Nearly every company has certain components that run like well-oiled machines, and others that don't. And ensuring the former group outsizes the latter is important for talent development professionals. Luckily, tools powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning have made doing this easier than ever before. One such tool is Nintex Hawkeye, which is a workflow analytics and automation software.

Able to connect with digital systems throughout a business, it gathers data from around an organization to visualize its different process in workflow diagrams. Next, it filters these workflows through different "lenses" to compare them across process types, users, roles, departments, and more. The resulting information is then shown in dashboards that visualize how well different parts of your company, and the individuals within it, work.

The potential of this tool (and others like it) for talent development professionals is fascinating. By gathering easy-to-interpret information on processes in a business, and which people run them the best, it becomes easy to isolate performance bottlenecks and their causes—individual workers, whole departments, or processes themselves.

For example, if a process moves slowly when only a certain individual performs it, the problem is likely with the employee. However, if it moves slowly no matter who performs it, the issue is likely with the process itself or the department running it. With such information, it becomes easier for talent development functions to find the root causes of performance issues and focus their efforts on the ones in most need of repair.