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Human resources in an enriched environment of business intelligence

Bhushan Kapoor
California State University, Fullerton, California, USA, and

HR in an environment of BI 1625

Joseph Sherif
California State University, Fullerton, California, USA and The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, Pasadena, California, USA
Abstract
Purpose While many organizations are starting to use business intelligence (BI) in many areas of their businesses and make substantial gains, they have taken little advantage of this in the human resources (HR) management area. The purpose of this paper is to advance BI and data analytics technologies as precursors to the design of HR management protocols and database strategies. Design/methodology/approach The paper discusses the fact that the increasing prevalence of globalization is driven by a number of factors including growing consumers in developing countries, technological progress, and worldwide workforce diversity. HR departments of global companies must implement BI techniques and assemble global databases that obtain information such as employees attrition and hiring, compensation and benets, ethnic, gender, cultural, and nationality distributions. By applying advanced analytical techniques on the global database, human resources professionals will acquire intelligent business insight, predict changes and make informed decisions at operational and strategic levels. Findings The business environment is constantly evolving into a more complex system and with global competition, decision making in organizations has become increasingly intricate and convoluted. This creates challenges for global organizations HR departments to manage a workforce diverse in cultures, time zones, expertise, benets and compensations. Practical implications Only those multinational enterprises willing to adapt their human resource practices to the changing global labor market conditions will be able to attract and retain high performing employees. BI and data analytics can aid in making informed decisions based on knowledge extracted from the data and options at hand. Organizations that have successfully implemented BI are able to make decisions quickly and with more accuracy. They have better and faster access to the key activities and processes that the organizations and its functional departments must pursue to meet their goals and objectives. Originality/value The paper tackles one of the most critical problems of educating multinational enterprises to adapt their HR practices to the changing global labor market conditions. By incorporating BI and data analytics in the design of HRM protocols and database strategies they can attract, develop and retain high performing employees and succeed in the global business competition. Keywords International business, Human resource management, Data management, Global databases, Multinational organizations, Business intelligence, Information management Paper type Research paper
Kybernetes Vol. 41 No. 10, 2012 pp. 1625-1637 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0368-492X DOI 10.1108/03684921211276792

This paper is in memoriam of Dr Joseph Sherif.

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Introduction Human resource intelligence (HRI) consists of processes for making facts based human resource decisions in an enriched environment of business intelligence (BI). BI encompasses people skills, technologies, applications, and business processes to make better strategic and tactical business decisions. It plays a crucial role in achieving competitive edge over competitors in the challenging economy we are in. These processes pertain to collect, transform and manage key human resource related data and documents, to analyze the gathered information using BI and business analytics models, and to disseminate the analysis results to decision makers for making intelligent decisions. The analytical models include statistical and data mining techniques to analyze large volumes of data for querying, reporting, visualizing, and advanced analytical techniques for clustering, classication, segmentation, and prediction. The analysis results provide business insight, and help make better business decisions. The primary human capital management functions are to effectively acquire, develop and retain human capital for all business units in the company. HRI can help companies identify and foresee their workforce needs especially for high skills and take intelligent action plans. HRI systems are software that automates the HRI processes. These are specialized human resource information systems embedded or integrated with BI and business analytics software tools. Like other BI systems, HRI systems leverage powerful technologies, such as data warehousing and business data analytics for information-driven answers to their operational, tactical, and strategic questions. To get most of HRI systems these must be carefully designed and congured to sync with the processes. These are critical to formulate questions or hypothesis, to compute and disseminate results to appropriate users, and then for the users to draw insights from the results to shape business decisions and, as a result, improve performance. The human resource departments are transforming as modern businesses face numerous and complex challenges, and exploit opportunities. The transformation of human resources today is a direct call of the rapid changes within businesses due to combined forces of demographics, globalization and information technology. Friedman (2005) described instrumentation of globalization as a whole set of technologies and political events converged including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the internet, the diffusion of the Windows operating system, the creation of a global ber-optic network, and the creation of interoperable software applications, which made it very easy for people all over the world to work together that levelled the playing eld. It created a global platform that allowed more people to plug and play, collaborate and compete, share knowledge and share work, than anything we have ever seen in the history of the world. The numerous free trade agreements have made easier ow of capital, people and knowledge. The new global world has widened the talent pool of workers from different parts of the world, and has made it possible for organizations to hire workers from this pool. The primary purpose of HRI systems is to gather and maintain data for predicting short and long term trends in supply and demands of workers in different industries and occupations and help global organizations make strategic decisions relating to optimal acquisition, development and retention of their human capital. An organizations talent can be a source for a sustained competitive advantage and can affect important organizational outcomes such as survival, protability, customer satisfaction level, and employee performance (Stroh and Caligiuri, 1998; Pfeffer, 1994).

