Business intelligence (BI) technologies have revolutionised the way enterprises make their business decisions. With particular thanks to digital transformation, BI is crucial for deriving useful insights from the influx of information companies find themselves confronted with. In other words, BI is the method to the terabyte madness. However, to properly action the data assets available, organisations must be able to exercise agility. Hence: data warehouses. That statement might stop you in your tracks, and quite rightly so. Data warehouses are renowned for their complexity and much less, their agility. However, as with many enterprise initiatives, automation has swooped in to make hopes a reality. In particular, automation can rev up your data warehousing efforts by generating reports within minutes of the data becoming available. This means your teams will always be able to work with the most up-to-date information, enabling the most accurate decision-making possible. Not only that, but automating anything takes the human error out of processes, in this case bolstering data integrity. Then, as an added bonus, automation can also save organisations significant costs, making it a no-brainer for data warehouses.
The power is within the people
Thus, the synergy between data warehouses, automation, and BI has been warmly welcomed by companies as a means to enjoy data in an agile manner. However, as powerful as these technologies are, there is one more asset that trumps all in value to the enterprise: people. It’s funny that data, automation, and digital tools alike have all been placed on a pedestal higher than that of employees in terms of value. Instead, the approach business should be taking is to leverage the technologies at their disposal to get the best out of their workforce. As our understanding of the harmonious relationship between automated data warehouses and BI tools matures, it makes the most obvious, natural remedy to solving our business challenges. One such challenge is understanding and analysing the workforce, aptly termed ‘people analytics’. Until now, most businesses have focused analytics efforts on more quantifiable data such as finance, rather than in areas such as HR. Despite the efforts of many organisations to democratise data, many HR professionals still don’t have access to the right employee data, hindering effective decision-making. However, organisations that harness people analytics will quickly see how it enables them to strategically get the best out of their most powerful asset. Today, companies have a range of employee data at their disposal, which can be harvested from, for example, recruitment and HR systems, as well as training and appraisal reports, to gain better visibility into how their employees work. In turn, organisations can action those insights to help their employees progress. The rewards of doing so are significant, from encouraging loyalty to positively impacting your company’s bottom line. However, organisations would be forgiven for feeling stumped on how best to roll out people analytics. In particular, knowing who is responsible for the oversight of people analytics is a grey area. Of course, the HR department would be the most appropriate, but it’s natural to feel concerned about whether it necessitates high proficiency in technical skills.
Data dreams do come TrueCue
Fortunately, modern offerings such as TrueCue (which can be used to pull data from systems such as SAP SuccessFactors or Workday HCM) provide HR with rapid and agile data warehouses that don’t require heavy technical involvement. This Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform minimises the technical complexity of creating and managing a data warehouse, but without compromising on best-practice architecture and modelling methodology. In turn, business teams can create and take ownership of data warehouses which act as their foundation for high-value analytics. The single SaaS offering, which has a Power BI offering built on top, promises the same secure, governed, and scalable standard that an enterprise IT team would expect. Thus, business teams can confidently analyse their data, while IT teams are free to shift their focus elsewhere. For senior management and HR professionals in particular, they can take advantage of TrueCue to answer questions quicker and make more informed, accurate decisions about their workforce. The solution can be configured for your specific business needs by defining business requirements and questions which inform the data requirements and dimensional data model, designed to maintain business focus. As a result, HR can enjoy stunning visual analytics and reports for harvesting insights. The TrueCue people analytics solution allows your teams to investigate a number of questions, such as “how are our L&D programs performing?” or “how effective is social media for recruitment?” As a result, senior management and HR will be able to achieve their goals of improving company performance through a better managed workforce, powered by a data warehouse that delivers the simplicity we have all been longing for.
