A lot of the research we conduct at Brandon Hall Group has been pointing to a convergence of focusing on people. Whether it’s companies focusing on improving the customer experience, creating more learner-focused learning, or developing better candidate experiences, there is an increasing focus on the experience people have when interacting with the organization. 
At SilkRoad’s Connections 2016 user conference in Chandler, Ariz., this trend was on full display. According to Kamran Kheirolomoom, EVP of Strategy, Products and Marketing, “people are the key stakeholders.” So SilkRoad is designing technology to provide a “continuum of experiences.” Across all of their platform offerings, the message is “talent activation.”
For SilkRoad, talent activation is a step beyond employee engagement. By using a combination of apps, connected experiences and actionable analytics, organizations should be able to not only engage employees, but also better inform the C-Suite with the insights necessary to align talent management with organizational outcomes. These are some of the key characteristics:
- Continuous engagement – employees are engaged via each talent management process, from hiring, to onboarding, to learning and more.
- Adapts to the business – by being flexible and agile, talent is better positioned to meet the changing needs of the business.
- Works where you work – mobile capabilities and full Office 365 integration (which is where most people work).
- Works with what you have – apps and open APIs allow companies to integrate the tools they already use.
- Measureable and actionable – more robust analytics and dashboards give predicative and prescriptive insight into talent.
One of the more interesting approaches SilkRoad is taking is to “appify” everything. The company wants to give companies the ability to build their own solutions by picking just the apps they need, and even integrating other technology they may use. This could go a long way to alleviate the common concern that many platforms have more features and functionality than most companies would ever use.
It is also promising to see the approach they are taking to reporting and analytics, by building in functionality that allows users to ask plain English questions, and get data back that answers those questions. Too many organizations do not know how to handle the amount of data their technology provides, and therefore end up disappointed in the reporting. This takes a lot of the heavy lifting out of the hands of the users and handles it within the platform.
–David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst, Brandon Hall Group
@davidmwentworth
