Data Platform as a Service: The Newest HCM Value Add?
Data platform as a service tools can offer big benefits for HR teams when paired with HCM solutions. But finance leaders also can come out ahead by future-proofing data analytics, reducing the amount of time needed to leverage HR data and improving their talent acquisition process.
Big data has big value — but only when it's effectively captured, analyzed and leveraged. Until recently, HR was largely left out of the big data discussion, but the emergence of data platform as a service (dPaaS) tools have changed the game. Now, HR teams can leverage dPaaS tools to empower HCM systems and derive critical employee insight. But what does this shift mean for finance leaders? What's the value proposition of deploying dPaaS tools and integrating them with existing HCM solutions?
An Effective Impact
HR teams adopting dPaaS likely already enjoy significant benefits. For example, these as-a-service solutions allow organizations to effectively track key employee metrics such as day-to-day activities, communications and overall efficiency, which in turn empower HR to develop both staff-specific training plans and organizational-wide process revisions as required. DPaaS also lets organizations pick and choose the data that's the most relevant and actionable, rather than forcing them to navigate massive data "lakes" in hope of coming up with actionable information. In addition, dPaaS delivers both clean and actionable data for HR use, providing a solid foundation for benchmarking against current competitors. Quantifiable data can lead to quality results.
Technology Revolution
For finance leaders, however, more agile and effective HCM tools don't necessarily translate into better ROI. Where's the fiscal value in this kind of adoption?
It starts with legacy systems. As noted by Data Center Journal, there's a solid comparison between the mega-popular mobile app Pokemon Go and dPaaS. Here's why: They both represent technology revolution. In the case of Pokemon, it's the shift away from sit-and-play video games to augmented-reality offerings that require players to interact with the world around them. DPaaS, meanwhile, "harmonizes data from disparate sources into a useful whole, improving productivity and agility while giving enterprises greater control over their data," as Data Center Journal notes. As these revolutions enjoy more mainstream adoption, businesses still relying on legacy solutions could pay a significantly higher price to "buy in."
Cloud-Based Models
Fiscal benefits also stem from the cloud-based access model of dPaaS. As noted in Health Data Management, current models of big data storage and access depend on large-scale silos, which force employees to spend time and effort moving, cleaning and finally parsing data. This is made even more complicated and labor-intensive if they're dealing with a mix of structured and unstructured information, since these typically require disparate management tool sets. Data platform as a service solutions give all authorized staff the same ability to easily access and manipulate data of all types, in turn possibly reducing time wasted and improving your bottom line.
Talent Recruiting
For financial leaders, the talent recruiting process is also part of the dPaaS discussion. With talent shortages on the rise and organizations increasingly searching for right-fit staff instead of right-now employees, reliable data can help identify existing talent shortfalls along with specific skills that can benefit your bottom line.
For example, an effective dPaaS solution can not only pull employee data from multiple sources, but effectively anonymize it, allowing HR pros to uncover complementary skill sets or gaps that need to be filled. In turn, this focuses your hiring process, can reduce the time required and more quickly identify ideal applicants. The result could be lower spend for better returns.
Data platform as a service tools can offer big benefits for HR teams when paired with HCM solutions. But finance leaders also can come out ahead by future-proofing data analytics, reducing the amount of time needed to leverage HR data and improving their talent acquisition process.
