HispanicBusiness

Over the past five years, the growth and adoption of consumer Internet applications has given people the power to auction off the Alaskan governor's plane (eBay), reconnect with a middle-school crush (Facebook), or collaborate on a team presentation (Google Docs). These applications offer a rich, engaging experience that promotes communication, facilitates collaboration, improves user productivity, and encourages the user to complete the transaction. Because of the success of these applications, organizations are reevaluating their expectations of their own applications. In particular, Human Resource professionals need to understand - and more importantly embrace - this evolution in technology.

If your employees haven't already demanded the same level of collaboration and productivity in their business applications as they experience in consumer Internet applications, they are sure to make their voices heard soon. Consumer Internet applications are making people's lives easier every day. Shouldn't they also be able to make your employees more productive and efficient?

The Problem: Lack Of Insight And Unintelligent Business Intelligence

Many organizations embraced the promise of self-service applications for their employees. Similar to web applications, self-service solutions were purported to be simple to use. In reality, traditional ERP self-service systems were primarily focused on reducing the amount of manual data entry required on the part of the HR and IT organizations. This proved effective for Human Resources, but the benefits to the workforce were limited - employees could only perform a minimal number of tasks, such as manage their own personal data or submit an expense report. To further complicate the experience, clumsy usability and a lack of informational flow meant employees gained little insight into their own job performance or how to perform their jobs more effectively.

Conversely, most business intelligence systems weren't designed to be simple to use at all. Although powerful, these tools were typically very complex. Only individuals with special training became proficient at creating reports useful to the business. As a result, many managers never had access to information that could help their teams perform better.

In today's fast-paced business environment, this lack of insight just doesn't work. Managers need to be empowered with insightful information to inform their decision-making process in a format that is as simple to use as Google or Amazon. These business intelligence solutions, while well-intentioned, never viewed the casual user as an audience worth serving. However, the majority of employees at most companies are, in fact, casual users - serving them can open up a tremendous competitive advantage for the organization.

The Solution: Modern Tools For A Modern Workforce

As consumer Internet applications have gained more prominence, companies are looking for ways to maximize their investment in business technology. In a 2007 survey of 159 software vendors and enterprise buyers, che most critical factor identified for software success and return-on-investmenr was effective user adoption (70% of respondents listed it as # I).1 Knowing this, companies need to prioritize usability as a key factor in evaluating the best business technologies available. Understanding these trends, Workday has built a simple, usable application that gives employees relevant information when they need it: at the time of decision-making. Like Yahoo or Ebay, it uses familiar visual elements, works with a wide variety of computing devices (including mobile devices like the iPhone and the Blackberry), and is accessible from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection.

Workday not only provides a superior user experience, it offers contextual information - such as performance and compensation information - that lets managers better motivate, manage, and develop their staff. Workday also offers a built-in report writer that allows the creation of custom reports by or for an entire organization or individual user. With Workday, employees and managers always have access to the information they need to make the best decisions possible, presented in a way that is simple to acquire, process, and act upon immediately right within the system. Workday empowers all users to make informed decisions quickly by pushing past the previous limits of self-service.

Empower Employees, Empower Your Enterprise

Technology companies such as Google, LinkedIn, Ebay, and Amazon are exploiting this new way of thinking across a whole range of services. Workday is taking the same approach ro building the Workday product. Speed of processes and transactions, ease of use, mobility, and communication are top of mind. With Workday, HR employees dramatically reduce the time spent pushing paper, training employees, and correcting mistakes; they can instead focus on increasing their strategic value to the company. Workday self-service not only benefits the HR organization, it empowers managers - the new decision makers - and makes the entire enterprise more efficient and successful.

Find out more about Workday by visiting www.workday.com.