Most people don’t think of Human Resources departments as a hotbed of innovation in analytics. But the HR team at BAE Systems has been developing dashboards that provide key analytics insights that drive their business. With use cases around compensation, flight risk and compliance, they are providing the insights to optimize the workforce at one of the world’s top 3 defense contractors.
The team at BAE has been using Tableau for quite a while, and they were using SQL and R programming to prepare their data. But when they saw Alteryx at the Tableau Conference in 2015, they saw the potential to move their data processing into a higher gear.
Rana, Josh and Ian will be presenting about their use of Tableau next week at the Tableau Conference. We thought it would be valuable background to share a conversation we had with Rana and Josh last April regarding their overall analytics approach and how Alteryx has helped them. Rana Dalbah, Director of Workforce Intelligence, Amy Roll, Manager of Compensation Data Analytics, and Josh Kabler, Lead BI and Analytics Developer, of BAE Systems, presented their analytics program at Tableau Conference 2016.
“Originally we were managing on a SharePoint site,” said Rana. “We were using SQL to create metrics. We were planning on using R, but Josh went to Tableau Conference 2015 and found Alteryx. Before Alteryx, it used to take a lot of time to write code for the metrics and then fix the errors. Change management was a hassle because the metrics and dashboard were evolving, so change was really hard to adjust the SQL coding. Alteryx saves significant time by automating the input of files, but it is also more flexible and error proof. For example, we now have the ability to fix column name misspellings on the fly. We couldn’t do that before.”
With use cases like flight risk they are combining many points of data – number of connections on LinkedIn, number of days of PTO left, and other factors. They are able to predict which employees might be considering leaving BAE. “It’s important for HR to analyze flight risk because there is a cost to hire and train new employees,” said Josh. “To analyze flight risk we use predictive analytics. We had to transition from the existing R-code. What used to take 6-weeks in R, we were able to develop in Alteryx and now have turnaround time of a couple days. Once it was transitioned, flight risk analysis took a couple weeks compared to a couple of months. And we like that the predictive tools in Alteryx have multiple predictive model options.”
The HR team at BAE is now sharing their use of Alteryx with other groups to ensure they are using best practices in preparing their analytics datasets for Tableau, in area such as manufacturing and engineering. And they are continuing to grow with more analytics use cases in Human Resources.
To find out more about how Alteryx will be participating in the Tableau Conference, visit the Tableau Conference page on Alteryx.com: http://www.alteryx.com/tableau-conference.
BAE Systems will present “We.are.analytics! How HR is Leading an Analytic Revolution at BAE Systems using Alteryx” at the Tableau Conference on Tuesday 1:45 PM at ACC - L1 - Room 1
