Business leaders are always looking for opportunities to control costs, improve productivity, and maximize profitability. With the explosion of data aggregation and analysis tools over the preceding two decades, businesses of all sizes can now collect massive amounts of data and use the information to make more accurate predictions and smarter business decisions.
With labor costs running on average between 15-30% of expenditures for small- and medium-sized businesses, workforce-related decisions have a major impact on a company’s bottom line. Every HCM software boasts robust built-in reporting features—but unless your system is configured correctly, your organization may be missing out on the full capabilities of all the data you collect.
Here’s how to take full advantage of your human capital management data to improve your business’s financial and strategic decision-making.
Ensure data integrity and data quality of your systems
Many HCM software solutions feature faulty integrations with the potential to destroy the quality of your data without your knowing. Unfortunately, lots of companies fail to realize they lack full access to relevant data until they find themselves with skewed results or are forced to implement time-consuming, manual workarounds.
The first step in ensuring your data informs better decision-making is to audit your HCM system to ensure your data is relevant, accurate, and ready to integrate with your other business intelligence systems.
Determine relevant KPIs
Failure to specifically outline your key performance indicators (KPIs) is like trying to hit a moving target…while blindfolded. Your company will never fully capitalize on your available data collection unless you clearly articulate what you plan to measure and why it’s important.
Many businesses start with an initial set of KPIs only to revise them upon deeper understanding of how each data point relates to various departments or processes inside and outside the organization. As part of Seequelle’s expert-led system optimization process, we conduct a detailed solution audit that accounts for every key stakeholder’s needs as well how each role utilizes the system.
Only by unveiling the full context of the decisions influenced by your HCM data can you determine the true system specifications and objectives that will define your path forward to implement a new platform, integrate with another system, or optimize your existing HCM software.
Move beyond descriptive data
HCM systems boast the ability to collect data to drive key decisions—but for most human capital management platforms, the data delivered remains at a basic descriptive level. Descriptive data tells you “what” is happening but puts the onus on your team to determine the “why.” This often requires the time-consuming manual process of sorting through the data to make sense of it all.
Data automation, system optimization, and advanced integrations can take the value of your data further by pushing beyond descriptive data collection into a diagnostic level (revealing why something has happened) or even to predictive levels (using forecasting algorithms and/or multivariate statistics and pattern matching from historical data to predict what is likely to happen in the future).
But there’s a catch: no system can deliver this level of granularity straight out of the box. Work with HCM software experts to configure your current system correctly, ensure your data is prepped for transformation, and integrate your HCM platform with your other business intelligence solutions.
Data automation is key
Only through regular data collection and analysis can you reveal patterns that reflect the true evolution of your business. Intermittent data collection risks inaccurate insights. And the only way to efficiently gather the information is to automate your data collection. Your company’s HR, finance, and other business-critical technology platforms may be configured to collect data—but is that data ready to be transferred into a data warehouse or other business intelligence systems? If not, failure to collect apples-to-apples data sets means you’ll have to correct a bigger problem down the line. Work with HCM experts to configure your platform to automate data collection using your organization’s unique KPIs as a guide.
Partner with HCM experts to achieve your system’s full potential
The IT departments at most medium-sized companies are not equipped to manage the necessary level of customization, configuration, and integration of disparate applications, platforms and systems. While they may be able to handle small changes or manage minor hiccups, they usually lack the in-depth expertise to help you maximize the potential of your HCM system for better decision-making. We recommend letting your IT team focus on your overall technology infrastructure and let HCM system specialists focus on optimizing your system to meet your organization’s intelligence needs.
Buying the right HCM software is only the first step. Using your human capital management data to drive effective decision-making means following through with the appropriate data collection, preparation, and system integrations to help your organization understand what all that data actually means for your business.
Contact the HCM experts at Seequelle to begin maximizing the full potential of your data, starting now.