SOURCE:
www.engineeringnews.co.za
By: Schalk Burger
26th October 2012
Business leaders can use the relevant data and expertise received daily from every department, merged with a cloud-based service that integrates people and processes, to analyse and shape its workforce to be more effective and productive, says global computing giant IBM Software business development VP Nigel Beck.
IBM announced its intention to acquire workforce and performance management analytics company Kenexa. The synergy between IBM’s social business tools, functional data capabilities and Kenexa’s workforce analysis and talent management tools will enable companies to manage their entire workforce actively.
Businesses will be able to identify the effectiveness and productivity of different workers easily and, using the data generated y their employees across all sites, determine where different people will be the most effective, the areas in which an employee needs training and their average effectiveness, explains Beck.
“A smarter workforce through software analytics is a big thought and it is quite a cool area. With Kenexa’s current tools, we can assess your performance relative to the best performers in your area, identify the gaps and then determine precisely what education or training you need, as well as provide you with the training tools to do that,” he says.
“When we combine this with social business tools, a company can have a much broader view of what might make its employees more effective and efficient. We can then begin to analyse which areas are better suited to different people. We can do a lot of interesting analytics with the combination of Kenexa’s tools and social business tools,” Beck highlights.
Further, when a business has social capabili- ties, employees can see what others are doing and discover useful practices or processes on this network. When this is combined with learning and talent-management capabilities, employees can determine the specific areas in which they lack expertise and can get material and comments from experts in the company and from those not affiliated.
Employees can improve their skills using expert information, while the training is logged and can be recognised, he explains.
On a broader scale, regions can use social business analytical tools to attract investors more effectively by demonstrating the levels of training of people in the region, he notes.
“A recent global IBM study revealed that 70% of CEOs cite human capital as the single biggest contributor to sustained economic value,” highlights Beck.
The survey also showed that 57% of the CEOs identified social business as a top priority and more than 73% were making significant investments to draw insights from available data. The combined strengths of IBM and Kenexa are key differentiators at a time when organisations are looking to increase workforce efficiencies and gain more insight from their business information, he says.
“Social media have pervaded our lives, helping us to connect with each other in new ways. However, a shift is occurring in the enterprise, as business leaders look for ways to generate real value through the use of social technologies to evolve their front-line business operations.”
The adoption of social business technology is supporting the growth of big data and the need for analytics in the enterprise. IBM recognises enormous opportunity to apply advanced social business and analytics capabilities to front-line business operations, concludes Beck.
Edited by: Martin Zhuwakinyu
