When Standard Is Not Enough

Talent Management Magazine 

Technology, which is often seen as this century’s golden child, can also kill competitive advantage. We all tout the benefits that can come from technology — from efficiency to effectiveness in analyzing our data to the “nth” degree, which ensures we measure every nut and bolt that our technology spits out. But while this technology era is truly the golden era for HR — and more importantly for workforce technology — and we can truly measure and monitor the workforce to drive new business results like never before, the same tools that promise all of this value can also make us incredibly lazy.

As the evolution of cloud-based computing has become the norm when selecting talent management technology, so has the practice of implementing the vendors’ built-in best practices. The theory that the software can’t be customized continues to be touted as the biggest advantage since the birth of the computer. For those who have boxed themselves into a corner writing custom code and spending millions of dollars modifying vendor software, the thought of no customization is a sigh of relief. But maybe we as an industry need to land somewhere in the middle...

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