EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Talent management describes the process through which employers of all kinds firms, government, and non-profits anticipate their human capital needs and set about meeting them. Getting the right people with the right skills into the right jobs, a common definition of talent management is the basic people management challenge in organizations. While the focus of talent management tends to be on management and executive positions, the issues apply to all jobs that are hard to fill. Decisions about talent management shape the competencies that organizations have and their ultimate success, and from the perspective of individuals, these decisions determine the path and pace of careers. Talent management practices can have a crucial impact on society as well. The lifetime employment model of the post-WWII generation, for example, provided the economic stability that created middle class society. Failures in talent management may be more recognizable than the concept itself. Those failures mean mismatches between supply and demand: Too many employees, leading to layoffs and restructurings on the one hand, and not enough talent, leading to talent crunches on the other. In India at present, it may be hard to imagine the problem of having too much talent, but the first downturn in the economy or even in a section of the economy will make that clear. These mismatches are among the fundamental problems that businesses and other large employers face. Over the past generation, corporations in particular seem to have lurched from surpluses of talent to shortfalls to surpluses and back to shortfalls again. The challenge employers face is to track much more closely the demands for talent to avoid both shortfalls and oversupplies. Many observers assume that the management of talent is really about the internal development of human capital, yet the majority of vacancies in corporations now are filled from outside. They also assume that internal development practices such as executive coaching, career path developmental assignments, assessment centers, high potential programs, and succession planning, are something new.

These techniques and indeed, every employee development practice that seems novel now forced ranking performance evaluation systems, 360 degree feedback programs, executive coaching, etc. were all common in the 1950s. Except at a few very large firms, they have been scaled back and, in many cases, largely abandoned. The reason was not that these practices failed to develop talent. It was because they were too costly. And the biggest cost was the difficulty they faced in managing the unpredictability of the demand for talent. Internal development of talent collapsed in the 1970s when business forecasting failed to predict the downturn in the economy, and the talent pipelines continued to turn out talent under the forecast assumptions of booming corporate growth. The excess supply of talent and the nolayoff policies for white collar workers caused a bloating of corporate organisations and the steepness of the 1981 recession in the US and elsewhere led virtually all companies to back away from developing talent. Lifetime employment came to an end, and the reengineering processes cut away the development practices and staff that created talent. After all, if the priority was to get rid of talent, why would companies maintain the programs designed to create it? A new way of thinking is required about the talent management challenge. A new framework for talent management has to begin by being clear about the goal. Talent management is not an end in itself. It is not about developing employees or creating succession plans. Nor is it about achieving specific benchmarks like a five percent turnover rate, having the most educated workforce, or any other tactical outcome. The goal of talent management is the much more general but important task of helping the organization achieve its overall objectives. In the business world, that objective is to make money. The important question is how to make investments in development affordable, and part of that challenge involves employee retention, making it possible to at least retain employees long enough to recoup the training investments in them.

HUMAN RESOURCES AN OVERVIEW

Human Resource Management (HRM) is the function within an organization that focuses on recruitment of, management of, and providing direction for the people who work in the organization. Human Resource Management can also be performed by line managers. Human Resource Management is the organizational function that deals with issues related to people such as compensation, hiring, performance management, organization development, safety, wellness, benefits, employee motivation, communication, administration, and training. The objective of Human Resources is to maximize the return on investment from the organization's human capital and minimize financial risk. It is the responsibility of human resource managers to conduct these activities in an effective, legal, fair, and consistent manner. Human resource management serves these key functions: Selection, Training and Development, Performance Evaluation and Management, Promotions, Redundancy, Industrial and Employee Relations, Record keeping of all personal data, Compensation, pensions, bonuses etc. in liaison with Payroll, Confidential advice to internal 'customers' in relation to problems at work and Career development In the very narrow context of corporate "human resources", there is a contrasting pull to reflect and require workplace diversity that echoes the diversity of a global customer base. Foreign language and culture skills, ingenuity, humor, and careful listening, are examples of traits that such programs typically require. It would appear that these evidence a general shift to the human capital point of view, and an acknowledgment that human beings do contribute much more to a productive enterprise than "work": they bring their character, their ethics, their creativity, their social connections, and in some cases even their pets and children, and alter the character of a workplace. The term corporate culture is used to characterize such processes.

