Can HR Systems ever do Big Data? Workday?

'Big Data' is one of those IT buzzwords these days, with everyone jumping on the bandwagon.

Last week I was researching Custom Objects for our implementation, to see if there's anything new in the Workday world on this topic.  Custom Objects are Workday's 'customer-defined' fields, I previously looked into the Workday functionality last year.

On the 'Worker' data object, we're already up to 12 fields used out of 20, prior to starting our Europe roll-out.  Workday 'Big Data Analytics' customers, however, get 100 Custom Objects on the Worker!  This alone would be a reason to license the product, and I think that's why WD keeps the rest of us in check at 20.

What is 'Workday Big Data Analytics' (BDA)?

 BDA is a newer, separately licensed product that enables a customer to analyse Workday and non-Workday data together in one place.  You put non-Workday data into the 'Big Data Store' and use 'Big Data Explorer' as your interface to upkeep (i.e. load) your data and perform analysis.  (In some ways it reminds me of the promise of ERP in the late 1980's...your Financials and HR data, all in one system!)

Advantages?

As I'm curious, I've been looking at the WD presentations on this topic and reading through the forum posts by other customers. 

• It sounds like it offers pre-defined templates and reports to help you to analyse large volumes of data more easily.
• You can incorporate this data into your manager dashboards in WD, so a 'one stop shop' for a manager.

Can an HR System really deliver on 'Big Data' benefits?

When it comes to data in the HRIS world, I find a few main hurdles:

1. Getting data
2. Maintaining data
3. Working with data so that it becomes a source of better decision making

I'm not sure how much Workday (or any other HRIS or HCM system) is really able to capitalize on Big Data, for a few reasons.

1. Getting data and linking it across systems can often be a challenge.  Not all systems have a unique key structure that matches other systems.
2. Other systems roll up data and define data in a different manner--it becomes an 'apples to oranges' exercise to compare it.
3. Even when you are able to match data, it's often a one time exercise.
4. HR data is not always maintained.  Someone may have a great idea to keep company property or driver licenses for company vehicle drivers in the HR system, but on-going maintenance can be an effort if systems and processes are not robust or meeting local needs.
5. Even if you have the best data in the world, it can be a struggle to define a common set of reports or to figure out how to configure manager dashboards automatically at a highly detailed level so that you are providing targeted information at a manager's fingertips, on demand, rather than a 'general manager dashboard' which is the same for all managers.

When I think Big Data, this is how I think of it

Here in the UK, we have a large supermarket chain, Tesco.  They do some 24 hour supermarkets, some mega-stores that carry clothes and electronics, as well as having little stores tucked into train and bus stations and in neighborhoods.  Tesco appeals to a variety of customers as they offer foods from value through to upscale.

Most people (including myself) have a Tesco clubcard.  You can scan it when you pay and get discounts, rewards, and every other month, they send targetted coupons based on your spending habits.  Yes, it's very big brother, but no one is forcing you to take or use a card.

Tesco knows that I bought bananas at 6 AM on a Sunday, wine on Friday, and that I buy cat food from them.  Tesco has a super big database somewhere, and I suspect their analytics team is gigantic.

Big Data can change behaviour

A few rounds back, they sent me a cracking good coupon for 1.10 off cat food, so I used it.  In the last round of coupons, they sent me 75 p off of cat food.  I didn't use the coupon but bought my cat food elsewhere.  In this round of coupons, they've now raised the ante, and are offering me 95 p off.  Will it change my behaviour in cat food buying?  It might, as they're now making it more valuable to me. 

Big Data knows what I need before I know that I need it.

The bottom coupon absolutely tickled me!  I am a US person living in the UK.  Those very smart data crunching computers (or the smart IT wonks programming the logic) have analyzed the data and are thinking that they can woo me into their USA product range.  I can only assume that they put together the data facts, that I don't buy tea and milk, but instead coffee and a variety of other tidbits that lead them to this conclusion.

So why can't HCM, HRIS, HR Systems, etc. be this smart too?

I see a lot of hype from the HR data solutions that they're harnessing the power of Big Data, but I'm not sure that they're there yet. 

1. I don't think that they have the data volumes necessary to fuel Big Data, even if you can combine data from other systems such as T&E or Sales.
2. You'll never be in the 'daily, operational, transactional' level of data needed to get the deep data insights.  For example:
1. An average HRIS may give you a report of terminations in the last fiscal year and an exit reason cited by the employee (where existing)
2. Big data HR Systems may bring in data from other systems--what was the sales volume of the emps leaving?  Did you lose a top performer or underachiever?
3. A Business Intelligence or Management Information team may use either of the above two sources to spot data trends...and then provide a further level of insight.
1. An increase in terms at location X coincides with the HR policy changes to not match 401k and to reduce company contributions to benefits.
2. Recommendation:  adjust the policy to influence the future term numbers.
3. Check after six months, any impact?  Rinse/repeat.

