From Time-to-Market to Time-to-Skill: Creating your Talent Supply Chain via SWP

In the 1990s, SAP revolutionized Supply Chain Management (SCM) by accelerating time-to-market. What once took over a year to deliver a product could suddenly be done in months, thanks to smarter forecasting, pre-purchasing, and parallel production. The result was faster delivery, happier customers, and healthier financial outcomes. The quality, time, and cost improvements made SCM adoption a no-brainer.

 

Today, organizations face a new challenge. It is no longer just about how quickly you can deliver products; it is about how quickly you can equip your workforce with the right capabilities. With OXYGEN, Strategic Workforce Planning enters its own transformation: turning “time-to-skill” into a measurable, manageable advantage.

 

Business strategies evolve rapidly, roles transform, new technologies emerge, and customer expectations change. The problem?

• Critical capabilities often lag behind business needs.
• Training and redeployment start only after the need is certain, creating delays.
• Opportunities are lost when organizations cannot adapt fast enough.

 

Just like supply chains once held back product launches, capability gaps now hold back business growth.

 

OXYGEN introduces the concept of a Talent Supply Chain, where skills are managed with the same foresight once applied to components in production:

• Probability-Based Preparation: if a role has a 30% chance of needing a new capability, OXYGEN will plan 30% of employees.
• Rolling Evaluation: probabilities are re-assessed quarterly, ensuring investment focuses on the highest-impact areas.
• Capacity Stockpiling: just as companies once pre-purchased common components, organizations can build “capacity reserves” in large workforce segments before demand peaks.
• Scenario Planning: test how different training, redeployment, or hiring strategies affect business readiness and cost.

 

By applying supply chain thinking to workforce planning, organizations achieve:

• Shorter time-to-skill: training and redeployment are already in motion before the need becomes urgent.
• Higher resilience: talent supply is ready to meet shifting demand without disruptive hiring cycles.
• Strategic advantage: the workforce evolves in lockstep with the business and the sales pipeline, not behind it.

 

In the 1990s, SAP helped companies cut time-to-market from 12 months to just 1-3 months. Today, OXYGEN enables the same leap, this time for skills and capabilities. By transforming “time-to-skill” into a core capability, organizations can stay ahead of disruption, reduce risk, and ensure the workforce is always ready for what comes next.

 

Eat. Sleep. Plan. Repeat: with us, workforce planning becomes a continuous talent supply chain.