Your HCM software can be an incredibly powerful part of your business intelligence solutions—or it can be a woefully underutilized tool. Many mid-sized businesses invest heavily in switching to a new HCM platform only to discover they are still strapped with time-consuming workarounds and lack access to key data to guide smart decision-making.
All HCM solutions boast data collection and analysis capabilities, but unless your company is prepared to take the additional step of custom configuration or integration with your other business management tools, you are likely leaving important information locked away.
So, what’s missing from your HCM reporting software? Read on to find out.
Descriptive reporting is the first step
Most built-in HCM reporting is descriptive. This means the software provides an aggregated description of what happened, but little insight into why. That said, descriptive reporting is the foundation of all decision-making, so it’s extremely important that your organization regularly captures a uniform data set to reveal change over time. Automating your data collection is the most effective way to ensure apples-to-apples comparisons. Intermittent collection efforts or data aggregation through manual processes risks data drift that can create blind spots in even fundamental reporting.
Diagnostic reporting delivers the “why”
Understanding what happened is an essential part of business intelligence, but future decision-making is only improved by revealing the full context. This requires using your HCM software to drill down and extract deeper levels of granularity to populate your reports. Diagnostic reporting considers all the variables that contributed to what happened. This multi-variate analysis enables you to see how changes in one department influence outcomes elsewhere in your organization.
Predictive reporting helps you anticipate what’s ahead
Predictive reporting represents what is likely to happen in the future by applying forecasting algorithms, predictive modeling, multivariate statistics, and pattern matching. This is the gold standard of HCM reporting available today. Many of the top HCM solutions have the potential to deliver predictive reports, but require additional levels of analysis to unlock the full value of your data.
The level of expertise required to configure your system correctly, aggregate and prepare your data, and integrate with other business critical systems like SAP Finance, Netsuite, Oracle, and leading ERP systems is usually well beyond the capabilities of most internal IT departments. It’s often a case of “companies don’t know what they don’t know.” This is why partnering with HCM specialists provides a major advantage. HCM software experts like the team at Seequelle understand the full potential of Dayforce and UKG and can quickly determine how to configure your system to make sure it delivers accurate predictive reporting to align with your company’s unique KPIs.
The future: prescriptive reporting
Companies using predictive reporting outlined above have a head-start on the future—but smart decisions still require a deep level of human discernment and involvement. In the future, we expect to see more applications of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and neural networks to cut through the noise and slash the time needed for effective decision-making. Many of these technologies are still in development, but look for more uses for these leading-edge technologies in the years ahead.
Get the full value of your system by moving beyond the basics
Mot straight-from-the-box systems deliver merely descriptive capabilities. Reports may look robust, but ultimately, built-in reporting features are simply collecting and exporting basic information that provides a snapshot of an outcome. To reach the full value of your HCM software solution, you must take additional steps to elevate your reporting. The capability is there but must be configured correctly.
Turn to HCM software experts
HCM systems are like Formula 1 cars: The machine’s (product) performance alone does not guarantee success. With a great driver (implementation team), your system will blow past limitations with unprecedented speed and agility. But when operated by an under-experienced team, the system is likely to hit a wall quickly.
Large organizations with analytics departments can dedicate necessary resources to integrate their HCM system with other business intelligence solutions, but if you’re part of a mid-market company, you likely lack this level of in-house manpower. Partnering with HCM specialists is an efficient, cost-effective way to start filling in the reporting gaps and capitalizing on the full value of your data.
In addition to optimizing your existing system and integrating your HCM platform with your other business-critical technologies, you gain an additional advantage when partnering with experts: constant data and system monitoring. As one platform evolves, ensuring seamless integration with the rest of your technology suite is key—or you risk data drift that can result in inaccuracies no one recognizes until it’s too late.
Expert configuration and integration illuminate your reporting blind spots
Too many organizations do a lift-and-shift into a new HCM platform and unwittingly bring along baggage and limitations from their old system into their new solution. Working with certified HCM experts helps you overcome limitations, correct temporary stopgaps, and move beyond basic reporting to unleash the full potential of your system and provide a complete picture of what your data is trying to tell you.
Talk to the HCM experts at Seequelle to bring your reporting capabilities to the cutting edge.