James HolincheckOne of the fun parts of managing a team of analysts is that I get to read a lot of great research. Today, I read a note about a vendor panel at one of Gartner’s conferences. One of the panel questions was about what customers can do to spread the usage of business intelligence tools beyond the typical 20% of the organization that uses them today. The answers from the vendors were illuminating. Much of the discussion was about benefits through better technology. If you just showcase the technology better, then users will adopt it.
This is what I would consider a "Field of Dreams" approach. If you build it (and showcase it properly), the users will come (and adopt it). My experience with clients implementing Workforce Analytics is that if you build the right solution (delivering the right information to the right users in the right format at the right time), they might come (if they believe WIIFM – what’s in it for me – is compelling enough to change). To be fair, there was an acknowledgement that there was a need to think about real solutions to support business needs, but it should have been the first item on the list, IMHO.
So, do you have a workforce analytics strategy (if you do not, you should, especially right now)? If so, is it a "Field of Dreams"? If you have a good story (or not so good), please comment.
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1 response so far ↓
1 Nicholas Garbis March 3, 2009 at 11:11 am
My colleagues and I work with top firms in building these ‘Field of Dreams’ — workforce metrics & analytics platforms that have charts, graphs and multi-page reports for leaders — and what I think goes missing sometimes missing is the ‘billboard’ that announces the game is on (http://tinyurl.com/cl6mlg)
The ‘billboard’ for the workforce analytics field of dreams could be a compelling finding/discovery/insight that was made using the new toolset or approach…but it ‘don’t mean a thing’ if it doesn’t get into the right leader’s hands.
HOW:
1) Find the most compelling analytics story within the data
2) Convert it into business terms (e.g., ‘this is costing us $x each year’, ‘we could save $x by …’)
3) Help shape the strategic actions to respond to it.
4) Make it public – get it into the right leaders’ hands – let it be the ‘billboard’ for your ‘Field of Dreams’