"Some assembly required."

You may cringe when reading those words as it might remind you of a time when the excitement and anticipation of opening a shiny new gift was dulled by the realization the fine print says "some assembly required."

Whether it's a backyard swing set, bike or new furniture, there probably has been a time when you -or your parents- spent time assembling gifts, buying batteries or otherwise taking time to manually put together a product to realize value from it. Some take 10 minutes (buying batteries), others take hours (assembling swing sets and furniture) - but the common theme is they aren't "off the shelf" ready.

As a mid market CIO, you must be thinking "welcome to my world" after making the decision to purchase an empty company-wide enterprise software platform.

Even after the compelling value proposition has been established by the technology vendor, the product has been enthusiastically demo'ed (showing data in the system of course), and questions answered to the satisfaction of the decision makers, the reality of enterprise technology is the true value from the investment can only be realized after the system has employee content.

Until the new system has been populated with data it’s just like a backyard swing set that requires assembly. But it probably will take longer than an afternoon populating with content – at cost. What if there was a faster way? There is.

Enterprise Software Platforms off the shelf with pre-populated employee data = Faster Time to Value

When considering enterprise software, mid market CIOs need to ask:

• What technologies will help me pre-populate data?
• How can I automate this manual process and realize the most value from the new technology as quickly as possible?

Enter Talent Analytics embedded inside enterprise technology, available today.

With analytics-driven talent content pre-populated via API, employees can start collaborating from day one.

Just like a new toy that comes with batteries, having self-reported people discovery data about the employees already pre-populated inside an enterprise software platform adds significant off the shelf value, encourages broader user adoption (more data = more value), and generates a positive buzz around the roll out of the new enterprise technology.

Does instant ROI sound good to your executive team?

Mike Kennedy is a Technical Evangelist at Talent Analytics, Corp. He can be reached via mike@talentanalytics.com and @talentanalytics.

Originally posted at TalentAnalytics.com/blog