Drivers of human resource transformation Major drivers of human resources today are combined forces of globalization, demographic changes, and technological changes. The increasing prevalence of globalization is being fueled by demographic changes in the developed and developing world and technological progress. Globalization Globalization means that the world market is increasingly behaving as a single market based on interdependent supply chain production with raw material and components coming from different parts of the world. The number of trade agreements between different countries of the world is on the rise. According to the World Trade Organization, over 420 arrangements covering trade in goods or services between countries of the world have been noties. A large majority of these agreements (over 300) were concluded after 1995. The average tariff rates on manufactured goods for developed countries has come down from about 20 percent in 1950, to about 5.9 percent in 1990, to about 4 percent in 2002. World trade has increased signicantly in the last decade. The ratio of world imports to gross world product, GWP, has grown from just 10 percent in 1970 to over 18 percent in 1996. Global stafng and global leadership development are the two components of global human resources with the greatest potential for powerful leverage for global rms (Pucik, 1996). Only the multinationals that will be able to make fact based decisions to suitably adapt their human resource practices to the changing global labor market conditions will be able to attract, develop and retain the right talent, and will likely survive, succeed and prosper in the global competition. Demographic forces Despite the current economic downturn and unemployment, most developed countries, including the USA, Germany and Japan will face long term talent shortages mainly due to ageing and retirement of baby boomers. There are more workers retiring than entering the labor force in these countries. By 2020, for every ve retiring workers, only four new workers will join the labor force in most developed countries. According to an estimate the USA will need to add 26 million workers to its talent pool by 2030 to sustain the average economic growth of the two past decades (1988-2008) unless a technological breakthrough replaces manpower, while Western Europe will need to add 46 million employees (World Economic Forum, 2010). The shortage of workers is predicted across most industries, including manufacturing, construction, transport and communications, trade, hotel and restaurants, nancial services, IT and business services, health care, public administration, and education. The opportunity has never been greater for multinationals to attract top talent from emerging countries, such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China, or to outsource work to these countries. Global population growth differs between developed and developing countries. In the developed countries, the USA, EU, and Japan, the current annual rate of growth is less than 0.3 percent, while in the rest of the world the population is increasing almost six times as fast. According to McKinsey Global Institute, there are approximately 33 million potential professionals in emerging market and they are growing very quickly. The stock of suitable, young professional talent in emerging market is growing at 5.5 percent annually, while the number in developed countries is

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growing just 1 percent annually (McKinley Global Institute, 2005b). The total number of university-educated talent in low-wage countries far exceeds the number for high wage countries. At present, India produces as many young engineers as the USA, and China has more than twice as many. Russia produces ten times as many nance and accounting professionals as Germany. According to International Organization for Migration, there were an estimated 214 million international migrants in the world in 2010, and 57 percent of all migrants live in high-income countries. The number of migrants is likely to grow at high speed in the coming years. The migration of workers and outsources of work would not be just one way from emerging countries to developed countries, but it will be in both directions. The global supply of talent is short of its long-term demand, and the gap is a challenge for employers everywhere. The shortage between the demand and supply of talents is likely to continue to increase, notably for highly skilled workers and for the next generation of middle and senior leaders. Most emerging nations with large populations, including BRICS countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, may also not have a net surplus workforce with the right skills for very long. Now organizations need to place greater emphasis on attracting human capital rather than nancial capital. Because capital is broadly available from investors and lenders, and innovations can be duplicated relatively easily and quickly, effective human resource management is the best way to differentiate your company from the rest in business today. Information technology The globalization is driven by the development of inexpensive, yet very powerful technologies, including the intra- and internet, enterprise resource planning system, data warehouse, data mart, and data analytics. Cloud computing and new advances in remote access and support technologies also seem to fuel globalization. Many service jobs, such as call centers, animation, transcription, and software development can be carried out remotely. It is estimated that 160 million jobs, or about 11 percent of the projected 1.46 billion service jobs worldwide in 2008, could be carried out remotely, barring any constraints on supply (McKinley Global Institute, 2005a). Human resources need to take advantage of technology and data analytics to build a global HRI system that collects and stores data from various sources and locations into data warehouses and data marts, and analyzes the data to get business insights and predict future needs and develop strategies to ll the needs. With the development of computer technology and internet, globalization is increasing rapidly, such as e-mail, Http services, or EDI shorten the space-time signicantly. Because of these technologies, multinational corporations have emerged; they can operate their business and manage internal affairs via network. Roles and responsibilities of human resources of a global organization In the past, human resource function was typically considered a cost center and an administrative overhead. The human resource departments focused on short-term gains and savings. They focused on administrative efciency and compliance activities. They tended to expense investments in talent intangibles rather than capitalize and tended to raise short-term earnings by cutting discretionary expenditure on people development (Guthridge et al., 2008; Hamel and Prahalad, 1994; Schuler and Jackson, 1987). Such tendencies achieved short-term successes but encountered

