Quadim

Quadim is a skills and competence platform that keeps a structured record of what people in your organization can actually do. It maps skills against roles, shows where the gaps are, and connects that data to practical uses – planning development, and putting the right people and CVs in front of a client when you are bidding for work. It is aimed at organizations currently tracking competence in spreadsheets and CV documents scattered across folders.

What you can actually do with it

The product joins up a few things that are usually handled separately:

• Map skills across the organization. Define competencies, assign them to people and roles, and hold the result as data rather than as a spreadsheet somebody maintains by hand.
• See where the gaps are. Analytics highlight where capability is missing or thin relative to what the work requires, which is the input to hiring and training decisions.
• Plan development. Individual development paths follow from the gap analysis, so training is tied to an identified need instead of a generic course catalogue.
• Support bids and tenders. Match your available capabilities against what a tender asks for and find the people who genuinely fit the requirement.
• Manage and tailor CVs. Keep employee profiles current and produce versions specialized for a particular bid, which is a real time sink for consultancies.

Who it fits best

The bid and CV features point clearly at consultancies, engineering firms, agencies and other professional services organizations that sell people’s time and have to prove capability to win work. If you regularly assemble project teams and submit CVs as part of a proposal, that is where the value concentrates.

It is also relevant to any organization big enough that no single manager knows who can do what – typically once you pass a few dozen people. Small teams where everyone knows everyone’s skills will not get much from formalizing it, and a simple shared document will do the job.

Things worth knowing before you commit

• The data has to be maintained. A skills platform is only as accurate as its last update, and the hard part is getting people to keep their profiles current rather than the software itself.
• You need a competence framework first. Deciding which skills you track and at what levels is your work, not the tool’s, and it is the step organizations most often underestimate.
• It is a smaller vendor. There is limited independent review coverage, so ask for reference customers, and check integration with your existing HR system before assuming it will fit.
• Pricing is not published. You will need to contact them for terms rather than sizing it up from a pricing page.

Alternatives to compare it against

Larger HR suites and talent management platforms include skills modules, which makes sense if you already run one and want everything in a single system. Dedicated skills-management tools focus more narrowly on gap analysis and workforce planning without the bidding angle. If your real problem is producing consistent CVs and proposals, a proposal or CV management tool may address it more directly and more cheaply than a full competence platform.

Features and pricing for a product like this change quickly and terms are not published. Contact Quadim for current pricing and check the specifics against your own requirements.

Further reading

• Top 8 HR Software Solutions for Effective Workforce Management — the broader HR suites whose skills modules compete with a standalone platform.
• 10 Best HR Analytics Software 2024 — other ways to get the capability gap reporting described above.
• Best Practices for Workforce Allocation Simulation — how skills data feeds decisions about who to put on which project.
• Cloud Based HRIS: An Overview — background for checking how Quadim would integrate with your existing HR system.

Have you used Quadim?

One sentence is enough. Would you pick it again, and why or why not? We publish the critical reviews too — that is the point.