MODERN CONCEPT OF HUMAN RESOURCES

Though human resources have been part of business and organizations since the first days of agriculture, the modern concept of human resources began in reaction to the efficiency focus of Taylorism in the early 1900s. By 1920, psychologists and employment experts in the United States started the human relations movement, which viewed workers in terms of their psychology and fit with companies, rather than as interchangeable parts. This movement grew throughout the middle of the 20th century, placing emphasis on how leadership, cohesion, and loyalty played important roles in organizational success. Although this view was increasingly challenged by more quantitatively rigorous and less "soft" management techniques in the 1960s and beyond, human resources had gained a permanent role within an organization. Talent Management a Top Concern Finding, developing and keeping talent are among the top concerns for HR executives for 2008, according to a survey released by ORC Worldwide, a New York-based provider of human resource management consulting and data services. Nearly 62 percent of respondents said that the most pressing strategic issues they will face in 2008 would fall into the realm of talent management. Talent management, encompassing acquisition, assessment, development and retention of a workforce, was also cited by 33 percent of the survey's respondents as what they expect to consume the majority of their time in 2008. Stated by 7.7 percent of HR professionals, activities related to a "cultural transformation" were also among the top three concerns of HR executives. Shifting the culture of workplace has become an increasingly popular topic in recent years, according to the survey, encompassing the implementation of tools from performance management and "pay for performance." HR executives also foresaw a continued expectation of supporting the responsibilities of senior managers in implementing requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Among the most important issues ranked by HR executives, leadership development, succession planning, workforce planning, compensation and diversity ranked at the top.

INTRODUCTION TO TALENT MANAGEMENT

This new age economy, with its attendant paradigm shifts in relation to the human capital, in terms of its acquisition, utilisation, development and retention, has placed a heavy demand on todays HR professionals. Today HR is expected to identify potential talent and also comprehend, conceptualise and implement relevant strategies to contribute effectively to achieve organisational objectives. Hence a serious concern of every HR manager in order to survive this War for Talent, is to fight against a limited and diminishing pool of qualified available candidates to replace valuable employees when they leave, dramatically underscoring the difficulty to attract, motivate and retain the best employees in an organisation. To analyse the reasons, we first need to understand what TALENT means. People have different views and definitions. According to Leigh Branham, vice president, consulting service at Right Management Consultants and author of the book, Keeping People Who Keep You in Business, a talent is not rare and precious. Everyone has talent too many to possibly name all. Talent is behavior; things we do more easily than the next person. We speak of natural born talent but those with a gift, knack, ability or flair for something can refine and develop that talent through experience. Talent, however, cannot be taught. As someone once said, you can teach a turkey to climb a tree, but it is easier to hire a squirrel. Vice President, HR of Seagram, Mr. Gopi Nambiar, says talent can be best described as a combination of abilities and attitudes. The real trick is to match the right motivated talents to the right role, individually and collectively, harnessing and harmonizing this crucial attribute to achieve the objectives of your company. Today, companies have become fiercely competitive when it comes to attracting and retaining talent. According to Branham, 75 per cent of the senior executives admit that employee retention is a major concern today, the obvious reason being the increasing rate of turnover. This dynamically changing and volatile demand-supply equation with such erratic attrition trends and cut throat competition has led organisations to focus on mechanisms pertaining to attracting and retaining talent. It is an accepted truth that turnover will happen and companies need to devise a strategy to curb unprecedented turnover from affecting organisational success.

