The Complete Guide to Skills Management Platforms

Skills management platforms provide unparalleled visibility into your workforce capabilities. This enables better development, utilization and future-proofing of your talent.

With rapidly evolving job roles, nearly 50% of employees will require reskilling by 2025 per the World Economic Forum. Skills management technology is essential for adaptation.

This guide will explore:

  • Key capabilities offered by skills platforms
  • Top players in this emerging HR tech domain
  • Use cases and customer examples
  • Best practices for implementation

Let‘s start by examining why skills management matters more than ever.

The Growing Imperative of Skills Management

Skills Gap

The skills gap is widening at an alarming rate. By 2030, 85 million jobs may go unfilled due to talent shortages, per Korn Ferry. This threatens business productivity and innovation.

Skills management platforms help combat this by:

  • Creating a centralized skills database for real-time visibility
  • Offering diagnostics to reveal competency gaps
  • Using AI to match learning to demonstrated needs
  • Providing analytics to inform reskilling investments

With this technology, companies can proactively upskill over 70% of their workforce by 2025 to stay ahead of change.

Some key skills measured across platforms include:

  • Technical: Coding languages, cloud platforms, BI tools
  • Power: Communication, collaboration, creativity
  • Agility: Adaptability, learning agility, growth mindset
  • Leadership: Coaching, strategic thinking, influencing

Now let‘s overview the top skills analysis solutions on the market.

Top 10 Skills Management Platforms

Here are the leading platforms companies rely on to future-proof their workforce:

Platform Key Capabilities
MuchSkills – AI-based skills taxonomy
– Career path mapping
– Custom assessments
– Gap analysis
AG5 – Centralized skills directory
– Skill keyword search
– Training compliance tracking
– Skills benchmarking
Skills Base – Custom skills framework
– Employee skill self-reporting
– Competency analytics
– Succession planning
GrowthSpace – Expert mentor matching
– Learner progress oversight
– Skills-adjacent capability building
– Enterprise integration
Pluralsight Skills – Technical skill measurement
– Role IQ benchmarking
– Channel skill development
– Platform health analytics
Primetric – Dynamic skill reporting
– Skills mining from text
– Career development planning
– Manager oversight
Cinode – Interest + skills combined view
– Job specific competency review
– Employee skill self-reporting
– Automated development suggestions
Skilltree – Custom skills framework design
– Soft + hard skills taxonomy
– Automated gap identification
– Dynamic team creation
Augmentir – Frontline workforce focus
– Operation-specific skills tracking
– On-the-job training reinforcements
– Workflow integrations
Fundamento – Science-backed power skills methodology
– Microlearning course creator
– Predictive hiring assessments
– Custom modules

While features vary, all these platforms aim to create visibility, facilitate development and form data-driven workforce strategies.

Now let‘s look at some specific use cases and customer examples…

Skills Management in Action: Key Platform Use Cases

Each skills solution serves a range of industries and use cases. Here are insights into how major players deliver value:

MuchSkills: Optimized Team Composition

MuchSkills Dashboard

MuchSkills leverages AI and ML to intelligently group employees based on complementary strengths. This leads to higher performing teams.

For example, technology services giant Wipro used MuchSkills to improve utilization on client projects. By algorithmically assigning consultants to accounts based on skill match, utilization rates rose over 10%.

AG5: Centralized Skills Visibility

AG5 Skills Dashboard

With an intuitive skills directory, AG5 offers real-time visibility into workforce capabilities enterprise-wide.

Global bank Rabobank managed skills across 45,000+ employees with AG5. Centralized insight enabled better promotion decisions and mobility between business units.

Skills Base: Data-Driven Workforce Planning

Skills Base provides dynamic analysis of competencies to inform strategic talent decisions.

Non-profit skills training provider Infoxchange uses the platform to identify reskilling opportunities. By projecting future needs, they optimized their curriculum to build relevant capabilities.

Cinode: Career Growth Mapping

Cinode Dashboard

Cinode creates personalized growth plans by linking employee skills, interests and aspirations to organizational needs.

One customer saw career plan engagement grow 329% after rolling out Cinode. They credit it with increasing retention 4%.

The above snapshots demonstrate the far-reaching use cases of these agile platforms. Let‘s look at best practices for implementation.

Deploying Skills Management Successfully

Once you‘ve aligned on business objectives, here are tips for rollout:

Collect input from stakeholders: Include leaders from HR, Ops and Tech to outline needs.

Build a skills taxonomy: Classify required competencies based on roles.

Map systems integrations: Connect to existing HR tools like an LMS for consolidated analytics.

Train managers: Ensure they understand platform features to support employees.

Incentivize participation: Recognize employees for engaging with skills assessments.

Reinforce learnings: Use daily workflows to apply skills and track mastery.

Review metrics frequently: Monitor adoption and refine strategies as needed.

With the right foundations, skills management delivers transformational upskilling, productivity and agility over the long-term.

The Future of Skills Management Technology

As the shift to skills-based talent optimization accelerates, adoption of these platforms will only grow.

Skills Management Growth Projections

Per research firm Mordor Intelligence, the global skills management software market will grow from $1.5 billion to over $5 billion by 2027.

The platforms overviewed here provide unmatched capabilities in managing this next era of human capital development.

Key Takeaways

  • Skills management platforms create unprecedented visibility into workforce capabilities.

  • They apply analytics, AI and customized frameworks to reveal gaps and development areas.

  • Leading solutions help optimize talent decisions, team composition and career growth.

  • Useful across industries, these tools provide a strategic advantage in workforce agility.

As jobs rapidly transform, proactively developing skills is an economic and innovation imperative. Platforms like those covered will prove foundational in this human-centered revolution.

What skills management platforms power your workforce? Share experiences in the comments below!