Evolving Data to Intelligence

Organizations require good data to make good decisions. It is a simple statement, yet securing real-time, accurate, and complete data has proven to be elusive. This white paper maps out how a Workday customer can more easily achieve a competitive advantage by finding and using the business data all around them.

The Difference Between Having Business Data and Having Business Intelligence 

Having business data = an organization's most valuable commodity

Let’s first establish a common framework on the term “business data.” Data is the DNA of every organization: Global workforce, enterprise attributes, financial forecasts, and strategic priorities come together to define a company. Without this data, there is no viable entity.

Having business Intelligence = an organization's competitive edge

Let’s next consider what it means to have “business intelligence.” Progressive and active use of business data is critical to produce business intelligence. An organization can only achieve business intelligence with the ability to plan, analyze, and act on trusted data.

The conceptual progression of Data >> Knowledge >> Action is obvious, but to make it a reality, both technology and behavior must evolve.

The Required Evolution of Technology and Behavior 

In the quest for data intelligence, there is a direct relationship between technology and behavior. Workday enables a democratization of data, in so much as an organization is able to embrace that new freedom. Fortunately, Workday is configured by design to allow an organization to evolve into its new data capabilities; think of the data democratization opportunity as a dimmer feature vs. an on-off switch.

Illustration of data democratization opportunities that scale from having data to having business intelligence

 

 

This scale introduces pathways to enable data intelligence, identifies an organization’s current position, and sets a target for the next level of maturity. Consistently across each of the indicators, there is both a technology and a behavior change required: Organizations must both deploy Workday and increase real-time access of data and reporting to the business.

Invisors can efficiently facilitate a discovery session to assess where an organization is exhibiting leading or lagging practices on their evolution to transform business data into business intelligence:

• Evaluate the level of data available for reporting in Workday

• Calibrate the role of the HR Information Systems or centralized reporting team

• Assess current data quality and introduce low-maintenance data audits and dashboards

• Measure business engagement and consumption of data

• Enable the business to use real-time data in their decision making

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

The data and analytic technologies and behaviors of yesterday are not sufficient for today’s enterprise, nor the future of work. Data is an organization’s most valuable commodity, especially in the growing digital world. It should be a strategic imperative of every organization to identify their current and target position on the evolution to business intelligence.

  

 

With Workday and Invisors, there is no practical reason why organizations can’t evolve their enterprise technologies and behaviors to novate from having business data to having business intelligence.