When Training Needs Analysis Breaks: Why 5,000-Row Spreadsheets Isn't a Strategy

A few weeks ago, I spoke with a learning and development (L&D) leader at a large industrial company. Who said something that stuck with me: "By the time I finish collating Training Needs Analysis, I’m already exhausted, and I still don’t trust the data.”

Every appraisal cycle, their process looked like this:

• Line managers identify skill gaps.
• Each plant HR compiles the data.
• Everything gets pushed to L&D.
• She receives an Excel file with up to 3,000 rows.

And that’s where the real frustration begins, several business owners, human resource, learning and development specialists struggle with this same problem every single day. The current method makes it almost impossible to get clarity, and when we lack clarity, companies do what they’ve always done: Train everyone on everything, and hope something works.

The Hidden Cost of Bad Training Data

From the outside, it looks like progress is happening:

• ✓ Training budgets approved
• ✓ Vendors engaged
• ✓ Employees attending sessions
• ✓ Certificates issued
• ✓ Boxes checked

But if you look underneath, you'll see; skill gaps that still exist even sometimes worsening, critical roles that remain at risk (succession planning fails), high performers who don't feel stretched (they start looking elsewhere). Employees who quietly disengage (learning feels generic, not personal) eventually money gets wasted (on training that doesn't move the needle).

Organisation leadership now start believing that "training just doesn't work." But here's the truth that most people miss: It's not the training that's failing, it's the diagnosis. That's where Semis gap analysis comes in.

Why TNA Breaks Down (Even in Well-Intentioned Organisations)

Over the past year, I've interacted with a couple HR and L&D leaders across industries. The same patterns keep emerging:

1️⃣ Data collection is manual, fragmented, and time wasting

Line Managers/Supervisors send Word docs, Excel files, PDFs, or sometimes Emails with notes scribbled in the body text about a training need or review conducted.

HR or L&D specialist gets overwhelmed by spending time trying to utilise manual ways to standardise, merge, and make sense of it all. By the time it's "done," the data is already stale.

2️⃣ Managers don't know how to articulate real skill gaps

So they fall back on generic labels:

- "Presentation skills."
- "Excel."
- "Leadership development."

But what kind of leadership? For what context? What specific Excel capabilities? For which workflows? Presentations to whom? Internal teams? Clients? C-suite?

Without context, L&D is forced to guess—or default to off-the-shelf courses that kind of, sort of, maybe fit.

3️⃣ No meaningful connection to business outcomes

Training conversations then become: "What course can we run this quarter?"

Instead of: "What capabilities must we build for our strategy to succeed?"

Learning becomes reactive, not strategic.

4️⃣ Zero visibility across the organisation

Organisations and businesses miss out on answering critical questions such as; Who's struggling? Who's underutilised? Which departments are quietly at risk?

Where is critical knowledge concentrated in just one or two people? Who are your hidden high-performers that nobody's investing in?

All of these insights exist but they're invisible, buried in 5,000-row spreadsheets that nobody has time to actually analyse. And this is exactly why we started building Semis.

Semis: Transforming Training Needs Analysis Into Employee Intelligence

Semis didn't start as "just another HR tool." It began with a deeper, more fundamental question: How do organisations build people who actually stay, grow, and perform without drowning in admin work and guesswork?

We realised that the problem wasn't just TNA. It was the entire approach to understanding and developing talent. So we built Semis around three interconnected pillars:

🔹 Pillar 1: Training Needs Analysis—Automated and Intelligent

🔹 Pillar 2: Mentorship & Internal Knowledge Sharing

🔹 Pillar 3: Employee Intelligence (The Game-Changer)

The Future is Built on Knowledge Driven Community

So what does this actually mean for L&D, HR, and Business Leaders? Imagine a world where Training Needs Analysis looks like this:

• ✓ Data collection is organised, structured, and AI-assisted
• ✓ Insights are visual and intuitive, not buried in Excel tabs
• ✓ Skill gaps are specific and contextual, not vague department-wide guesses
• ✓ Every training initiative maps clearly to business strategy
• ✓ Internal mentorship and knowledge-sharing actually happens (and gets tracked)
• ✓ Leadership has real-time visibility into talent health
• ✓ L&D becomes a strategic function, not just a cost center

That's what we're building with Semis. Early Signup here Semis.

If You've Ever Felt This Pain—You're Not Alone

If you've ever stared at a massive TNA spreadsheet at midnight and thought:

"There has to be a better way to do this..."

You're exactly who we built Semis for. We're currently onboarding organisations into our early access programme; HR teams, L&D leaders, forward-thinking founders, learning communities, and companies that genuinely care about their people.

If you'd like to see what Semis can do:

→ Book a short walkthrough with us

→ Or join our private beta waitlist

And if it's not the right fit for you yet? Share this with someone who needs it. Because employees deserve clarity about their growth. Leaders deserve real visibility into their talent. Organisations deserve systems that actually make sense.

And that's exactly what Semis is here to build.

Get started on Semis from Reispar.