long-term problems when the objectives were achieved at the expense of employee productivity. The new human resource role is to focus on organizations long-term objectives. Instead of focusing exclusively on internal human resource issues, modern human resource department takes a balanced and broader approach. They place emphasis on future-oriented plans and objectives and value adding initiatives (Adler and Ghadar, 1990; Adler, 1997; Kobrin, 1992; Milliman et al., 1991; Tung and Punnett, 1993). Ulrich (1996) denes the roles of human resource based on the following four functions strategic business partner, change agent, employee champion, and administration expert. They are also champion of globalization and technology savvy. Strategic business partner and change agent Strategic business partner and change agent functions are about leading and helping in formulating the organizations overall business strategy and alignment of human resource activities and initiatives with the organizations overall business strategy. Unless the human resource strategy is appropriately formulated and skillfully implemented, success of the organization is at risk (Belcourt and McBey, 2010). In these roles, the human resource professional contributes to the formulation and the accomplishment of the organization-wide business plans and objectives, and formulates the human resource business objectives to support the attainment of the overall strategic business plans and objectives. Talent planning should be inextricably linked with strategic planning and, as such, regularly addressed by human resource executives. Companies need to develop leaders capable of generating growth and effectively managing a multicultural workforce. Leaders themselves need to represent diverse cultures and backgrounds so the structure of the decision-making bodies with organizations reects a more diverse composition of the marketplace (World Economic Forum, 2010). The human resource personnel do periodic evaluation of the effectiveness of the organization at corporate level. The personnel anticipate changes and understand what is necessary to implement it. The human resource professional is skilled in getting business insight, to predict changes, and make informed decisions at operational and strategic levels. The human resource professional accesses current and anticipates future skills shortages through strategic skills planning. Business volatility and uncertainty increase the need for companies to rely on advanced analytics, scenario simulations, and other sophisticated workforce-planning levers (BCG and WFPMA, 2010b). Partner with frontline and middle managers One of the characteristic features of the human resource literature is the pivotal role that has been given to frontline managers as a delivery point for a variety of employment policies that are intended to raise the performance of the workforce (Gratton et al., 1999). The people and performance research carried out for the CIPD by a team at Bath University found that where employees feel positive about their relationship with their frontline managers they are more likely to have higher levels of job satisfaction, commitment and loyalty which are associated with higher levels of performance (Hutchinson and Purcell, 2003). The human resource role is to partner with frontline and middle managers to effectively acquire, develop and retain human

