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Uber Enables People Leaders with People Analytics
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Applicable Industries
- Professional Service
- Software
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Human Resources
Services
- System Integration
- Training
The Challenge
Uber’s fast global expansion created the need for a people analytics solution to support its culture of data-based decision-making. There was limited ability for Uber’s People function or business leaders to quickly conduct analysis on their workforce, particularly across the entire organization. The company’s people data was housed in disparate systems and often categorized in different ways. This made it difficult to answer even simple questions like current headcount in an efficient, repeatable manner. Uber was faced with choosing whether to assign internal resources to build a customized people analytics solution or to select a vendor’s solution that could deliver to their requirements. Additionally, Uber’s business leaders needed comprehensive information on their people to be delivered through an attractive and intuitive interface. Time to value was also an important factor for determining their approach to a people analytics solution.
About The Customer
Uber, a global company with a workforce of about 20,000 employees, is re-imagining the way the world moves. The company has brought together a collection of optimists and doers to tackle some of the most challenging problems of our time. Uber’s people vision is to build the highest performing diverse workforce and to anticipate and meet the needs of its diverse customers, thus leading the global marketplace. The company’s fast global expansion created the need for a people analytics solution to support its culture of data-based decision-making. Uber’s business leaders needed fast and comprehensive access to information on their people, and they were faced with the choice between building or buying a people analytics solution.
The Solution
Uber decided to buy Visier, a people analytics solution, based on its intuitive user interface, robust and people-focused data model, and the power and speed of its implementation partnership approach. By choosing Visier, Uber avoided the time and cost of building a data model and metric definitions for its people data. The decision to buy Visier was driven by the principle of enabling all business leaders, not just HR leaders, with data and analytics. Uber pursued a self-service model that empowers users, rather than having a large analytics team doing customized analyses with specialized tools and raw data. The onboarding and development approach was based on Uber’s “Test and Learn” product development approach, which draws on the lean concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP). An “Uber People Dashboard” was developed in the Visier solution and tested with a group of users. Feedback was gathered from users weekly and converted into lists of changes and enhancements to data and configurations. The solution needed to enable local configuration changes without having to develop multiple customized versions. The project was guided by a decision team composed of key stakeholders from user groups, and crucial to implementation was having a senior business executive as an executive sponsor, along with the Chief People Officer.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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