As the Director, HR (Asia) of Bausch & Lomb, Mr. P.G. George declares, achieving zero percent turnover is neither realistic nor desirable. People tend to seek change for a variety of reasonsmore money, better benefits, the appearance of a greener pasture- and this has been a practice from the very beginning. Then, what is it that has really changed? Despite intense competition being the key to market development and success, organisations have failed to identify some of the major reasons which highlight why good performers leave. In his study, Branham clearly states that one major reason why people leave their organisation is because of the organisations failure to bring about a correlation between pay and performance. Human Resource experts in the industry believe matching the right blend of talent with the right job profile can lead to superior performance. The present scenario with abundant opportunities has triggered a wave of employees, perpetually on the move, forever seeking better opportunities whenever, wherever and however they can. What is behind the restlessness of these hard to keep employees? By focusing on productivity, organisations are realising that it is imperative to hire employees who can do the job and be successful at it. The organisation no longer wants to just hire to hire, in fact they are striving to find the right people, bring them into the organization and retain their services. One of the critical functions of HR is a sound Human Resource Planning through which they are able to project the demand for human resource and thereafter formulate strategies for acquiring them. As the leading HR heads of the country point out, the solution is not just about finding the correct retention mechanisms, but it starts from the very beginning by devising ways to acquire the right people for the right jobs. Talent management refers to the process of developing and integrating new workers, developing and keeping current workers and attracting highly skilled workers to work for the company. Talent management in this context does not refer to the management of entertainers. The process of managing, the supply and the demand of employees talent, to achieve optimal business performance in alignment with organisational goals. Talent management is also known as HCM (Human Capital Management), HRIS (HR Information Systems) or HRMS (HR Management Systems), and HR Modules.

Companies that are engaged in talent management (human capital management) are strategic and deliberate in how they source, attract, select, train, develop, retain, promote, and move employees through the organization. This term also incorporates how companies drive performance at the individual level (performance management). The term talent management means different things to different people. To some it is about the management of high-worth individuals or "the talented" whilst to others it is about how talent is managed generally - i.e. on the assumption that all people have talent which should be identified and liberated. This term is usually associated with competency-based human resource management practices. Talent management decisions are often driven by a set of organizational core competencies as well as position-specific competencies. The competency set may include knowledge, skills, experience, and personal traits (demonstrated through defined behaviors). Older competency models might also contain attributes that rarely predict success (e.g. education, tenure, and diversity factors that are illegal to consider in many countries). A survey conducted in 2008 by Knowledge Infusion in conjunction with the International Association for Human Resource Information Management (IHRIM) found that approximately half of all respondents said their companies had no integration between systems and talent management processes, and only fair to poor organisational alignment of the workforce to business goals. How Talent Management programs are implemented within an organisation will vary, but regardless of the differences, the same core concepts established in this article will apply. Talent management is the process of ensuring that the organization attracts, retains, motivates and develops the talented people it needs.

STRATEGIC TALENT MANAGEMENT PLANNING

The following four stages in the creation of a strategic talent management program will help develop the five areas. They operate as a cascade down the organization, from senior management, to talent managers and onto the people identified as talent themselves.

Str ategy For mulation

Diagnosis

Analysis

Action Planning

Stage 1. Strategy formulation This stage involves understanding the current business context and its challenges followed by developing objectives and processes for the talent program. Meetings with senior management are used to elicit their views and experiences of existing methods for recruiting, developing and engaging talent and to understand demands for change. Further supporting input can be provided through reviews of competitor activities and benchmarked practices in other leading organizations. Stage 2. Diagnosis The next step is to hold interviews and focus groups with current managers of those identified as talent. The main focus of the diagnosis is to understand how well talent management is working in providing them with what they need to run the business, and in particular, what attributes they believe talent needs to exhibit. These attributes can be documented in a high-level talent framework. The diagnosis stage may also include an assessment of talent against the framework. By including head-hunters in this process, internal talent can be compared to people outside the organization who might also display the attributes identified in the talent framework.