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capital for all business units in the company. Modern technology has made it possible to for human resource personnel and line managers to have virtual, without face-to-face meetings and communications. Employee advocate and champion of globalization As an employee sponsor or advocate, the human resource manager plays a pivotal role in organizational success via his knowledge about and advocacy of people. This advocacy includes expertise in how to create a work environment in which people will choose to be motivated, contributing, and happy (Ulrich, 1996). When employees are motivated they want to do their best work not out of obligation but because their job matters to them, both professionally and personally. On the other hand, discipline comprises systems, policies, and practices that raise accountability. When motivation and discipline unite, employees are excited about, accountable for, and rewarded for their work (BCG and WFPMA, 2010a). Workplace exibility is expected to be on the rise in the future workplaces and thus, most of the interaction between human resource personnel and line managers or workers will be virtual, without face-to-face, meetings. The human resource personnel are a champion of globalization, and help develop global mindset in its employees. Having a global mindset implies recognition of benets that can ow to the whole organization from encouraging and valuing cultural diversity in people. Globalization is increasingly adding one more thing to low-cost labor and high-power technology: unfettered imagination that is, high innovative and creative capabilities (Friedman, 2005). The role of human resource is to implement the necessary organizational strategies with sensitivity to specic cultural inuences (Pucik, 1996). Component of a HRI system Global organizations are utilizing the organizations data to making informed decisions instead of relying on their intuitions or gut feelings. Likewise, HR departments of global companies also assemble the data such as on employees, attrition and hiring, compensation and benets, ethnic, gender, cultural, and nationality distributions, load the same into data warehouses and data marts, analyze and get business insights, and make fact based decisions. The global human resource information system consists of a number of component systems that are interdependent. The various components may be broadly classied into the following four main sub-systems: data warehousing, data analytics, performance management system, and information delivery. These tools and systemic processes are critical to formulate questions or hypothesis, to design data and analytical models, to compute and communicate results to appropriate users, and then for the users to draw business insight from the results to shape business decisions and, ultimately, improve performance. The data warehousing system A data warehouse is a decision support database that is maintained separately from the organizations operational databases. Operational databases contain data pertaining to each transaction and data warehouse contain summary data such as totals, counts, maximums and minimums. The data stored in a data warehouse is optimized for querying and data analysis. Data warehousing system deals with design,

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implementation, and operations of a data warehouse including data extraction, data cleansing, data transformation, and loading of data from different sources. The system also includes meta-data management, security management, backup and restore, and disaster recovery. The data warehouse is able to collect and combine data from various sources. Employee data is generally housed in separate human resource systems based on vertical human resource functions, such as benets, payroll and compensation, leave, training, performance appraisals and surveys and/or horizontally across functional areas. Companies need to identify all internal and external data sources and then consolidate the data into a human resource data warehouse or, one or more data marts. The design of a data warehouse depends on identifying facts, dimensions, and granularity. Facts are summarized numerical data stored in a table called fact table. Dimensions are categories by which summarized data can be viewed. Each dimension can have one or more hierarchies. Hierarchies are logical structures that use ordered levels as a means of organizing data. Query tools use hierarchies to drill down or roll up into your retrieved facts to view different levels of granularity. Granularity refers to the level of detail of the data stored in a fact table. The more detail there is in a fact table, the higher its granularity and vice versa. We may also (for performance and condentiality reasons) choose to store the facts at some intermediate level of granularity. As compared to the data warehouse with highest granularity, this data warehouse does not contain details that could be very valuable to the company. In general, as the granularity level is lowered, the system contains less detailed information (therefore less useful), but gains in performance (in speed and storage) and condentiality of individual records. The information technology professionals are overall responsible to design a data warehouse system that is optimal in storage and performance, and human resource department is responsible to ensure that each user in their group has the information detailed enough to do his or her job. The performance and usefulness oppose each another and information technology and human resources departments need to nd an optimal solution that is overall best in the long run for the organization as a whole. The business analytics system The global human resource information systems are generally very rich in business analytics applications, including online analytical processing (OLAP), data mining, and advanced analytics applications based on statistics, forecasting and predictive analytics. These applications not only can give answers to questions, such as, what happened? Why did it happen? but also can enables the user to predict and inuence the future. The advanced analytics can answer some deeper human resource questions, such as in what ways human capital investments will contribute to business performance? How much do human resource activities impact employee performance? What skill needs and opportunities lie ahead? OLAP applications can retrieve summary statistics (metrics), such as totals, averages, percentages, Standard Deviations, maximum, minimum of data measurements (facts) from multiple dimensional views. These applications are capable to perform several data retrieval operations, including drill down, roll up, and slice and dice and allow users to view metrics based on different detail levels.

