you’ve just implemented a SaaS application, expect that there will be a steady stream of new features available in the package. Not all of these capabilities will be relevant to your business, and it will be an exercise to determine which features to include in your own “upgrade” based on which user roles are impacted, the ability of those roles to absorb further change, and the impact of other HCM or enterprise deployments
• Selling the system to users does not go away a few months after “Go Live.” You must develop and execute an ongoing marketing plan that continues to extol the benefits of the application, describes pending changes, and highlights the experiences of “poster child” users.
• Regularly update senior management on the progress being made, continue to educate them on the ROI of the project, and ask for their continued support.
• Keep close to users and stakeholders at all levels of the organization, and build their feedback into the application roadmap. Develop a governance model that includes a steering committee that meets regularly to review the plan, prioritize issues, and re-allocate resources if necessary.

Conclusion

It is important to note that this seven step methodology for executing ITM focuses on business goals and objectives (the “What”) before addressing lower-level concerns like processes and technologies (the “How”). As a result, a firm can have multiple ITM technologies from disparate vendors, and still be executing a comprehensive ITM strategy. This broader, more inclusive definition is critical, given the state of the vendor marketplace that is attempting to fulfill the ITM vision of many organizations.

As always, please let us know how HRchitect can assist you to get maximum benefit that comes from Integrated Talent Management and as it progresses, E2E HCM.

Matt Lafata
President & CEO