“Having clean data and the right data is the only way you can make decisions based on the data!” began the rant of an angry HRIS professional at SAPHR “Why does every vendor in this hall except you guys brush the issue aside or throw the burden of proof and responsibility for finding a way to fix the data back on the customers!!??”

He was hot under the collar and he was right. Workforce data is a bad issue for nearly every company on the planet of any size. It happens when data collection tools are difficult to use. People hate them and will do as little work within them as possible. It happens when policies change and data is not collected retroactively, so there is often large quantities of missing data. It happens when staff turns over and training doesn’t include the importance of standardized data entry. It happens for many reasons.

The challenge our new friend at SAPHR was angry about was that this known issue is huge and vendors don’t want to touch it with a 30 foot pool. They want the client to clean up the data. Aquire’s innovators have recognized this problem for nearly 2 decades and chose to do something about it a long time ago. We know that clients need help with dirty data, missing data and inconsistent data. So we built tools to help.
Aquire directly helps clients identify what data may be missing in their HR systems. We have methods to systematically clean up subsets of data and provide easy to use tools to identify and distribute the data clean up that must be done manually. When the data is visible, it is so much easier to clean up and to seek the appropriate owners for accountability to the data.

Sometimes, we have become the system of record for pieces of data, but often we are cleaning the data and then bringing it back to the system of record, shiny, new and once again useful. We have seen the issue and helped with an enormously wide variety of talent management and HR systems.

It is critical that new systems are fed good data; that decision makers have clean data in their analytics and reports and that employees are represented in the best way when you are doing evaluations, succession planning, reorganizations or future scenario planning. This is what it takes to make good decisions. You owe it to the company and to the employees. Only use clean data, so only use vendors that know what that means, care and help you do something about it!

Cheers,
Lois


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