This remarkable book, written by two of the top thought leaders in the human capital industry, provides the roadmap on how to win the war on talent. By applying the principles laid out in this book, organizations can gain a huge competitive advantage.

Allow me to help put this in perspective. This is a trillion-dollar opportunity to create shareholder value. The evidence to support this claim is overwhelming. In the United States alone, corporations spend well over $6 trillion in labor expense per year. Every organization makes bad hires, conducts training programs that don’t generate sufficient returns, and has unqualified employees, weak leaders, disengaged employees, and a suboptimal workforce.

My company, KnowledgeAdvisors, provides predictive analytic solutions through its software, Metrics that Matter. Our data shows that organizations that effectively deploy an automated talent analytics solution embedding predictive analytics will see at least a 4 percent productivity improvement. A 4 percent increase in productivity on a labor spend of more than $6 trillion is approximately $250 billion in bottom-line improvement per year. Most companies trade well above a four times price per earnings multiple, resulting in a trillion-dollar opportunity in shareholder value. This analysis does not include other global economies, which makes the opportunity even larger.

Business leaders and human resource (HR) executives who do not deploy a predictive analytics solution for their talent investments are doing their shareholders a disservice. Government leaders should also take note. Research shows that at least half of every dollar spent on training is wasted. The U.S. federal government spends approximately $30 billion per year on training. That means approximately $15 billion per year is wasted. To be fair, some federal agencies are now deploying automated analytic solutions and are starting to see dramatic reductions in waste and significant improvements in productivity. Given the ongoing deficit battle, U.S. citizens should be more demanding for improvements in this area.

Many leading corporations have deployed this solution and are already reaping the benefits. It is time for the rest of the market to catch up. The old ways of running HR without good data will quickly become the exception and not the rule. What chief executive wants to continue making more bad hires than competitors or having a higher percentage of ineffective leaders? Why should shareholders not expect their companies to deploy a quality control system for their onboarding programs or their corporate universities? The technology and ecosystem to cost-effectively deploy a cloud-based talent analytics solution exists today. The time is right for business, HR, talent, and learning professionals to step up and take their organizations to new heights.

This book provides a practical, how-to guide for starting and managing an analytics function.