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Mega BI vendors have incorporated comprehensive statistical and data mining capabilities in their software. Data mining is an extension of statistical techniques such as, classical and articial intelligence. Statistical techniques are generally applied to relatively small-size sample data selected randomly and specically to validate a hypothesis. These techniques conform to a set of assumptions about the population and are called verication driven techniques. Data mining includes techniques called discovery driven techniques that do the exploration and analysis by automatic means of large quantities of data in order to discover meaningful hidden patterns in order to nd relationships, associations, and trends among the data measurements (Kim, 2002; Tan et al., 2006; Shmueli et al., 2010) and this knowledge is then applied to achieving specic business goals. By contrast, predictive analytics includes statistical, mathematical, and data mining analyst-guided (not automatic) techniques that do the exploration and analysis of large quantities of data in order to make decisions by forecasting the outcomes. Whereas OLAP and data mining focuses on past performance, predictive analytics forecasts behavior and results in order to guide specic decisions. If OLAP and data mining can tell what has happened and why did it happen, predictive analytics can tell what to do. Performance management system It consists of processes for strategic goals and objectives, performance measurement and mentoring, analyzing performance and making decisions to improve business performance. Strategic goals and objectives a strategic goal is a broad statement of what the management wants to achieve, and an objective is usually time bound specic course of action that contributes to the achievement of the strategic goal. There may be several objectives pertaining to a goal. Here is an example of a goal and its two objectives as planned by HR department of the state of California (www.dpa.ca.gov/hrmod/accomplishments-and-goals/mission-statement-goals-and-objectives.htm). Goal: improve and instill high performance in the workplace. The primary purpose of employee learning and performance management is to improve both employee and organizational performance. Within state service, staff development is too often considered an expense rather than an investment. This goal will establish performance management as a basic objective for improving service to internal and external customers including the citizens of California. Objective no. 1: ensure supervisors/managers acquire, implement, and apply principles necessary to foster high performance in the workplace. Currently, employee appraisals are done irregularly, despite the requirements for annual appraisals and individual development plans. As we convert to a competencybased HR system, performance will be used to assess current competencies, identify training needs, and better align resources to achieve organizational effectiveness. It is essential supervisors/managers continually provide meaningful feedback. Properly trained, informed and accountable management is the key to establish and foster high performance. To achieve this, performance management training and training assessment methods must be established to evaluate the effectiveness of the training received. Continuing education and resources (e.g. communication forums, webcasts) must be made available to keep supervisors/managers informed and apprised of industry best practices. Automated tools must also be created and made

available to support improved methods for ascertaining the achievement of performance goals and objectives. These will further provide opportunities to more effectively measure management compliance. A compliant, consistent, and available 80-h supervisor/manager training program will be deployed by winter 2009. Objective no. 2: ensure supervisors/managers conduct meaningful timely performance appraisals. This objective will equip supervisors/managers with the skills necessary to provide constructive feedback to staff. Supervisors/managers will be held accountable in their personal performance appraisals for assessing their staff. Initial learning management tools will be available by summer 2009. Identication of performance management tool(s) will be accomplished by fall 2009. Organizations make operational and nancial plans to achieve organizations strategic goals and objectives, and then initiate projects to implement the plans. Performance measurement and monitoring during the entire period of the project, the outcomes are measured and trends are monitored in real time. The measurements are done according to certain key performance indicators (KPIs). The KPIs need to be designed for each functional area and for each of the levels in the organization starting from the highest, moving towards the lowest. Performance indicators are leading indicators that gauge the outcome by examining incremental progress of the project. Performance indicators with respect to human resources may include employee retention, job satisfaction, compensation and rewards, employee training, accident levels, employee absenteeism, and employee performance. Analyzing performance KPIs are compared to the strategic goals and objectives. The results are utilized to monitor, further analyze and act to improve performance. The advanced analytics subsystem enables organizations to make informed decisions to align their goals and objectives, as well as programs and budgets to the performance indicators. Decision making and performance feedback the organizations are able to adjust their goals and objectives, modify programs, and re-allocate resources and funds. Performance measures in essence provide a feedback loop in the process of business performance management. The information delivery system The information delivery system gives business users the ability to access reports and continuously monitor performance of a project or entire organization at enterprise and lower levels. End-users are also able to monitor the key activities such as trends, metrics, and KPIs in easy-to-understand designs, such as congurable information portals, scorecards and dashboards. Depending on an individuals role and responsibility, he or she is presented with the trends, metrics, and KPI at appropriate aggregate levels. Some users can get to the lowest detail that exists in the warehouse. BI adoption in industry and human resources BI is gaining rapidly in popularity, faster than most anticipated. It was found that BI and business analytics software revenue was $25.2 billion in 2009, a 13.9 percent increase from the 2007 revenue of $22.1 billion, and a 43.6 percent increase from the 2005 revenue of $17.5 billion. We have proportioned the total BI revenue into