Stage 3. Analysis Based upon the results of the diagnosis, the future talent management program can be mapped out. This involves workshops and interviews with those people identified as talent. The understanding of what talent needs (moderated by what the organization believes it can provide) developed from this analysis can be documented as an organizational-level EVP. Stage 4. Action planning Recommendations to build upon existing talent management processes can be made based on the above data. Examples of strategic, value-adding actions that might arise at this stage in talent program development and that could excite business leaders and help close the strategy/implementation gap fall into three categories: 1. Pre-recruitment actions. 2. In employment actions. 3. Departure-related actions. 1. Pre-recruitment actions Organizations have an opportunity to ensure theyre recruiting the very best people (rather than just those who are available when an organization wants to recruit) by proactively searching for external talent. The benchmarking conducted in the diagnosis stage of talent program development has an additional benefit here in enabling organizations to pinpoint existing external talent. Organizations can then engage the external talent early on, finding out how they are being looked after and identifying their career drivers. This helps potential employers of choice to identify who to target when the time is right, but also to recruit internally with knowledge of all options and to succession plan externally as well as internally, transforming the level and quality of talent that can be made available.

2. In employment actions During employment, its the personalized relationships between talent managers and the individuals identified as talent that is the key. This relationship needs to be based on discussion around the organizational and adapted individual EVP, supported by the enhanced manager capabilities described earlier on. With this support, management of performance extends into management of the deal clarifying both organizational and individual needs and providing a two way review of whether, and how well, needs are being met. However, even more important than the discussion, is effective delivery of the deal that has been agreed. One important area emerging from the EVP is likely to be development of potential. Experience and research tell us that the key development opportunities for talent lie within the roles they occupy and the element of stretch these roles provide. Formal executive education programs can address specific development needs and produce better performance, but theyre unlikely to offer the range of development situations necessary to maximize potential. Its therefore important that those assessed as talent are assigned to (and can contribute towards) high-value strategic roles or assignments. These should be real work assignments that a leader would be expected to deliver against. Effective development aligned to both the talent framework and the EVP will have the potential to significantly upgrade talents contribution and retention and so have tangible impact on business results. 3. Departure-related actions Most leading organizations already maintain ongoing contact with departing talent for six months or more following their exit, in case their career move proves not to be a success. Another common approach involves developing alumni networks to encourage talent with further appropriate development experiences outside of the organization back in again at a later date.

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TALENT ACQUISITION
Companies realize that if they can attract and hire top talent, they will have a competitive advantage. In essence, companies are competing on the basis of their intellectual capital. Their ability to acquire top employees is critical due to the "war for talent," in which organizations are always looking to lure the "best and the brightest." A simple way chief learning officers can help improve talent flow is to offer training on effective interviewing techniques. When managers are able to select more effectively, it lowers the probability of making a "bad hire." But talent flow is more than just reducing poor hiring decisions. It also involves being able to attract top candidates. These talented individuals tend to have several choices as to where they can work because they are in high demand. Knowing that they can no longer rely on - nor desire - lifetime employment, these talented individuals are seeking something else: lifetime employability. Top candidates are seeking out jobs that will provide them with opportunities to learn and grow. By enhancing their skills, capabilities and education, these individuals know that they will be more marketable when they move on to their next employer. (Remember, the question today is not if an employee will leave, but when.) These increased capabilities help ensure their employability throughout their career, thus giving them even more job choices. For today's talented candidate, lifetime employability is the mantra. Thus, providing challenging job assignments and robust development programs that will help an employee grow professionally are critical for organizations to enhance their appeal to star job candidates. A 2006 study conducted by Accenture indicates that one of the top elements impacting candidates' decisions to join a firm is a company's ability to provide fast career growth and professional development. Alysia Vanitzian, assistant vice president of human capital at Farmers Insurance Group, indicates that a commitment to people development through stretch assignments and job rotation helps attract top talent.

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TALENT MANAGEMENT: AN INTEGRATED MODEL

Talent management is a set of competency-based human resource management practices aimed at getting the best out of its high-value people and ensuring that right people are in place to do a particular job. A recent research by Success Factors and human capital expert Dr. Jac Fitz-enz has shown that smarter talent management leads to better financial performance of the company. The factors influencing Talent Management Strategy are to be dealt in such a way so as to fine tune it in accordance with the conditions that a firm is faced with. The macro-level variables are the environmental factors and the industry factors while the micro-level variables are the organizational factors. A Talent Management process model has been developed, which outlines the sequence of steps to be followed in effectively implementing the talent management strategy. In addition to these, ways of aligning the HR practices of the organization with the talent management initiatives have to be looked at. Thus it is seen that an Integrated Talent Management approach by the organization, with the talent management strategies and processes perfectly aligned with the various HR processes and with the overall organizational strategy, would help in getting the best out of the talent and in achieving its objectives.

