How many additional staff will be needed in marketing from Q4 to reach the agreed targets? What qualifications do we need in R&D next year? Who already has them and for whom is what training needed? What are the costs associated with all this?
BETTER BUSINESS DECISIONS THROUGH EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION
HR managers today need to be able to provide management with quick and reliable information about the state of the workforce structure and what changes will be necessary to remain competitive and fit for the future. This is made possible by workforce planning, i.e. the systematic identification and analysis of a company’s future needs in terms of staff numbers and qualifications to achieve the company’s goals. Workforce planning can provide answers to the rapid changes in the world of work and the challenges this poses for companies. Its central task is to ensure the deployment of the right employees in the right place at the right time.
CHALLENGES IN PERSONNEL PLANNING
However, without a powerful workforce planning application that is tailored to the needs of the respective company, these modern requirements pose major challenges for HR departments. While most companies have user-friendly tools to administer their workforce, workforce planning often still uses Excel. However, with a growing number of employees and an increasingly mobile workforce, planners quickly reach their limits here – purely Excel-based planning processes become too error-prone, time-consuming and untransparent.
Business Intelligence for HR – or a planning application based on a business intelligence tool provides a remedy here by reducing the susceptibility to errors through system-supported mechanisms and increasing planning efficiency.
PERSONNEL PLANNING WITH BI-APPLICATION - A GAIN, NOT ONLY FOR THE HR DEPARTMENT
Thanks to versatile business intelligence tools, it is possible to develop powerful applications for complex personnel planning. As a basis for planning, the required actual and master data can be loaded directly into the system from the previous systems used – for example SAP HCM or Bamboo HR. This creates a uniform basis for planning, while at the same time eliminating manual and time consuming data collection.
Planners have an easy-to-understand and easy-to-use template at their disposal for planning. Ideally, a professionally designed and implemented workforce planning application also enables the central control of all personnel movements of a company and is able to record vacancies and employee movements – e.g. to another position and/or to another cost centre. This increases transparency in personnel planning.
DATA PROTECTION AS A STUMBLING BLOCK? PROFESSIONAL IMPLEMENTATION MAKES THE DIFFERENCE
For human resource planning to work company-wide, departments must be able to plan their workforce at the employee level. In the HR department, this highly sensitive data from all departments and specialist areas flow together.
Data protection is therefore one of the central issues in this context. HR managers in particular are often sceptical about the introduction of company-wide business intelligence systems including workforce planning or personnel modules. Their justified concern: sensitive personnel data need and deserve the best protection.
High-performance BI systems adapted to the needs of the company can and should do this. This is done with detailed, customised role and authorisation systems that define access for the individual employees involved.
BI-supported personnel planning applications also make it possible to quickly and easily transfer the aggregated and anonymised results of personnel planning to financial controlling while maintaining data protection. Thus, integrated planning can be made possible and the consistency of the company’s sub-plans can be ensured.
Such role-user concepts can hardly be implemented in Excel, for example, and therefore represent a great added value of BI systems, which enable the restriction of authorisations down to the smallest cell.
Curious? Get in touch with us. We will be happy to advise you on the possibilities of CPM & BI solutions in the area of personnel / human resources and support you in the conception and introduction in your company.
