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I am always excited for the start of a new year — it is a time of reflection for the year just past and an opportunity to look forward to the year ahead. I am an optimistic person by nature, so this reflective process is always filled with promise, hoping to learn from my experiences over the previous 12 months. I felt especially optimistic approaching 2015; my personal life is great (wife, Molly; daughters, Regan and Maggie; and son, Aidan, are all healthy, happy, and doing well) and the horizon for my profession has perhaps never been brighter. After almost 20 years in the workforce analytics and planning industry, the marketplace was FINALLY accelerating; the discussions have moved from whether organizations should invest in analytics to how to optimize investments.

The industry has been on quite a journey the past few decades. Many point to Dr. Jac Fitz-enz starting the industry with human capital benchmarking programs and the launch of the Saratoga Institute. This work was enhanced through innovative consulting, benchmarking, and technology firms across the globe. The contributors were many, including InfoHRM (Peter Howes and Anastasia Ellerby from Australia) and the larger professional services firms (Mercer, Deloitte, AonHewitt, etc.) all the way to combinations of the two (PwC/Saratoga). I believe the growth of the industry started an initial period of acceleration, and acceptance, as the software firms started to get into the game. Large, global enterprise resource planning (ERP) software firms such as PeopleSoft, SAP, and Oracle included benchmarking, metrics, and dashboarding capabilities into their software platforms. These innovations, and the capable software sales teams, made HR dashboards a must-have tool for every human resources department.

The growth capabilities in the large ERP software platforms also contributed to the growth of the performance/talent management software vendor community and the rise of cloud computing. These new cloud-based firms such as SuccessFactors, Taleo, Kenexa, and Cornerstone OnDemand brought new capabilities to the marketplace. The industry started to move from HR Metrics and benchmarks to more advanced analytics and concepts around workforce planning. The ability to aggregate data in the cloud across organizations brought a whole new dimension to the analysis that could be conducted, produced, and delivered to C-suite executives. These were exciting times as the promise of finally linking human capital to business results appeared to be achievable. And it was! The industry saw leading companies such as Capital One, The Home Depot, Starbucks, Target, Ameriprise Financial, Avaya, and others influencing capital decisions within their respective organizations. It was not unusual to see many companies presenting findings, results, and program strategies at conferences across the globe and many companies establishing dedicated workforce analytics and planning centers-of-expertise (COEs).

The growth of COEs represents a significant achievement for our industry. Organizations were recognizing the importance of human capital analytics and workforce planning and were willing to invest capital (human and financial) in this capability. Many of the COEs reported directly to chief human resources officers (CHROs) and had direct access to the C-suite at large. HR was starting to become more quantitative in its capabilities, with statisticians, industrial-organizational psychologists, and business operations executives migrating into COEs and HR executive suites. COEs were starting to drive the innovation expected from the technology vendor community, pushing the boundaries of existing vendor capabilities. And then the HR technology community had another merger-and-acquisitions wave as the talent management vendors were swallowed up by the ERP vendors (SAP/SuccessFactors, Oracle/Taleo, IBM/Kenexa) and pure-play cloud ERP firms emerged with vendors like Workday. This consolidation of the HR technology industry did not drive the innovation in the analytics industry — the growth of COEs was the largest contributing factor to the growth we are seeing in the industry today.

This brings us to today, and I am so excited and optimistic for our industry. The growth and innovation of our industry is now driven by practitioners — the same practitioners that have launched and run COEs for the better part of a decade. These practitioners have taken the next step in the evolution of workforce analytics and planning and have moved to predictive analytics capabilities. COEs are harnessing the power of big data, leveraging machine learning functionality and providing insights to business leaders that were never before possible. In many ways, COEs serve as the R&D function for today's HR technology community and for their own organizations!

I was excited to be approached by Gene Pease regarding participating in the writing of his latest book. Gene and I are working together at Vestrics, provider of the industry's leading predictive analytics platform. Vestrics joins the companies I mentioned above in industry innovation and specifically in placing predictive analytics technology in the hands of talent professionals. Vestrics has been a thought leader in this work, and I was excited that, with his third book, Gene was going to formally document, and share, the innovation taking place in today's predictive analytics marketplace.

This book is not theory; the examples cited are real-world experiences and examples of some of the globe's leading companies tackling their thorniest business issues. The examples should serve as a template for organizations looking to analytics, a call to action for organizations struggling with their own efforts, and a confirmation of success for those already leading the charge.

I remain optimistic on the future of our industry — and hope you are as excited as I am for the next chapters of learning and growth that remain ahead.

Brian Kelly

President, Vestrics