Article at a glance:

Matching people and jobs

Few companies understand fully which employees are essential to success or how to organize them so that the right person holds the right job at the right time. What's more, while software tools to manage supply chains and other tangible assets have been around for years, only now have systems emerged to optimize the most important asset of a knowledge economy: human capital. These new software technologies will facilitate highly sophisticated approaches to deploying and developing workers, promising a sea change in the way companies manage a large, distributed workforce.

The take-away

In a knowledge economy, strategy must focus on boosting productivity through the careful deployment and development of individual employees. Companies can now tap a new generation of software technologies to help them turn human-capital management into a strategic advantage.