However, we'll never get to that Big Data level of detail...without having the full data set, for example, knowing the compensation and benefits received at the new company, we're just making a one-sided, best guess, based on the data that we have.

Tesco doesn't know what I'm buying at the competing supermarkets...but it has an idea based on what I am buying and not buying at Tesco.  It knows that I have a cat based on all the cat related things that I buy, but I don't buy cat litter there (Her Excellecy prefers another brand that I buy elsewhere).  Those data gurus at Tesco periodically shoot me a fabulous deal on cat litter, knowing that it's a *missing* item on my list. 

We'll never get to that level of data in the HR systems world, regardless of how good the product may be at providing templates, reports and analysis tools and that is why we'll never do Big Data properly in an HRIS setting.

Of course, very happy to be proven incorrect on this point, be it on Workday on another HCM.  :)

Why I wouldn't want a career in Workday HCM

Probably not the best title, but regardless...before I start let's be clear:  I like what I see of the Workday application, and have the utmost respect for Workday as a company (despite my occasional jabs, critical reviews of functionality and whining about how they could improve their software and become more global).  :)

I previously was employed by PeopleSoft many moons ago (prior and during the Craig Conway years--boo!), and if the Workday company environment is anything close to the early years of PeopleSoft, feel free Workday internal recruiter to send me an email, I'll be on the first train into central London to interview!  ;-)

I'd do anything to be able to work with Workday, I'd even work for free! 

 

Every week someone stumbles onto this blog and sends me an email about how they'd love more than anything in the world to get a hands-on position (be it HR, IT or somewhere in between) with Workday.  I can only assume there are a few key drivers for this interest:

1. There is a lot of work for contractors, supporting Workday implementations.
2. There are a lot of new internal positions being created to support newly implemented WD systems.
3. Both of the above pay above market rates due to the scarcity of talent in the market.
4. Based on WD's recent growth, it seems like there will be jobs in this area for years to come.
5. It's something new and exciting, and who doesn't like a shiny, new software and being the first to have it?

However, some musings and my two cents on the topic based on what I've seen internally post go-live at our company and through talking with others, internal and external.  I may be a little controversial (short-sighted?) in making this statement, but if we were not implementing WD, I wouldn't be looking to jump ship or hitch my star to the Workday wagon, and here's why.

Reasons I wouldn't want a Workday job

 

* As a SaaS, it's a locked down system.

I am fully aware of the business value of such systems and the business benefits such as driving standardisation and its subsequent benefits such as lowered operating costs that such systems bring.  However, as an IT professional who designs usable solutions and implements HR Systems to support the business operations, Workday is not my bread and butter, and I'm struggling to find any crumbs even.

It is what it is, but my 'creating design and usability side' is floundering here.  My focus is more on forcing data into fields and convincing HR people to drop business requirements or to accept that a field called 'end date' can be used in your country for 'expected end date' while in another country it truly is 'end date'.  In PeopleSoft, we'd customize and add another field.  Now, I'm creating a messy data landscape, and even worse, I know that I'm making a mess but I have no other options.

The current generation of HR Systems professionals will have an entirely different skill set than ones who cut their teeth on ERPs or even some of their green screen predecessors.

* High salaries will not stay forever, and will ultimately be replace by lower salaries than you're on in the first place. 

Around a year ago in London, the Workday market was absolutely on fire.  All the big consulting houses were offering top money and the ability to train and certify you in WD.  The niche players were out there as well, seeking everything from consultants through to business development and integration specialists.  The work is still out there for consultants, HRIS Analysts, HR Systems Managers, Workday Tenant Managers, etc.

However, I'm also seeing an ugly underside.  I see positions trying to recruit HR Systems Analysts at 18k in central London where as an equivalent title in the ERPs (PSoft, Oracle, SAP) will get you 23-25.  Granted, the skillset in the WD arena is lower, very operational:  maintaining configuration, supervisory orgs, job profiles, etc.  Ultimately, this is the benefit of a SaaS solution, isn't it?  You don't need highly skilled resources to operate and support the software on a day to day basis.  Granted, Psoft, Oracle and SAP may not be around long-term, but I'd prefer to ride it out with one of them rather than getting lowballed 2-3 years from now as the market fills up with skilled resources.

