There... I said it. Sorry to burst your bubble software vendors. Having spent a large part of my career in the vendor community myself, I know that the software usually seems to get the starring role in Talent Management projects. But our experience at Knowledge Infusion with the clients we help is that the software plays - at best - a strong supporting role in successful Talent Management deployments.

In my opinion, the factors that play a much more important role are as follows:

Courageous Leadership: Whether it is an executive with vision who is not afraid of "rocking the boat," a middle manager that champions a project, or an influential front line member of the implementation team, it often takes courage to execute these projects. Courage to combat the inertia that exists in many organizations, courage to evangelize change and progress, courage to influence, cajole, and shepherd reluctant stakeholders. Governance goes hand in hand with leadership. It's important to have well-defined decision processes in place during the strategy and implementation phases of your project. Without one or more courageous individuals driving these initiatives, they have limited hope of success.

Strategy: Having a clear picture of what your organization is trying to accomplish over the short, medium, and long term is imperative. Your talent management strategy should be closely tied to the business outcomes you're trying to achieve. Ideally, your strategy should go beyond business process automation to impacting the bottom line of your business.

Business Process Work: As you evaluate and implement the software that will enable your strategy, significant time should be spent understanding the needs of your business and developing processes that will meet and exceed those needs. Ideally, your goal should be to quantum leap your business processes far into the future. Although some of what you want to do may not be possible with current technology, this exercise will lay down the groundwork for years to come. This work should be completed at a high level first, then fine-tuned to make best use of the technology solution you select.

Change Management (Deployment Excellence): Your approach should go far beyond training. Marketing, Marketing, Marketing. Create a buzz. Make it fun and effective. Although users will need to know how to use your new tools and processes, today's applications are very intuitive. To really drive a high level of adoption, you must pique users interest and energize them. Help them understand the big picture, as well as how they'll need to do things differently.

So, although technology is important, it is only one of many factors necessary to successfully change the face of Talent Management in your organization. It's important that you and your team realize that technology is only one piece of the puzzle. By looking at your Talent Management initiative holistically, and realizing it is much more than a technology project, your chances of success will be greatly increased.