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Key Tools

People Analytics Technology Landscape

You have choices in terms of your People Analytics infrastucture

Introduction

It feels like every day there is a new tool on the market for helping you analyze your People data. The HR Tech space has been a huge beneficiary of venture capital investment, and established players have improved existing offerings and created new ones to help customer unlock the power within People Analytics.

If it feels like there are a ton of choices, it is because there are a ton of choices. 

Our goal in this guide is to frame those choices and provide a starting point directory of providers. We add a company if we see a post online or a marketing campaign suggesting a use care for this tool in People Analytics. We will update our directory as options evolve, but we recognize the directory will always be incomplete. Note that Novo Insights does not receive referral fees from any of the technology providers noted in our directory.

 

Analytics Tools Come in Different Forms

Not all tools marketed for or used in People Analytics are substitutes for one another. There are different types of analytics tools, ranging from tools that come with their core applications to dedicated People Analytics platforms to the wide variety of tools used to manage and analyze data more generally. In this guide we categorize these tools as follows:

  • System-Embedded: The primary HCM vendors are aware of the need to invest in People Analytics - and have been. Many Enterprise-class systems, from your broader HCM to your ATS to your Listening platform, come with reporting and even more advanced analytics tools.
  • People Analytics Systems: These are tools dedicated to the craft of People Analytics. They come with out-of-the-box capability specific to People Analytics and have feature roadmaps specific to People Analytics.
  • Build-Your-Own Components: These are tools and systems that can certainly be used effectively for People Analytics, but are really broader data tools that you can choose to deploy for People Analytics. Most companies start with a "pull the data, do the work, share the work" strategy, and the "do the work" part uses tools of this sort. These tools really in themselves could be subcategorized, as some are more data mnagement tools (accessing, moving, storing, transforming, and managing data of any type) and others are analysis or visualization tools. Because these tools often have a variety of features, we'd encourage all readers selecting technology to understand the capabilities of all when making a decision to select a tool. 
System-Embedded

The Obvious Starting Point

You have your own systems today for managing the People Experience. Thsoe tools likely include some form of analytics as part of their core technology. Start there. Understand what you alreayd own and how that can be leveraged for impact, as using existing tools overcomes a variety of data challenges and human behavior change constraints.

Of course, these aren't perfect tools and many companies choose to utilize additional capabilities. In this case, continue your journey into the other categories below.  

Notable System-Embedded Tools

Not meant to be an exhaustive list, but these are among the embedded or add-on tools marketing by broader People Experience tools. Sorted alphabetically.

  • Oracle Fusion HCM Analytics
  • SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics
  • Workday Prism Analytics
People Analytics Systems

When the Build vs Buy Decision is "Buy"

The pace of innovation and investment in People Analytics has produced a number of new tools and rapid acceleration of value in this space. Organizations can accomplish a quick time-to-value by deploying a purpose-built People Analytics system. These tools often have a People-oriented data model pre-built, and metrics and dashboards engineered with People-specific topics ready to go. 

Notable People Analytics Systems 

Among the most prominent, sorted alphabetically:

Build-Your-Own Components

For the DIY Teams

Choosing to build your own approach to People Analytics is common - in fact, everyone starts here and many organizations choose to contiue on this path. Many companies in the early stages of their People Analytics maturity utilize a "pull the data, do ther work, share the work" process for answering People questions with data. They get data out of the systems it lives in... utilie a variety of tools to transform and analyze the data, and then often use another set of tools to share the findings and conclusions. This is normal - and often works really well. It's just not always the fastest, and doesn't create leverage as you scale.

In fact, the most common People Analytics Technology Stack is probably this:

  1. HRIS: Extract raw data
  2. Excel: Crunch the numbers
  3. PowerPoint: Summarize the findings  
  4. Email: Share the findings with the people who need to see them

This is not the ideal state of People Analytics maturity, but it abolsutely can still generate value. The tools above can be substituted for other tools that have added features and efficiency gains, which is what is catalogued below. 

Among the MANY tools...

There are simply too many tools to list here, as analyzing data is a problem worthy of tremendous invetsment and innovation. Listed below are simply the tools we hear people mention most often.

Conclusion

There is no right answer. No system is perfect, and no tool will do everything for you. 

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