* I don't want to be an operational drone!

I stole this phrase from one of my HRIS colleagues.  This person is currently the first tier of operational support for the HR colleagues.  She partners with them on new functionality requests to help document their requirements for me to solution, as well she provides user support for the application (data entry, query, etc.)

She's been noticing what the US side of the house is doing with her counterparts and is not impressed.  As part of the move to WD, we implemented a mega HR Shared Service Center (in a low-cost country).  This hub is now responsible for that first level user support.  The previous HRIS staff are no longer tasked with speaking with the HR customers but instead are focused on data entry for configuration (which was not a distributed task to the Shared Service Ops folks).  So she'll lose that 'people' connection with her job and is not happy to be a 'glorified HR data entry person'.

On the IT side, the IT Analysts got tasks with being the Security Admins.  Workday has been a step backwards for us from a Security Administration standpoint.  (It's one part application clunkiness + 1 part our WD certified implementation partner's inappropriate setup for our requirements = inefficient, admin-heavy administration -- but that's a topic for another posting.)  I recently heard one of my IT colleagues comment on a call--I don't really have time to look at this HR user security request, this isn't my real job.  Well then.  Same outcome though, isn't it?  Implementing Workday may give you more of a mindless, yet operational necessary role in an organisation.

I certainly don't want to be negative here at the Workday application, I think these points are part and parcel of operating a SaaS, and a bit of a shock to people who previously had a different job prior to WD.  My point is that the grass is not always greener on the other side for those of you searching for work in this area.  However, let's face it, the industry is going cloud and SaaS, but relevant to keep your eyes open, as this is a completely different world than traditional HRMS.

Workday Training Schedules...still 'unglobal'

Way back in November 2012, I was whining about Worday's US-centric training schedule.  Here we are 18 months later, and I'm about to do it again...

I am very lucky that my company will pay for me to attend training.  While I've done most of the basic training early on in the project, our US colleagues are struggling post go-live with reporting topics.  I took the basic reporting class last year, but wanted to get my hands into the 'Calculated Fields' class, a 1.5 credit (15 hour option).

On the plus side, it's a virtual class offered over 3 days at 5 hours a day.

On the minus side, the timing is pretty poor.  For a company that claims to support global companies, I find it lacking.

• There are 8 instances of this course scheduled between now and the end of July.
• None are in the Eastern US timezone (which is somewhat palatable to London), but 7 are in Pacific or Central US.
• One is in the 'London timezone' (from 11 AM - 4 PM) according to their website.  I cannot quite figure out why the Pacific and Central classes start at 9 AM, but Workday thinks that in London our workday begins at 11 AM??  For anyone on the continent, that's a noon-5 PM run.
• That being said, the class does fall inside the European workday, a novelty from my friends in Pleasanton.
• Most of the US classes are Wed-Fri, so even if you did want to bite the bullet and take the US-centric offering, you're stuck online until 11 PM Friday night if you choose the Pacific option.  As well, starting a course at 6 PM on a Friday after a long work week will not be effective for me.

I wish I could have a better report out in this area.  I can only assume that Workday's customer base/focus remains heavily in the US market?

Apologies for the radio silence

It's been a busy few weeks here in the UK, and I'm currently working and traveling a lot for our project.

In addition, I haven't been overly pleased with the solutions I've been designing in Workday for our business requirements, so I have not felt compelled to list them out here.  As a little bit of background on that point...

We're heavily in the throes of gathering business requirements for our European countries.  My more HR-oriented colleagues do a great job of gathering the HR folks in the countries and they outline our new global Workday processes and inquire about the local processes that HR do in comparison to our scoped out list of global Workday processes, as well as gathering their field level requirements for those processes.  Then, for anything that does not fit into the global model or is not readily available through existing configuration, e.g. new event reasons, it gets forwarded over to me to provide some solution options and a recommendation.  I look at things holistically, so keeping things in mind like:

• Ease of use for the person doing data entry.  Will they enter it all on one page or have to go to multiple pages?  Are the labels good, or are we heavily mis-using a page (doing it Saas style, as I'm now calling it), so they'll need to ignore the labels and fill in the data entry boxes. 

• Can we interface any of the data in?

• Is this data going somewhere, such as a payroll system?

• How do all the pieces fit together in the process?  Can we get all of the data in a certain step or is this going to be a back and forth to collect data?

• Ease of reporting on the data

• Making is easy for the integration guys, for current as well as future interfaces

• Etc.