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OBJECTIVE OF TALENT MANAGEMENT

The objective of the Talent Management System is to capture the right talent, convert the talent by providing them with appropriate developmental opportunities, which will help them take on key positions in the organization. All this in turn will help in retaining the right talent. Talent management is viewed as a strategic approach to managing human capital throughout the career cycle: attracting, retaining, developing and transitioning your most important assets.

The basic objectives: 1. To identify various upcoming challenges of talent management 2. To establish upcoming trends in talent management. 3. To identify the ways to retain the best talent. Talent management is a process that emerged in the 1990s and continues to be adopted, as more companies come to realize that their employees talents and skills drive their business success. These companies develop plans and processes to track and manage their employee talent, including the following: 1. Attracting and recruiting qualified candidates with competitive backgrounds 2. Managing and defining competitive salaries 3. Training and development opportunities 4. Performance management processes 5. Retention programs 6. Promotion and transitioning

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IMPORTANCE OF TALENT MANAGEMENT

Like human capital, talent management is gaining increased attention. Talent management (TM) brings together a number of important human resources (HR) and management initiatives. Organisations that formally decide to "manage their talent" undertake a strategic analysis of their current HR processes. This is to ensure that a coordinated, performance oriented approach is adopted. Quite often, organisations adopting a TM approach will focus on coordinating and integrating: 1. Recruitment - ensuring the right people are attracted to the organisation. 2. Retention - developing and implementing practices that reward and support employees. 3. Employee development - ensuring continuous informal and formal learning and development. 4. Leadership and "high potential employee" development - specific development programs for existing and future leaders. 5. Performance management - specific processes that nurture and support performance, including feedback/measurement. 6. Workforce planning - planning for business and general changes, including the older workforce and current/future skills shortages. 7. Culture - development of a positive, progressive and high performance "way of operating". An important step is to identify the staff or employees (people and positions) that are critical to the organisation. They do not necessarily have to be senior staff members. Many organisations lost a lot of "organisational knowledge" in the downsizing exercises of a few years ago. The impact of the loss was not immediately apparent. However, it did not take long for many companies to realise their mistake when they did not have people with the knowledge and skills to either anticipate or solve problems that arose.

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THE FOCUS OF TALENT MANAGEMENT

At the heart of talent management is developing the following intrinsic human capacities: 1. Capacity to learn (measured as learning quotient LQ) Enhancing an individuals capacity to learn improves the persons awareness. It adds to the persons quest to know more and delve into newer areas. This capacity is developed by holistic education that teaches how to learn, an enabling environment and good mentoring. Capacity to learn comprises of the following: Introspection is the individuals willingness to look back and learn ability to learn from mistakes and identifying areas of improvement. Reflection and contemplation is the individuals ability to observe his own thoughts, actions and emotions/feelings and using the awareness to improve further and perform better. Getting into the flow is the individuals ability to get into a new experience and flow with the experience. It is the persons child-like ability to derive joy out of learning. 2. Capacity to think (measured as conceptual quotient CQ) An individuals quest to know more leads his mind to create images. Enhancing an individuals capacity to think helps the person not only takes learning to a higher level of intellect but also improves creativity. Capacity to think comprises of the following: 1. Analysis is about asking the right questions and breaking complex things into simpler elements. 2. Creativity is about generating new thoughts and breaking the existing patterns of thought. 3. Judgment requires both. This is what helps an individual take quality decisions. 3. Capacity to relate (measured as relationship quotient RQ) It is important for an individual to be able to relate to his learning and thoughts. This leads the person to be able to relate to other individuals and the environment around him. The outcome is indeed a sense of belongingness and an environment of trust at the organizational level and team spirit at the individual level.

