There is an incredible amount of data in today’s world. Many forward-thinking corporate leaders know it’s essential to harness that information to help their enterprises grow. That knowledge led to a demand for business analytics. Whether you’re mostly unfamiliar with it or are ready to use the related tools to your advantage, keep reading.
What Does Business Analytics Entail?
Business analytics involves digging into an organization’s data and examining the statistics to find patterns, trends and other useful information. Companies often use it when the goal is to make decisions based on hard facts rather than assumptions or gut instinct.
As you learn more about business analytics, don’t be surprised to come across material about big data or artificial intelligence (AI). People often discuss those things as they explain how and why company representatives analyze facets of their organizations.
A recently published survey from NewVantage Partners about companies adopting big data and AI to become more informed showed that 64.8% of companies invest at least $50 million in those technologies. However, you don’t need to plan on spending that much in the beginning. A common strategy used by businesses budgeting for new technologies is to start small and scale up if favorable results occur.
Business Analytics Can Keep You Informed About Productivity
Human resources professionals know how important it is that people make their respective contributions to a company’s goals. If an employee consistently turns projects in behind schedule or arrives late to the office, they’ll likely get called into a meeting with HR. They may receive coaching to mitigate the problem or get to its root cause while there.
However, many business analytics tools give data about employee activity on a far more granular level. For example, they can show how much time an employee spends corresponding with a particular client or working on a specific project. Moreover, the tools can give details about the productivity levels of teams or indicate if a person’s output goes up after they implement a new approach to a task.
Thus, business analytics tools do not solely provide you with information that may suggest you need to take disciplinary action against an employee that’s not working as hard as their peers. They could also give opportunities to praise top performers, tweak time-consuming processes or determine if it may be time to distribute duties usually handled by a single team.
If you plan to use business analytics to gauge productivity, remember that statistics often don’t tell the whole story. Talk to all employees involved before making any major workflow alterations based on what the data indicates. Get their feedback, and combine it with the insights provided by your business analytics tool.
Business Analytics Could Inform Your Recruitment Techniques
Which departments at your workplace are over- or understaffed? What are the most crucial needs you could address by recruiting more talent? Which data sources should you use to get the best recruitment results? Those are not straightforward questions to answer, but it can become more manageable if you depend on business analytics products or services.
For example, you could look at a business analytics interface to separate your company’s most pressing needs from the least urgent ones. Next, use sourcing tools to populate your candidate pool. Then, it becomes easier to examine the prospects and progress through the overall hiring process.
The sheer amount of data analyzed also presents new opportunities that did not exist before big data analytics became mainstream. For example, a company called Emsi has a database of more than 100 million job postings, professionals profiles and resumes. It uses the content to find the skills gaps and surpluses present in hyperlocal job markets. The findings could tell human resources professionals whether they could recruit candidates locally or may need to expand their searches.
Remember that business analytics solutions should not replace your current recruitment methods, but they can supplement them. The best software on the market does not necessarily replace the decades of experience you may have. Let an analytics tool assist, but trust what you know, as well.
Using Business Analytics Could Help You Reduce Employee Turnover
Anyone who has ever applied or interviewed for a job knows that waiting to hear about the result is a nail-biting experience. Data published by Robert Half revealed that 57% of respondents said the long delay in getting a response after an interview was the most frustrating part of the job search. Moreover, the same source showed that 57% of those polled also lose interest when the hiring process takes too long.
Promptly figuring out which people to hire could keep those candidates interested. However, as a human resources professional, you also have to manage other aspects, such as the onboarding process and any questions that arise during a new employee’s first weeks and months. When business professionals apply analytics for enhanced decision-making, they often do so in predictive ways to manage future risks.
For example, a platform could pinpoint employees who may be unhappy to the point that they’re ready to resign and work elsewhere. In that case, you could intervene before the person hands in their notice. You could see what’s going wrong and what your company could do to convince the individual to stick around.
It also might show you which aspects of a benefits package workers use most frequently or wish you offered. The software may show employees rarely avail of a perk, or you often receive feedback about benefits people would love to have. It may be time to adjust your program so it more accurately reflects the workforce’s needs and desires.
Getting to the heart of a turnover issue is not easy, typically because there may be multiple matters causing it. Start by crunching the numbers to learn the most common reasons why your workers leave the company. Then, assess what you can do. There are no universal magic fixes, and some individuals depart because of things entirely related to themselves. Nevertheless, business analytics tools could make people more eager to become long-term, loyal employees.
Is Using Business Analytics Right for You?
This overview should clarify why business analytics tools are increasingly popular — especially for hiring and employee management. Although you must do thorough research about the options before investing in something, it’s ideal to keep an open mind about the potential of such technology.