As I've been based in Europe for 10+ years, I often know the business needs/use better than my US-based HR colleagues, so some of the things they just throw over the fence to me to define requirements and solutions.  For other stuff, they're doing a great job of gathering data definition, especially where the business does not use PeopleSoft now to meet a need and the central team thinks that we should start to accumulate this data in Workday.

I was talking to a colleague of mine, he's a general all-arounder, understanding technology plus the business use of systems, although his area of expertise is recruiting systems.  He's been assigned a task to investigate a certain area of data that overlaps between the recruitment system and Workday core HR data, and to get a team together to figure out what data should be captured in the business processes.

I gave him a debrief today of the Workday functionality.  It's a common European set of data, but WD is very light on the ground in this area, as it's not data that is used in the US.  I was giving him an overview of:

1. Here are the business requirements that I have heard from the core HR calls in Europe.
2. Here is the data we currently store in our European PeopleSoft instance for this topic.
3. Here is the Workday functionality in this area.

So now we're counting on him and his team to define the business requirements, and I'll then solution them.

He was asking me questions to confirm that he understood the WD functionality and was a little surprised that the functionality was so light in this area.  In particular, it's basically a page with some dates and free form fields.

For anyone who has worked in an HRIS operational capacity, free form fields are the devil's handiwork:

1. They're a hassle for the data entry people who can't just do a few characters of predictive text/choose a dropdown value.
2. They're a hassle for the team responsible for auditing data, as they're always chasing up and having to get corrections to misspellings, etc.
3. They're a hassle for downstream systems, due to a lack of consistency.

Implementing Workday: size does matter!

Last week at the Workday Rising conference, one of the most interesting things for me was to hear from other customers:  what functionality they are using, what is their support model, and what is their roll out schedule.  It seems that WD marketing and sales has done a good job of spreading the idea that the software can be rolled out perfectly on a very fast timeline.  Our own CIO was on a call explaining the new 'we're going cloud for all applications' strategy and made the statement:  those business processes, the ones that are taking you 6 months now to design, those will take 6 hours in the new world!  Actually, I'm discovering over time, that's not really the case.

There was an interesting presentation by a small WD customer, 500 employees, industry = wealth management.  They had rolled out HCM plus Financials in 12 weeks, then brought in expense management quickly, and are further augmenting their HCM use.  I compare it to a session on the same day by a large pharmaceutical company of 130k employees who explained their global roll out strategy.  They started with Asia and were going West to Europe and Latin America and finally finishing up with the US.  It was an interesting concept to me, as the bulk of the companies and people that I know start with the US and head East to Europe.

This pharma explained that they were on SAP and their US office was happy with it, so they were going to get the rest of the world on board first, although they did have to do some workarounds, such as putting in some shell records for US managers of employees in the non-US regions, in order to be able to approve goals etc.

They started WD implementation in 2012 have launched Asia countries (including payroll interfaces for some) and are working their way around the globe.

They also made the statement that they were two weeks from launching SAP in the UK and pulled the plug on the project, which sounds quite similar to us, except we were 1 year into a PSoft upgrade.

I mentioned last year, on our US implementation, that the project launch encountered a delay, so that the US launch was in December instead of October.  We're now going through re-sizing efforts on the Wave 2 Europe launch.  Rather than launching Europe for Jan 2015, we're now splitting the group up, with some countries to keep January but others to delay.

This certainly isn't to blame WD as a software application (which is being done internally in my organization as people seemed to think this was a 'magic' software that would fix all of our HR process issues) and they're now seeing the same issues on a new software platform.

It's currently my thinking that especially where you have a large and decentralized environment and you are injecting any sort of standardization or HR Transformation as a part of the mix, implementing WD is the same as implementing a traditional ERP...it's a multi-year effort due to all of the change management and factors outside of the software.  When you're a small company with Excel-based processes or on one Finance, one Expense system, you're able to make that 12 week implementation schedule as you can more readily fit the mold of standardize, change, launch.

Pleasantly surprised

A while back, I mentioned looking at address data.  While we mapped from PeopleSoft to Workday and made decisions to combine fields where we had to, we had a country where WD made the field required, while we would call it optional.  I spoke with our data entry expert in country to confirm it is not used and to confirm that it's not existing in local payroll.  I checked online as well and everything that I found aligned with this data being optional.