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4. Capacity to act (measured as action quotient AQ) Action is how the above three capacities of an individual are manifested. It is the individuals ability to enact his intentions. Following are components of capacity to act: 1. Organizing refers to the individuals ability to organize his time and resources so as to enable him to convert intentions into reality. 2. Implementing means delegating, attention to detail, and focus on the right process. 3. Perform under pressure means the ability to work under pressure and time constraints and handle multiple tasks without negative stress. The individuals values help in discriminating amongst alternatives and act as the bedrock for decisions. They act as multipliers in enhancing the individuals capacities, a sigma of which reflects the individuals true talent. Thus: (LQ + CQ + RQ + AQ) * Values = Talent Organizations provide individuals the opportunity and space for physically manifesting their talent into performance for achieving individual and organizational vision.

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NEED FOR TALENT MANAGEMENT

Dramatic shifts in the make up of the workforce can influence the way organizations recruit, develop and retain employees in the future. They include: 1. An increasing global labor market 2. An increasing virtual workplace 3. A vastly diverse workforce, in terms of age, race and culture 4. Workforce independent views about their own lifestyle and access to information about career opportunities The supply side puts pressure on companies to attract the best talent and ensure that employees join the company and choose to stay in the organization rather than look for opportunities elsewhere. Present study is supposed to find out the existing Indian talent scenario so as to analyze its emerging challenges and trends. For several years, hundreds of people were laid off in one part of the business while hundreds of others, often with similar skills to those departing the organization, were hired in other parts of the company. Regrettably, this situation is not unusual in many organizations today. Indeed, many companies are missing substantial opportunities to save costs and improve performance by upgrading their talent management capabilities. Companies can take up steps to quickly assess their talent management process and begin improving their talent management competency. According to Towers Perrin's 11th Annual HR Service Delivery Survey, after a decade of upgrades, many companies are shifting priorities. Talent management has snagged the top slot this year in HR service delivery issues, and organizations are turning their upgraded systems into tools to leverage their people agendas. Organizations are now putting the people dimension first and viewing their existing technology platforms as the foundation for and the means of better enabling their people agenda to deliver on business needs and goals." The research also found that, despite the current economic downturn, large organizations continue to invest in their HR technology platforms. Specifically, 30% have increased their investment in HR-related technologies, and 55% are maintaining their technology budgets at 2007 levels. Only 15% planned budget cuts for 2008.

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And although companies will continue to upgrade and streamline their technology systems to create a better employee experience, a more significant slice of their budgets is now earmarked for: 1. Internal and external recruitment and staffing 2. Succession planning 3. Workforce analytics 4. Other talent management-related technologies.

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PROCESS OF TALENT MANAGEMENT

There are four steps that companies can take to quickly assess their talent management process and begin improving their talent management competency: Step 1 Identify Key Roles. Analyze the key steps in each part of the talent life cycle (identification and attraction, hiring and inculcation, motivation and development, appraisal and reward, building and sustaining relationships) and map the key players and their roles and responsibilities to each stage. Are there gaps in responsibilities key activities that no one is directly accountable for? Are there overlapping responsibilities multiple people responsible for the same activity? Are the right people in the right roles? Are line managers provided with consistent and effective processes, guidelines and tools for managing talent? Step 2 Take an Inventory of Your Talent Management Skills. Identify the critical skills needed to play the key roles in the talent life cycle effectively. To what extent does your company employ people who possess them? What might you do to improve or develop them? What are you doing in-house that might be better outsourced? What have you outsourced that you should be doing in-house? Step 3 Measure the Right Things. Assess the measures you use to evaluate the performance of your talent management process at each life cycle stage such as offer-to-hire ratios, average tenures of new hires, performance ranking, and skill fit to job requirements, etc. What data are you capturing and reporting? Does it feed directly into an enterprise talent scorecard? How do these measures align with your overall talent management strategy? Step 4 Set Up a Process-Wide Feedback Loop. Everyone managing talent needs to understand the big picture and to connect their role and responsibilities to the overall objectives of the process. How is data captured in each stage of the life cycle reported and communicated? How are knowledge and experiences shared across the process? Where are the information gaps and missed communications? How much feedback

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is formally captured and communicated versus informally discussed among staff? What key actions might you take to improve your feedback mechanisms?

