Summary

Performance management requires companies to balance processes, information, technology and people to meet business objectives. Although many companies have invested in performance management tools and technologies that address the first three, few have made adequate investment in the people they employ. Cognos, known as a provider of business intelligence (BI) technology, hopes to change that by applying its analytical applications and framework to human resources organizations and their workforce processes. In the last year, research by Ventana Research has found that most HR and IT organizations neither support nor have access to workforce BI capabilities. Many HR departments have installed a complicated series of individual systems to address specific needs, but the combination often prevents employee data from being integrated into a common information framework to which users can apply BI tools. Organizations looking to improve their workforce performance capabilities should examine software such as that from Cognos.

Assessment

Over the last couple of years, HR departments have complicated their IT environments by installing systems to meet specific needs that traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) software or human resource management systems (HRMSs) did not address. These new systems, sometimes referred to as talent management systems, store workforce information critical to recruiting, compensation, competence assessment, goals management and succession management. The workforce information and metrics that BI can provide are essential to organizations that want to realize the potential of their workforces by aligning them to business goals and objectives. But in the typical enterprise environment, generating such BI insights can be challenging. Rationalizing workforce information and assembling workforce metrics typically involves integrating employee data from internal, outsourced, hosted and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications from a variety of suppliers. In many organizations, the IT group does not consider integrating these different HR applications a priority, nor does HR have the time or clout to make IT integrate them. Cognos now offers a way to do so.

Cognos first released its talent management software, Cognos 8 Workforce Performance, in 2006 to help HR organizations advance workforce performance. Now, with the 8.2 release, Cognos has moved the application onto the common BI platform used by all of its applications. Instead of just a data warehouse or a reporting system, Cognos offers a packaged application that users can customize to generate the metrics they need to measure workforce performance. Users can place these metrics in dashboards and reports and also extend them into planning and scorecard applications. Although it can draw information from ERP, HRMS and other systems, Cognos’ workforce BI tool works independently of them.

Market Impact

The market for workforce BI has been slow to develop because HR professionals have largely focused on the functional aspects of their processes and on operational applications; they have not prioritized developing a common view of workforce information in the whole organization. Recognizing this need, Cognos has collaborated with HR outsourcers and consulting firms to bring to market a sophisticated workforce BI application and framework. Cognos’ combination of BI and information management capabilities is part of a new wave of technology advances that will benefit HR and other functional areas that depend on this information, such as Finance and Operations. Traditional HRMS and ERP vendors have offered packaged data warehouses, but this approach has not met user needs for workforce information. An independent effort such as by Doublestar, which sells a packaged HR data warehouse, is a good first step, but it needs BI capabilities for organizations to use it fully.

Recommendation

Determining the best methods to measure workforce performance requires more than integrating employee data and storing it, and most ERP, HRMS and talent management vendors have not provided sufficient capabilities to provide useful workforce analytics. Cognos Workforce Performance, which builds on a solid BI and information management foundation, was a welcome addition in 2006. Now that there are successful customer deployments and partnerships, it is being released on the Cognos 8.2 platform, the centerpiece for all of Cognos’ applications and BI capabilities. Organizations that are serious about having information and metrics about their workforce should examine how the Cognos product can enhance their capabilities.

About the Author