People Analytics: Build, Buy, or BOTH?

In today’s data-driven world, organizations face a critical decision for their people analytics strategy: should they build a custom solution from scratch or invest in a “ready to deploy” platform? Building a bespoke, internal tool can be time-consuming and resource-intensive while purchasing an “out of the box” software solution will not be customized to the exact specifications of the business.

However, this choice does not have to be binary for business leaders. While each option has advantages, the most effective approach often combines the two. By optimizing the strengths of both building and buying, companies can create a smarter people analytics strategy that delivers business impacts more quickly and cost-effectively. 

Why Combine Build and Buy for People Analytics?

Opting for a blended approach—leveraging both off-the-shelf solutions and custom-built tools within the application—offers several compelling advantages:

Faster Time to Value: By purchasing a people analytics solution, organizations can deploy a new solution in weeks rather than the months or years required by a technical team to scope, design, and build a new tool from scratch. This is especially beneficial when time is of the essence, allowing teams to begin deriving value almost immediately. Over time, adding custom-built features enables further specificity to meet the unique needs of the organization.

Deeper Insights and Customization: Leveraging pre-built people analytics tools as a strong foundation frees up engineering teams to build tools that can generate deeper insights, uniquely tailored to the company’s specific challenges and goals. By integrating these tools with customized features, companies can generate deeper, more relevant insights that are directly aligned with their strategic objectives.

Single Source of Engagement: A blended approach creates a unified system where all workforce and business data converge, eliminating the need for traditional tools like Excel. It streamlines data access and enhances collaboration across the organization, ensuring that everyone is working from the same, up-to-date information.

Lower Cost of Ownership: A blended approach allows organizations to take advantage of the cost efficiencies of leveraging existing tools, reducing the need for extensive development from scratch. By building on top of an already solid foundation, companies can avoid unnecessary and unexpected costs while still achieving a high degree of customization. It also frees up their team’s time to work on other strategic initiatives. 

The Benefits of Included in People Analytics

When developing your people analytics strategy, choosing the right solution is key. Included, the AI-native people analytics solution, uniquely delivers: 

Integration with Multiple Data Sources: Included connects seamlessly with various data streams, weaving together fragmented people data from different business systems to tell an organization’s complete story.

Automated, Ready-to-use Insights and Visualizations: Included provides actionable quantitative and qualitative insights derived from clean, accurate data and presented in clear visuals. This makes it easier for all stakeholders to understand the data and make informed decisions.

AI-Powered, Democratized Insights: Stakeholders across the business are empowered by relevant, actionable insights – not just access to more data, promoting a culture of data-driven decision-making across the organization.

Streamlined Cost Structure: Included’s AI enables industry-leading cost-efficiencies, offering all-inclusive innovation without significant add-on costs, high setup fees, or service charges. 

Pre-Curated Metrics: The Included platform offers a comprehensive set of “out of the box” metrics covering the entire employee lifecycle, ensuring your team to derive value more quickly.

Robust, Role-Based Security: Included protects sensitive people data with advanced security features, giving organizations peace of mind that their data is secure.

Embedded AI and Machine Learning: Included is a dynamic, AI-native tool, leveraging the latest AI and machine learning approaches to generate highly accurate predictions and insights, enhancing company decision-making.

The Power of Building A People Analytics Tool

Building a custom, internal tool has clear benefits:

Endless Customization and Flexibility: Building your own analytics solutions allows you to tailor every aspect of the platform to meet your organization’s specific needs.

Inclusion of Non-People, Business Data: By integrating other critical business data, organizations can gain a holistic view of performance, making connections between people analytics and broader business outcomes.

Strategic Content Creation: Custom-built solutions enable the development of unique content and metrics specifically tailored to each organization.

Blended People Analytics Outcomes

By marrying the strengths of both build and buy approaches, with a dynamic solution like Included, organizations experience:

• Faster Time to Value
• Improved User Experience
• Deeper Insights
• Increased Scalability
• Lower Total Cost of Ownership

In summary, combining build and buy options allow organizations to achieve a well-rounded, effective people analytics strategy that maximizes value and efficiency.. Enabling both rapid deployment and enhanced customization, a dynamic blended approach ensures that your people analytics strategy is robust, scalable, and perfectly aligned with your organizational needs.