Better decision-making is made possible by the data from Workday, says Dimension Data's Micheala Voller.
Speaking at the HR Indaba in Sandton on 3 October, Dimension Data HR executive Michaela Voller told Zuko Mdwaba, Workday South Africa country leader, that being able to collect data in the HR space has been a major benefit derived from the transition to Workday’s platform three years ago.
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“HR tended to not be relevant on an income statement until now. 
For the first time, we’ve got data that allows us to make people decisions in relation to our income statement,” she explains. Dimension Data has branches spanning 49 countries, but thanks to Workdplace, it now has a single source of data in terms of people costs.
“When we need to make a business decision on the back of that, we can understand what skills we have, where our pipeline is going in future and how we tend to grow. The data allows us to compare these against our costs to make the right business decisions.”
In the past, Michaela said different divisions within the organisation worked on different systems. “As a result, we made a lot of leadership decisions based on intuition; I don’t think that’s a great strategy, but it was the best we could do in the past. Now, we’re starting to use data for decision-making going forward and Workday is the enabler.”
Bringing more focus to HR
Another benefit Michaela highlights is that Workplace allows managers to do the work they often ask HR to do. “For the first time, we’re empowering managers to make decisions, and not rely on HR department. This leaves HR to do what we’re required to do: workforce planning, talent management and engaging with people on a daily basis,” she explains.
This, she says, will impact recruitment in that employees choose organisations where they
can understand what data you hold on them. “They are going to demand transparency, going to want to understand their compensation, and assume everything works seamlessly.” With around 72 percent of Dimension Data’s workforce being millennials, she says there is increasing pressure from employees are become more and more demanding.
“Constantly keeping ahead of technology trends is really, really important to us."
