Organisation View‘s Andrew Marritt tells me top firms’ want to model workforce planning and talent pipelines, reflecting increasingly data-driven HR management. Syngenta, ABB, Nestlé and others have very large teams across multiple functions and business units, and small changes to hiring, turnover, promotion, transfer and age profiles make a big difference to their ability to grow and support their businesses … and management in other functions expect HR to figure out what to do, not just to meet short-term needs but also ensure the business is well-resourced many years into the future.

HR is a natural for dynamic modeling – large numbers, very long time-scales, considerable interdependence and feedback, and powerful threshold effects – for which spreadsheet models are just useless. A couple of very simple examples: experience and cost of a growing sales force and talent pipeline in a law firm … now imagine multiplying those models amongst diverse but interdependent teams and trying to match their planning to business development and operational needs!