With so much of the costs and performance of a business now dependent on people, it is now the time to manage them and make it a core competency of the organization.

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TALENT MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

Some of the modern world talent management strategies are as follows: 1. Integrated functionality and usability: Many vendors have invested heavily in the usability and integrated functionality of their solutions. The ability to seamlessly integrate data and streamline navigation and use enhances the user experience and encourages increased use of the solutions. A single data model technology infrastructure is ideal to maximize performance and simplify application management. 2. Dynamic influences in shaping the global workforce: Companies are being forced to adjust to ever-changing global regulatory and compliance issues that outline how companies can find, recruit and manage their workforces. In addition to automating HR processes, companies are now focusing internally to build a performance-based culture centered on metrics-based business outcomes and driving additional value of the company by adapting and improving the way they manage their global workforce. 3. Rapid acceptance of the on-demand model: The majority of most vendors revenue comes from an annuity-based hosted delivery mode. Indeed, many recognize 100 percent of their revenue from their on-demand solutions. The general acceptance of the ondemand model owes much to its proven success within other enterprise application categories such as CRM. In addition, the diminished impact of security issues has helped build the on-demand model. 4. Demand for service and support excellence: Service and support distinction has surpassed security issues as the key concern for those adopting talent management applications. Although security issues are still prevalent, especially if IT is involved in the decision-making process, key stakeholders in the vendor selection process have shifted their focus toward ongoing service and support issues as their key areas of interest. Many vendors continue to develop support options that meet the needs of their customers and have become very sophisticated in the tools and techniques used to measure service-level performance.

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5. Multinational capabilities: Global enterprises are demanding multi-language capabilities and in-country domain expertise to support the ever-changing international laws. A changing global landscape and an increasing assortment of compliance issues require vendors to maintain a strong international presence. The time is now to leverage talent management technologies. Todays available talent management solutions can not only support the changing dynamics of your workforce, but help plan for the future in building both a high caliber workforce and performance-based culture.

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CONCLUSION
The HR department is a very traditional function that is slow to change. Professionals in recruiting are no different: they seem to like their independence and they often loathe working closely with generalists, compensation, or development professionals. But companies like WalMart that have championed integrated processes like supply chain management have demonstrated the dramatic impact that coordination and integration can have on companys success and profitability. A successful talent management process starts with the foundation built by supply chain management, Six Sigma, CRM, and lean manufacturing, and adapts it to HR. Unfortunately, its strength and integration are also the primary roadblock within HR because getting HR people to coordinate their efforts is about as easy as herding cats. Highly demanding business environment makes it imperative for the organizations to build competence in the form of superior intellectual capital. It is agreed by almost all CEOs of big companies that it is the human resource - a talented one - that can provide them competitiveness in the long run. So it is the duty of the HR department to nurture a brigade of talented workforce, which can win them the war in the business field. The talent has to be spotted, carefully nurtured and most importantly preserved. As organizations continue to pursue high performance and improved results through TM practices, they are taking a holistic approach to talent managementfrom attracting and selecting wisely, to retaining and developing leaders, to placing employees in positions of greatest impact. The mandate is clear: for organizations to succeed in todays rapidly changing and increasingly competitive marketplace, intense focus must be applied to aligning human capital with corporate strategy and objectives. It starts with recruiting and retaining talented people and continues by sustaining the knowledge and competencies across the entire workforce. With rapidly changing skill sets and job requirements, this becomes an increasingly difficult challenge for organizations.

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Meeting this organizational supply and demand requires the right Talent DNA and supporting technology solutions. By implementing an effective talent management strategy, including integrated data, processes, and analytics, organizations can help ensure that the right people are in the right place at the right time, as well as organizational readiness for the future. Right person for the right job - is the new mantra.

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