“Intelligence on Demand” - contemporary thinking for talent management
When it comes to operational efficiencies, conventional business practice focuses on optimising a fixed set of resources and processes to deliver a desired outcome with minimal effort. Some companies complement this with scenario modelling to understand how to flex those resources in the event of changes in demand or unexpected events. This approach works well where demand is linear and predictable. But for many businesses demand is becoming harder to predict and hence harder to plan for. What's needed is a mechanism that can quickly and cost effectively align resource supply with demand and have sufficient inherent flex to adapt to changes - subtle as well as significant - without escalating cost or delivery timescales. We call this intelligence-on-demand.
“Drive operational excellence culturally and technologically. Operational excellence is especially difficult in volatile environments—like the one we’re experiencing today. Excellence should be defined by outcomes, such as meeting or exceeding stakeholder requirements, improving customer service, or executing marketing campaigns successfully.”
– McKinsey & Company ‘Why do Organizations have COOs?’
The principle is not necessarily new. Business process outsourcing, remote software development and other services have been around for many years and work on the basis of defining short-term requirements and then forming offshore temporary teams to address them. Intelligence-on-demand takes this much further by providing a "performance-as-a-service" approach to dynamically assessing needs, skills and, most importantly experience in a bundled approach that combines the identification, placement and on-boarding of a range of talent hand-picked to suit the unique requirements of a given business situation.
Why consider intelligence-on-demand? The most compelling reasons are cost and time-to-value. Dynamically "hiring" talent on an as-needed basis, with a range of compensation models intimately tied to value delivered, is much less costly than permanently hiring with all the attendant costs - direct and hidden. Equally, experienced talent combined with carefully crafted on-boarding processes can be deployed far quicker than traditional hiring, meaning the resources are productive in a matter of days as opposed to months in some cases. Then there's the issue of flex - intelligence-on-demand can be flexed at very short notice to deal with sudden shifts in demand (anticipated or otherwise).
Another factor that cannot be ignored is the growing trend toward portfolio careers, where high value, experienced people are now seeking fractional work on their own terms versus permanent employment. This is creating a fast growing talent pool of experience and intelligence waiting to be deployed at short notice with more attractive terms and arguably a greater potential to earn. Intelligence-on-demand is already present and expected to grow rapidly.
Key facts:
New hire rate in tech companies decreased from 60% in 2022 to 37% in 2023 – with the biggest falls in commercial and operational roles
Only 45% of European tech companies plan to increase headcount in 2024
59% of European tech companies are not planning to increase new hire salaries in the first half of 2024, even with inflation at 4.9% across Europe
Staff attrition is running at 22% in European tech companies and it’s growing in sales roles
A discovery mindset can uncover breakthrough actions and opportunities as it frees thinking from bias and constraints imposed by existing practices.