FAQ12 questions
MuchSkills compared with the alternatives
Workday and SAP both ship a skills layer. Why pay for MuchSkills too?
If your Workday or SAP SuccessFactors skills data is already complete and used every week to staff work, you may not need MuchSkills. The usual gap is completeness: employees open an HR system to check leave and payslips, rarely to describe their skills. MuchSkills sits on top of the HCM as the place people and managers keep skills current, reads people data from it, and can send skills data back through the API or a custom integration we build with you. MuchSkills is an SAP partner, and its SAP partner listing covers integration with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP SuccessFactors Learning.
How is MuchSkills different from tools that infer skills from work data?
Skills inference tools read systems your organisation already runs, such as project tools, code repositories and documents, and attribute skills to people from that work, usually without a self-rating survey; some then ask employees or managers to validate the result. MuchSkills works the other way round: people and managers build the record, and the organisation validates what carries consequences. The two fail differently. Inference can fail silently, with a plausible profile nobody checked. A people-built record fails visibly, as a gap someone can see and fill.
Is a spreadsheet good enough for tracking skills?
For a team of fewer than about 50 people with simple, stable skill requirements, yes, and buying software would be a waste of money. Spreadsheets break in three predictable ways: one person owns the file, certificates expire without anyone noticing, and the person who needs an answer is not the person who maintains the sheet. When any of those starts costing you a bid, an audit finding or a week of chasing, you have outgrown it. See what a modern skills matrix looks like.
Can one platform handle both staffing and employee development?
Yes. MuchSkills runs staffing and development off the same skills record, which is why consulting and professional services firms use it: in a consultancy, who can do the work and who should grow into it are the same question. Staffing is search and availability: Discover finds people by skill, certificate and availability, Team Builder assembles a team against required levels, and utilisation views show who comes free when. Development is gaps, goals and progression. Because both read the same data, the development plan and the staffing decision stay consistent.
How is MuchSkills different from a certification tracker like AG5?
AG5 and similar tools are skills matrix specialists built mainly for deskless, shop-floor workforces, with visual matrices tied to standards such as ISO 9001 and HACCP. MuchSkills tracks certifications too, with expiry alerts, manager validation, proof files and a full change history, and adds skills mapping, staffing and development on the same data. If certificate expiry on a shop-floor workforce is your only problem, a specialist is worth considering. If you also need to see who can do the work, staff it and develop people, one platform beats running a tracker and a skills tool side by side. See the MuchSkills and AG5 comparison.
Do we need a skills platform at all, or just better job descriptions?
If roles are unclear, fix the job descriptions first: a skills platform surfaces an organisational design argument faster than it settles one. Buy skills software such as MuchSkills when the question you cannot answer is about people rather than roles: who specifically can do this, how well, and are they free next month.
We are changing LMS. Should we choose a skills platform first?
Choose them together, or the skills platform first. Your skills data outlives any LMS: it describes what people can do, and the LMS is one source of ways to build it. MuchSkills connects to several learning platforms at once and links courses to skills and certificates, so you can change LMS later without touching your skills data. Organisations that let the LMS decision absorb the skills decision often end up with course completions and no view of capability.
Our HR system already has a skills module. Isn't that enough?
It might be. Ask four questions of it: does it hold levels that employees and managers agree on, certificates with expiry dates and proof, search by skill and availability together, and gaps against each role's requirements? If it does all four and people keep it current, you may not need more. Where it does not, MuchSkills sits alongside it, imports people data from it through one of more than 30 native connectors, and becomes the place skills are kept up to date.