systematicHR

I’ve realized that I may never have put together a comprehensive list of what I consider to be crucial to the reporting function. From a technology and application perspective, there are several key features that make up a business intelligence (BI) suite. When you purchase an HR application, you’ll almost always get a prepackaged reporting too, but business intelligence is so much more.

• Queries – Queries can really mean 2 things. To most people, queries are a simplified reporting tool that allows users to quickly return data with limited formatting and selection criteria. However, distributed queries can also mean that data is pulled from multiple applications or tables and stored so that those queries can be re-used without redefinition.
• Ad Hoc Reporting – Ad hoc tools are the base reporting for most organizations. The tools hsould have a robust interface and allow users to navigate multiple sources easily.
• OLAP Reporting – This is the analytics engine of business intelligence. Allowing users to view the organization from a “multi-dimensional” approach, OLAP reporting lets you see the organization from multiple angles. If you think about the descriptors of reporting, Ad Hoc uses tables which are 2 dimensional. OLAP uses “cubes” which are multi-dimensional.
• Dashboards – Dashboards are really formal queries that are integrated into a front end display. These show progress, status, or performance of key business metrics to end users (generally managers).
• Modeling – Allows users to do a “what if” on data.

So if the base of BI is ad hoc reporting, what does that get us? Well, not much to be honest. As I stated in a previous article, the role of HRIS, the HR organization needs to play a bigger part in decision support. While Ad Hoc is nice, it really only gives us a current snapshot of the organization and must be heavily manipulated to provide any realy value. To provide real decision support, HRIS needs OLAP tools and modeling tools.

Dahsboards may or may not be a “nice to have.” From the operational perspective (managers), how much insight you want to give your managers into their organization is up to you. There are obvious benefits to managers seeing drill down dashboards containing performance and competency metrics.

I’ve defined a few tools that are available in full BI suites. For sure there are technology components (that I should stay away from), but these form the base of user tools. My point is that Ad hoc is not the sold provider of intelligence, and if relied upon for yourdecision support needs, you’ll be quite dissappointed.