VIEW POINT
UNIT4
Ho Chee Tiong Sales & Operations Director
Getting a bird’s eye view on human resources Business intelligence tools provide organisations with a useful overview of their workforce, allowing them to identify trends and react quickly to issues before they escalate, says Ho Chee Tiong, Sales & Operations Director, Prosoft HRMS Imagine as you are on the flight to your next destination, the captain announces over the PA system that he has absolutely no idea how far and how high the plane now is, and whether the fuel will be enough to last the entire trip. Sounds absurd? Well this could be happening in your own organisation. Does your management know that production is not able to catch up with sales? Do they know all things being constant, that 20% of your current workforce will be retiring in two years’ time? Your management may not have the information to alert them on such events that may cripple the business. Many organisations in the Western countries are deploying Business Intelligence (BI) tools to help them make day-to-day and strategic decisions. BI tools typically provide ‘Dashboard’ user interface that unifies various sources of data into information through a simple, organised and up-to-date user interface (charts, scales etc.). In the areas of HR, the high availability of a consolidated view of vital metrics such as staff attrition, training costs, work hours, places and overtime allows decision makers access to information that will otherwise take ages to be collated and shared with other personnel. Some advantages are simply too many to ignore: • Information that is easy to read and understand – data presented in charts are definitely easier to read than rows and rows of data. Besides being able to gaze at critical information through constant data flows, the ability to further drill down into the details without over cluttering the summary information is an ideal way to share information
to various parties who have different needs in terms of data details. • Customisation of data to various organisation levels – data can also be filtered according to the sensitivity level or on a need-to-know basis. For example, you can configure top management to access all data, middle management to see within their own division, and the operation level to see just certain details that they need to get their job done. • Identify trends – this allows the organisation to identify trends and make fast reactions to issues before they become problems. For example, if employees who join the company through an graduate programme stay on four times longer than employees recruited from other sources, HR should look into reasons on why that is the case and exploit those factors to have a better staff retention rate. • Proactive approach – similar to a natural disaster warning system, the system can send automatic pop-up alerts and triggers based on user defined pre-configurations of thresholds. For example, the HR Director can receive an automated email once staff attritions exceeds X% in any given month. Timely and accurate information enables decision makers and even operational employees to make informed decisions. The high configurability of the dashboards enables easy sharing (user permissions) and alignment of information across the organisation, saving precious time and resources, while making the organisation more efficient and effective in responding to issues and opportunities.
• Tel: 6333 6133 • Email: prosoft.sales.sgp@unit4.com • Web: www.myprosoft.com www.unit4apac.com
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