Visier’s “people analytics” can make a real difference to both a company’s human resources and its bottom line.Supplied
There’s a hidden power behind employee data that most companies aren’t taking advantage of, says John Schwarz, Chief Executive Officer of Visier, a Vancouver-based analytics provider.
“Everyone keeps tons of data generated in everyday business activities, but finding useful and actionable insights from that data, that is difficult,” he says.
This is where Visier is uniquely designed to step in. The Visier solution is tailored specifically to answer the people questions that need answering, to help managers understand the organizational trends and the impact of people policies and determine how to optimize decisions for better outcomes in the future. It is the latest technology that helps line operations, Human Resources and Finance managers to shape a companyʼs workforce and manage its costs.
“We’ve built a solution that answers hundreds of pre-built questions, designed to guide the user through a process of discovery,” says Mr. Schwarz, who co-founded the company in 2010.
“People management and HR have not traditionally been seen as operationally effective as other areas of the business like finance, production or sales. By having a system in place where those teams can assess, predict and model the impact of their decision on the organization opens up new levels of competitive advantage,” Mr. Schwarz says.
Visierʼs software integrates with a company’s current people and financial operations systems and becomes the window for management on hiring, onboarding, training, payroll, benefits, diversity, performance management and productivity. Even individual employees can use the solution to manage their own careers and development.
The end result is people managers have a more accurate and predictable way of optimizing performance, and leadership can begin to easily see the real truth on how people management makes a significant impact to their bottom line.
“The more the use of people analytics is embedded in an organization's culture, the more benefits they begin to see, whether it’s an increase in employee retention, or improvements in diversity, or even just more accurate headcount planning” Mr. Schwarz explains.
Conventional reporting, often sold as ‘analytics’ by the providers of HR or Finance systems, typically delivers a static view of the past. One must know what to look for, and correlate elements of the data in their own mind. Nuances and outliers are missed because the data is overwhelming. There is no predictive ability, no opportunity to do what-if exercises because the causes of performance results cannot be understood.
“With Visier, you’re presented with insights determined by cause-effect analysis, you’re given predictive trends and you have the opportunity to model future outcomes by testing different decision options . Once you understand the drivers of trends, you can actually make the changes your company needs and see real improvement,” he adds.
Analytics has become a hot trend in leading organizations, with many multinational firms making significant investments in this area. Visier’s blue-chip client list includes tech firms such as Adobe, health service providers such as Kaiser Permanente, financial services companies such TIAA, retailers such as Dick’s Sporting Goods, and public sector organizations such as the City of Edmonton and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Collectively, Visier contributes to the success of 7 million employees around the world.
“In the past, most companies would look at building their own systems to track metrics like employee headcount, or diversity. But what companies are beginning to realize is this approach takes years of development, millions of dollars, a significant risk of failure, and at best a result delivering a fraction of what we are able to do for 1/10 of the cost or time spent,” he explains.
Without analytics, companies can be at a disadvantage in the marketplace, especially during times of historic low unemployment rates, or competing with the gig economy mindset.
“When dealing with an employment climate like today, it’s critical for organizations to know the levers that impact their hiring process, their employee engagement, costs and retention. That’s simply not possible without a modern analytics solution,” he says.
The results of some of Visier’s customers seem to speak for themselves. Experian, a consumer credit reporting company, has used Visier to reduce their overall employee turnover by 3%. It has resulted in over 9 million dollars in savings, a number the HR department can point to as a significant cost savings to the business.
“Our customers significantly beat the global market benchmarks in employee and management retention, and as a result, in return on investment,” Mr. Schwarz says.
The business world is clearly responding to Visier’s value proposition. By the end of 2018, Mr. Schwarz says Visier achieved a compound annual growth rate of 120 per cent, and exceeded $125-million in sales. Like most companies in the analytics sector, Visier says it is using artificial intelligence and machine learning to hone its analytical capabilities.
Mr. Schwarz attributes Visier’s growth in part to being more than just a supplier of analytics. “We work with each of our customers to make sure they are unlocking their full management potential.”
The other factor? “Because we get to see the data on 7 million employees, we know which performance drivers make a difference,” he says.
Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.