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four parts data warehousing platform, advanced analytics software, analytics business applications and information delivery tools. The rate of increase was phenomenal in each of the segments and in each of the periods (Table I). For example, the rate of increase for data warehousing platform from 2005 revenue to 2009 revenue was 49.2 percent. In addition, the corresponding rates of increases for advanced analytics applications, analytics business applications, and information delivery were, respectively, 39.2, 40.5 and 42.8 percent. Data warehousing platforms were found to have a $7.8 billion (28.8 percent) market share of total worldwide BI software revenue. Advanced analytical software were found to have a 1.5 billion (6.7 percent) market share, analytic business applications were found to have a $9.37 billion (34.5 percent) market share, and information delivery tools were found to have a $6.48 billion (23.9 percent) market share. The market segments, advanced analytical software and information delivery tools are BI tools, which had a combined revenue estimate of $8.0 billion (30.6 percent) market share in 2009. The BI software market has continued to outperform the overall enterprise software market in the past few years. Seeing tremendous opportunities in BI, there has been a large number of acquisitions and mergers of BI companies by Mega-vendors, SAP, IBM, SAS, Oracle, and Microsoft. They have benetted tremendously from the acquisition of these independent BI companies, and have made BI software their focal product to develop or acquire. Each also offers HR modules with BI and data analytics capabilities embedded in them. The vendors claim that the following features and functions are included in their HRI software: workforce planning, workforce cost planning and simulation, workforce benchmarking, workforce process analytics and measurement, talent management analytics and measurement, strategic alignment with goals of the organization, predicted turnover percentage, causes of voluntary termination. The software can help identify those in the high-risk group by job category, pinpoint the employees most likely to voluntarily leave, monitor workforce demographics in line with recruitment and retention objectives, analyze efciency of the entire recruitment process lifecycle, understand and prevent the drivers of employee turnover, gain insight into the movement of top and bottom performers in the organization to engage and develop

Market Data Warehousing Platform

2005

2007

2009

Growth % Growth % 2005-2009 2007-2009 (49.2%) (39.2%) (40.5%) (42.8%) (43.6%) (15.6%) (10.4%) (12.8%) (14.2%) (13.9%)

Table I. Worldwide BI and analytics software revenue estimates by market segments

5225 6744 7797 (29.8%) (30.5%) (28.8%) Advanced Analytical Applications 1093 1378 1522 (6.2%) (6.2) (6.7%) Analytics Business Applications 6671 8304 9371 (38.1%) (37.6%) (34.5%) Information Delivery Tools 4539 5675 6483 (25.9%) (25.7) (23.9%) TOTAL 17528 22101 25173 (100%) (100%) (100%) Note: $ millions Sources: Adapted from IDC (November 2008) and IDC ( June 2010)

internal talent, gain insight into learning demand by analyzing course enrollments by job, delivery methods, and organizations, understand how compensation impacts performance, ensure compensation is equitable and consistent across roles, and align variable compensation with your organizations objectives and goals, get a comprehensive view into employees current, planned, and historical absence events; monitor absence trends as a predictor for employee engagement, and assess HRs overall performance and employee productivity using industry benchmarks such as revenue per employee, contribution per headcount, and return on human capital. The leading-edge companies are increasingly adopting advanced HRI systems to gain intelligent business insight and enhance their competitive advantage. The best organizations see their people not only as individuals but also as a rich source of collective data that managers can use to make better decisions about talent. Future organizational performance is inextricably linked to the capabilities and motivations of a companys people. Organizations that have used data to gain human-capital insights already have a hard-to-replicate competitive advantage. Others, too, can draw on these new techniques to improve their business results (Davenport et al., 2010). By incorporating BI and data analytics in the design of human resource management protocols and database strategies they can attract, develop and retain high performing employees and succeed in the global business competition. Conclusion With global competition, decision-making in organizations has become increasingly intricate and convoluted. This creates challenges for global organizations HR departments to manage workforce diverse in cultures, time zones, expertise, benets and compensations. The global supply of talent is short of its long-term demand, and the gap is a challenge for employers everywhere. The shortage between the demand and supply of talents is likely to continue to increase, notably for highly skilled workers and for the next generation of middle and senior leaders. Only those multinational enterprises willing to adapt their HR practices to the changing global labor market conditions will be able to attract and retain high performing employees. Having seen BI as the core enterprise strategy, the mega software vendors have spent billions on acquiring other BI focused companies. The giant vendors have now BI solutions for organizations of most types and sizes. While many organizations have purchased their BI software and are starting to use in many areas of their businesses and make substantial gains, but they have taken little advantage of this in HR Management area. Executives should view HR as a strategic asset within their organizations. The new human resource role is to focus on organizations long-term objectives. Instead of focusing exclusively on internal human resource issues, HR executives should take a balanced and broader approach. They should place emphasis on future-oriented plans and objectives and value adding initiatives based on the following four functions strategic business partner, change agent, employee champion, and administration expert. By taking advantage of the enriched environment of BI, HR can position itself as essential value-adding department of the organization. BI and data analytics can aid in making informed decisions based on knowledge extracted from the data and options at hand.

