Supercharging HR with Skills

TalenTeam is a SAP SuccessFactors partner offering a variety of HR tech tools and consultancy services. It supports enterprises worldwide in enhancing their HR management and employee experience through core HR and payroll, recruiting and onboarding, learning and development, HR analytics, performance and compensation, and workforce transformation.

Over the last few years, TalenTeam has noticed a massive increase in demand for a skills-focused approach. Organisations are moving to use more skill analysis in managing their workforce, so they need more accessible ways to embed skills into their existing HR platforms. 

Importantly, this data needs to be organised by a skills taxonomy that is dynamic enough to reflect the changing nature of the labour market, enabling companies to easily integrate skills as another critical component of their approach to efficient and effective talent management. 

To continue supporting its customers in their talent and workforce planning, TalenTeam needed access to enriched skills data that would be easily integrated into its software systems. 

“The first area we started to look at was learning. How do we drive a skills-based learning approach for our customers? And that's where our need for a data provider came in,” said Sandeep Nahata, Director of TalenTeam. 

But TalenTeam was looking for much more than a data provider: it was looking for a partner that could provide a robust range of data services and capabilities, enhancing its offerings and improving its competitive advantage for years to come. 

After searching the market, TalenTeam found that Lightcast offered the best labour market data, along with a broader variety of capabilities that made it suitable for a strong long-term partnership model. 

Though TalenTeam was initially focused on leveraging skills data for its learning and development solutions, this partnership supports TalenTeam’s vision of continuing to scale its capabilities and adapting to its clients’ needs. 

“Lightcast’s partnership model, data, and wide variety of capabilities meant that it would be suitable for a long-term partnership because we only had one small requirement to start with, but we knew where we wanted to go,” shared Sandeep. 

TalenTeam initially started with Lightcast’s Skills API and Open Skills Taxonomy for two of its core propositions: BLEND LXP and Talent Intelligence Hub Accelerator.

Its suite of Lightcast products has since been extended to include Lightcast’s DDN API - an essential capability enabling companies to categorise skills by Distinguishing, Defining, and Necessary for any given role - and Lightcast’s Career Pathways API - which allows TalenTeam’s clients to improve career progression and employee retention.

To deliver its insight, TalenTeam pulls the learning content from its SAP SuccessFactors suite (which includes BLEND LXP and other HR products) and tags it with skills based on Lightcast’s Skills Taxonomy, making personalised recommendations to users based on these matches. 

“The capability wasn't there when we initially built BLEND LXP, so it's an optional element for the existing customers. But going forward, any new customers implementing BLEND LXP will have to adopt this feature. Lightcast and Lightcast skills data are a fundamental part of our product,” said Sandeep. 

The newly acquired DDN API will take skills-based learning and development a step further - allowing TalenTeam’s clients to understand what skills to prioritise based on the Distinguishing, Defining, and Necessary skills for each role in the labour market. Cross-checking this data with the skills their employees possess, companies can tailor and promote content to close existing skills gaps.  

TalenTeam is currently expanding and testing its product offering. Though still in its early stages, the feedback has been positive, and exciting plans are already in the making. 

“Career Pathways and DDN will allow us to not just focus on the skills that employees have today but actually understand what skills they may need in the future. This is where our partnership with Lightcast really starts to create value beyond just a skill taxonomy tagging,” shares Sandeep. 

These two APIs are vital for TalenTeam, enabling them to support talent leaders in understanding how each role can progress, building career paths for their employees, and recommending new skills and learning content to support their progression.