No subject is more likely to elicit a lively response from those managing procurement operations than one concerning the ongoing need to source and, crucially, maintain talent at a time when the need for it is more chronic than ever.

With that in mind, a recent article from Wharton Management caught my eye. In it, professor Peter Cappelli, argues that company’s need to take a new approach when it comes to talent management, claiming that failing to manage your company’s talent needs “is the equivalent of failing to manage your supply chain.”

Cappelli, is the author of a soon-to-be-published book entitled Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty, and says that it’s high time the principles of supply chain management – most pertinently those of ensuring stock and managing risk – were applied to talent. And he has a point.

"Managing supply chains is about managing uncertainty and variability,” he says. “This same uncertainty exists inside companies with regard to talent development. Companies rarely know what they will be building five years out and what skills they will need to make that happen; they also don't know if the people they have in their pipelines are going to be around."