Simply on the map in Skills Tech
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We are super excited to share that Simply has been highlighted by RedThread Research as part of the fast-growing Skills Tech market.
It is fantastic to be featured with such illustrious peers, and to be highlighted so prominently in the report. My reflections below on the report and our position.
The report covers how skills has the potential to help organisations imporve talent acquisition, employee engagement & development, internal mobility, DEIB, workforce planning, succession planning and work planning. The report analyses the emerging Skills Tech market on two dimensions: how skills are organised (more flexibly or with more structure) and how employees’ skills are identified (by people or tech).
Check our Simply’s placement in the 2x2 matrix below:
Here is what we make of the report and Simply’s position in the market:
💯 Simply is all about delivering on the promise of skills for employers and people. Our vision is to connect strategy to skills, simply, so that their employees and the company can grow together. Tim Dickinson puts it beautifully in the report below. Yes. This.
“We view [skills] as a critical way for, not just us as an organization but also our associates…to future-proof themselves in a changing economic environment”.
Tim Dickinson, Global Head of Learning Systems & Innovation, Novartis
🥴 Wow is the market complicated and changing fast. I can think of peers not even listed here doing fantastic work to build powerful solutions. At Simply, we recognise that the market is complicated from a buyer’s perspective, as the report shows given the range of vendors covered. But for us, our name is our promise. We make it easy to start and make rapid progress, connecting your strategy to your people.
🏉 A team sport requires a shared playbook, data, tools and understanding. Given how interconnected skills is across business and HR activities, and how fundamental it is to employee and company growth, it has to be played as a team sport. That’s why we’re building a holistic solution that gives everyone the same playbook, data and tools to deliver impact in their own area, but not cut-across what’s happening elsewhere. As the report notes. – start somewhere but start aligned!
“Skills has the potential to transform how organizations perform core practices like talent acquisition, talent management, employee development, employee engagement, workforce planning, and more.”
RedThread Research, 2022
🐴 Horses for courses. From a tech POV, we agree the HR system should be the master system of record. That’s what its good at! But we believe you need the analytical layer sitting across this to help make great business and workforce decisions using the language and granularity of skills. There’s an enormous business case in getting this right. So, you don’t need to change your core HR System or ‘go full talent marketplace’ to make progress with skills, you can deliver value for the business and employee through data-led enablers, like Simply. If you want to learn more about how, take a look at Simply: The Rightskilling Platform.
🔑 Workforce planning can be the key that unlocks other value. We’re delighted to be recognised as a leading company in using skills to inform workforce planning. The skills benchmarking insight featured in the report is just one of the ways you can get your leadership team engaged, generating new perspective and business value. Set a clearer destination and your other activities to deliver this become an awful lot clearer to prioritise.
🤖 Tech vs humans. We think our placement on the matrix is very interesting. We’re happy more towards ‘Tech IDs Skills’ than ‘People IDs skills’ because this is how you can accelerate and deliver value for your business and people now; but good ol’ AI itself cannot make informed decisions about building capabilities and skills, you do need to test and validate as you go.
🤸🏽 Flexibility and structure. We cosy with being bang-on half-way between ‘Flexible Skills Organization’ and ‘Structured Skills Organization’ because our customers tell us that’s their reality; most big enterprises are either not yet ready for full flexibility, or their model of business and work doesn’t require it to succeed. We believe balancing flexibility and structure is an important way to help people make better decisions now, and provide sufficient structure for the future.
💎 Our USP. We’re the only ‘Tech ID’s Skills’ vendor listed in the two horizontal segments of Flexible/Structured. This is great recognition of the breadth and depth of our solution, reinforcing the fact you need team data and tools for a team sport. Simply is designed for those senior business and HR leaders, across specialisms, who need connect strategy to skills, so that their employees and the company can grow together in an aligned way.
You can read the full RedThread Research report at Skills Tech - A Market on the Rise.
Simply. The rightskilling platform.
The strategy-led, data-driven way to conquer skill gaps.
Simply uses data and machine learning to define your skills strategy, build the skills architecture you need to make it happen, and pinpoints how to rightskill your workforce, fast. Learn more here, follow Simply here or get in touch at info@simplygetresults.com to discuss your needs and book a demo.