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BCG and WFPMA (2010a), Creating a New Deal for Middle Managers: En-powering a Neglected but Critical Group, The Boston Consulting Group & World Federation of People Management Associations, Boston, MA. BCG and WFPMA (2010b), Creating People Advantage 2010: How Companies Can Adapt Their HR Practices for Volatile Times, The Boston Consulting Group & World Federation of People Management Associations, Boston, MA. Belcourt, M. and McBey, K. (2010), Strategic Human Resources Planning, Cengage Learning, Stamford, CT. Davenport, T., Harris, J. and Shapiro, J. (2010), Competing on talent analytics, Harvard Business Review, Prod. #: R1010B-PDF-ENG. Friedman, T.L. (2005), The World is Flat, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, NY. Gratton, L., Hailey, V.H., Stiles, P. and Truss, C. (1999), Strategic Human Resource Management: Corporate Rhetoric and Human Reality, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Guthridge, M., Komm, A.B. and Lawson, E. (2008), Making talent a strategic priority, McKinsey Quarterly, No. 1. Hamel, G. and Prahalad, C.K. (1994), Competing for the future, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 72 No. 4, pp. 122-8. Hutchinson, S. and Purcell, J. (2003), Bringing Policies to Life: The Vital Role of Front Line Managers in People Management, Executive Brieng, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, London. Kim, D.A. (2002), Information visualization and visual data mining, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Vol. 8 No. 1. Kobrin, S.J. (1992), Multinational strategy and international human resource management policy, White paper, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. McKinley Global Institute (2005a), The Emerging Global Labor Market: Part I The Demand for Offshore Talent in Services, McKinsey & Company, New York, NY. McKinley Global Institute (2005b), The Emerging Global Labor Market: Part II The Supply of Offshore Talent in Services, McKinsey & Company, New York, NY. Milliman, J., Von Glinow, M.A. and Nathan, M. (1991), Organizational lifecycles and strategic international human resource management in multinational companies, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 18, pp. 269-92. Pfeffer, J. (1994), Competitive Advantage Through People: Unleashing the Power of the Work Force, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Pucik, V. (1996), Human Resources in the Future: An Obstacle or A Champion of Globalization, Center for Advanced Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Schuler, R.S. and Jackson, S.E. (1987), Linking competitive strategies with human resource management practices, The Academy of Management Executive, Vol. 1 No. 3, pp. 207-19. Shmueli, G., Patel, N.R. and Bruce, P.C. (2010), Data Mining for Business Intelligence, Wiley, New York, NY.

Stroh, L.K. and Caligiuri, P.M. (1998), Strategic human resources: a new source for competitive advantage in the global arena, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 1-17. Tan, P.-N., Michael, S. and Vipin, K. (2006), Introduction to Data Mining, Pearson, London. Tung, R. and Punnett, B.J. (1993), Research in International Human Resource Management, International Management Research: Looking to the Future, Walter de Gruyter, New York, NY. Ulrich, D. (1996), Human Resource Champions: The Next Agenda for Adding Value and Delivering Results, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. World Economic Forum (2010), Stimulating economies through fostering talent mobility, in collaboration with The Boston Consulting Group, REF: 100310. Further reading Davenport, T. (2006), Competing on analytics, Harvard Business Review, Prod. #: R0601H-PDF-ENG. Corresponding author Bhushan Kapoor can be contacted at: bkapoor@fullerton.edu

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