Key Criteria for Evaluating People Analytics Platforms

1. Summary

People analytics is one of the newest and most important domains within people operations, traditionally known as human resources or personnel management.

This market niche is undergoing rapid growth, as businesses adapt to an “employee experience” mindset and are driven by the desire to move away from highly subjective measurement of the traditional human resource management era to a more objective, data-driven and employee-centric approach to employee performance measurement, employee engagement, and employee development and retention.

This report will outline the decisive criteria for judging people analytics platforms. It describes the base functionality and features—referred to here as table stakes—that are expected of a vendor’s offering in the market, as well as the key criteria that help differentiate the market leaders. The report will also outline how to evaluate a vendor’s performance in relation to an organization’s needs.

Key Findings:

• The market is new and fast paced
• There is a growing need for integration with work, business and human resource information system (HRIS) software to enable deeper analytics
• Table stakes for the market include basic analytics, performance tracking and basic management activities such as reviews and 1 to 1s
• Key criteria for people analytics include full employee lifecycle tracking, support for different employee types, and diversity and inclusion monitoring
• Emerging technologies include what-if scenario planning, combining business and people data, team performance, career development, benchmarking, and automation