I put in a Brainstorm making this request to convert it to optional.  Three weeks later it had hardly any votes, but someone from WD responded to it and asked for the legal source, as their sources said that it was required.  I missed getting a notification at this point that someone had responded, so I did not respond.  However, the same WD employee then responded a few days after, that indeed it should be an optional data element based on new research, and that it was targeted for WD 21 to be updated.

On one hand, I have no idea how they can get to WD21 with no one else noticing this, except that we are not a pharmaceutical company, so maybe our global footprint differs from other big customers.

We had already programmed our conversion logic to stick 'unknown' in the field (no field validation), which was going to look ugly from a self-service standpoint.  Happy to be able to lose that logic and instead leave the field blank.

As a PSoft customer, our management made a strategic decision not to apply patches.  We don't run payroll out of PSoft in Europe, so we can do that.  Occasionally, when something is noticed by the users and it is deemed critical, we will extract that bit of code out of a project, and our developers will manually apply just that bit.  As you can imagine, whenever we would log a case with PSoft customer support, it would be instantly closed as you are not on the latest code line.

I realize this is a quick little fix by WD for something that should not have been wrong in the first place, but quite pleased at how this one has turned out.

A customer perspective on Workday Rising Europe 2014 - day 2

My company graciously paid for me to attend the Workday Rising Conference in London this week.  I mentioned day 1 yesterday, here are my thoughts on day 2.

Best Practices in Configurable Security and Global Data Privacy

It was an early start for me as I'm in the suburbs on the opposite side of London.  Pleased to say I was on the 7.20 train to arrive at 8.40, in time to grab a coffee, mini bagel with salmon and fruit from the breakfast set up in the vendor hall.  It was supposed to be a 9 AM start with 120 people in a full session.  As mentioned by the presenters and others, the customer appreciation party went long into the night, so they finally started at 9.08 with around 80 people.

Two WD pieces/presenters:  Data Privacy & the Security Toolset

1. Data Privacy - it was a good overview by Barbara, and I'd previously seen most of the material online.  Data Privacy can be a passionate subject, but WD's stance is clear--they are the processor and *you* the customer are responsible to ensure that you're not storing data on employees that you shouldn't/aren't allowed by your Data Privacy legislation, Works Councils, etc.  (Although WD does have some functionality in place here, to control some of these things systematically.)

No qualms there, it's standard in the SaaS world.  While it was a good overview on Data Privacy and Works Councils and where WD is with their various certifications, etc. most of the participants in the room were Europe-based and well versed in the area, so would have appreciated a little more depth here.  This presentation would be very good as an introduction to an American or Asian audience, however.

2. The Security Toolset - Kathy H from Workday did an outstanding job of presenting the topic.  It was an overview but as well she went in-depth and highlighted upcoming functionality.  As pieces of it are being worked on by *her* personally, it was straight from the horse's mouth.  Most interesting, this was so different from a sales presentation--when people asked her if WD could do X, she was quite honest in acknowledging where WD could not meet business requirements and where things were in the pipeline.  As a customer, I need exactly that sort of input to be able to plan workarounds, rather than unclear or unconfirmed answers.

Kudos to both American presenters for having more of a European presentation style--organized and serious, rather than the WD presenters' comedy routine of yesterday's joint HCM/Finance session.  Noticed that the audience was fully engaged in this session 9 AM session.

Maximising Your Investment in Absence Management

This was also a great presentation to attend.  There were maybe 20-25 people in attendance, and Brian K from WD is an expert in Absence Management functionality, to a similar depth as Kathy was to security.  He gave some advance previews of upcoming functionality.  As well, there was clear honesty in answering customer questions, and solid knowledge.  As well, he had a nice slide of the main brainstorms outstanding for Absence Mgt, which really laid bare the flaws/opportunities for WD.  As many of the customers were actually using the product already, it required detailed knowledge to field their questions.

The 2nd part of this presentation was done by a customer, Medtronic, who is using the functionality in multiple countries.  It was really great to get this customer perspective, and as well they provided tips and lessons learned from their implementation.  Most interesting, they had presented a case study of how they tackled some difficult requirements from France (via WD Studio).

Final Thoughts

There was then a break and then a 'Closing and Goodbye' session.  I must admit, I popped into the vendor hall to pick up some goodies and then cleared out before that session.  Overall, I could not imagine learning anything new, and also, it would run until 12.45 and after my early start, I didn't want to wait that long for lunch.  (Sorry WD!)

I'm glad I had a chance to go, it's nice to see WD building up a base over here in Europe, such as putting a training centre in Amsterdam.  As always, it's great to be able to connect with other customers, in particular ones of a similar size, to trade ideas.