In this series on ‘skills’ I first described the importance of making the soft side of your business manageable. I introduced what is skills taxonomy and how to build it. In the following article, I covered why & how to build and update your employee skills database.??
Once you have a skills taxonomy, a periodically updated skills database, and a real-time skills inventory, you have a data-backed skills management capability.? As explained previously, you need a capable AI-enabled PSA platform to build the skills data and maintain it.
Professional Services Automation (PSA) software creates efficient workflows that cover the opportunity-to-cash cycles of projects.? PSA software is a platform that aligns processes seamlessly across various projects, groups, and departments. It integrates data from different sources, like CRM, HRMS, timesheets, ERP, project planning, etc. and presents teams with actionable dashboards. It provides validated information related to opportunities, projects, people, costs, billing, and collections making data-based decisions quickly and collaboratively.??
The data-backed skills management can be used for day-to-day actions like quickly finding and allocating the right resources at the right time for your deliveries.?
It is your launchpad for a variety of cross-functional or company-level initiatives to gain competitive advantage, enhanced profitability, and growth. I shall describe some of these initiatives here.
- Interactions with investors: Whether your company is publicly listed or it plans to access the capital markets, your CEO needs to engage with the investor analysts and inverter community. Your comprehensive and real-time skills inventory lets your CEO make claims like, “60% of our workforce is AI-ready”.? Imagine the impact it would create if the CEO’s presentation deck has a slide or two showing the details of your talent pool with hard data. It will significantly impact investor confidence and market perception.
- Sales presentation to potential customers: Highlighting your strengths by showing the sales inventory can put you ahead of your competition, e.g. you can show that, say, 30% of your workforce has the specific in-high-demand skills that your customer needs. It convinces the potential customer that you are well placed to deliver what is needed. It is a factor that can help you clinch the deal.
- Profitability and bill rates: Your CFO, an important stakeholder, can sponsor studies to analyze the correlation between skill sets and bill rates to identify the skill sets that are fetching higher bill rates. The CFO can participate meaningfully in discussions on training and development and bring this focus in.
- CSAT score: Your delivery head can make use of the skills inventory to ensure that the right resources are chosen at the right time for various projects. The quality of resources is crucial for getting high CSAT scores. The delivery head can develop what-if scenarios to optimize costs while achieving a high CSAT score.
- Reducing attrition: HR can use the skills database to engage with individuals to discuss their career progress. HR can show employees how they can develop further and plan their training interactively.
- Individual growth & career planning: Employees can see their historical skill development journey on their dashboards. They can easily see what exactly they must do to climb the career ladder.? Career growth and success are like marathons. Having a training plan, knowing the routes, and getting help on the way motivate the runners and go through it all to the finish line.?
- Learning & Development ( L&D): L&D can use the skills inventory to find the current and future skill gaps. They can design training programs to bridge those gaps and impact top-line and bottom-line growth. They can have such meaningful KPIs rather than using ‘training hours’ which is just a number.
- Marketing and company positioning: Marketing teams can use the hard data on skills to showcase extensive upskilling opportunities and multiple career growth pathways available to employees. They can present the company as a ‘top workplace ‘ backed by employee testimonials.
The above are some examples of applications of data-backed skills management. You can do much more.
Kytes is an AI-enabled PSA that puts you ahead of your competition and on the path to sustained growth & profitability.
Kytes is designed and tested for doing the above and more.
Contact us at [email protected] for a demo and for more information.
