This content was written by Eric Laychock, managing director and Federal Workday lead at KPMG and Jeff Johnson, managing director and Workday Sales lead at KPMG.

As federal agencies continue their efforts to make more data-driven decisions in their business processes, one major opportunity to modernize their systems lies within human resources (HR). Many legacy HR processes exist in single point solutions, meaning the data cannot easily be brought together to get an enterprise view of the workforce, making strategic planning next to impossible. That’s why KPMG LLP (KPMG) and Workday team up to help agencies modernize their HR systems and ensure their workforce data is accurate, available and standardized in order to make proactive decisions.

“As Workday continues to expand its federal business, we are building trust with customers through the value our platform provides to collect, cleanse and construct scalable data frameworks that help agencies reduce complexity, eliminate redundancy and maximize employee performance,” said Matthew Cornelious, managing director of federal industry for Workday. “Workday isn’t selling software – we are entering into collaborative journeys with our customers to help them transform the way they strategically manage their two most important resources: their people and their money. Our continued investment in federalized solutions and our partner ecosystem ensure that we are bringing the newest and most meaningful solutions to our customer’s HR modernization challenges so that agencies can spend more time focused on the mission.”

The importance of data

Better decisions start with better data, and that means ensuring that it’s clean and collected. Data cleanliness starts with accuracy and availability, and one way Workday facilitates that is by enabling self-service options. Employees know their own information better than their organization does; they’ll recognize if their address is wrong in the system, while HR personnel won’t.

This will allow agencies to make better decisions because it reduces the “garbage in, garbage out” dynamic; inaccuracies in data make for flawed results. That’s why data is the foundation of any successful HR modernization effort.

Through accurate data, agencies can then more easily standardize their processes. With consistent data across the enterprise, agencies can knock down silos and gain greater insights into the state of their workforce, leading to smarter decisions about training, upskilling, hiring, succession planning and more.

It also contributes to maintenance of the data, because having standardized procedures keeps people from going outside the process, which creates gaps or inaccuracies within data. That means the data cleanup can be accomplished as a one-time event, and simultaneous standardization will ensure continued integrity of the data.

How to prepare for modernization

With many agencies, getting to a state of clean data and standardized processes is the biggest barrier to HR modernization. But agencies don’t have to reach a perfect state ahead of beginning their modernization process; what they need instead is an end-state in mind. This is something KPMG and Workday have learned in their experience in the commercial sector.

Organizations use data to inform and guide decisions on outcomes, but it is the implementation of these decisions that shapes results, not by the data alone. Knowing what outcomes are desired is the starting point — everything works backwards from there. If the desired outcome is a more efficient distribution of resources, then that requires gathering data on what resources exist, from how many people work in an organization to what skills, training and education they might have.

“Preparations are going to start at a very strategic level, and then move backward into a tactical level of the actual data analysis that you need to figure out what’s going into the tool,” said Jeff Johnson, managing director for KPMG. “That effectively gets you to the point where you’re making data-driven decisions, represented through dashboards and analytics.”

Oftentimes HR modernization is a maturity process. At the left end of the curve, an organization has the data to understand the current state of its workforce. As it moves toward the middle on that maturity curve, it begins using that data to make decisions, and discovering what further data it needs, such as information on training and certifications. On the right side of that curve, the organization is matching its existing resources with existing needs based on that data, and engaging in strategic planning: What needs and resources will it have 18 months from now, based on its current state?

Laying a foundation for the future

With clean and easily available data, agencies can take advantage of innovative technologies, like artificial intelligence and machine learning, to assist in that analysis and improve the accuracy and effectiveness of that strategic planning. HR modernization lays the foundation for the uptake of new technologies, which in turn will facilitate even more advanced uses for that data, and even better decision-making.

“Supporting HR modernization with the Workday platform has pretty obvious benefits to the federal customer,” said Eric Laychock, managing director for KPMG. “They’re competing with the private sector for the best candidates, and the first interaction they have with someone is the application and interview process. They also want their HR staff to be more efficient, and support more employees than they could before. So one, it’s user experience across the board, and two, it’s backend experience and efficiencies.”

From whole-of-workforce to whole-of-agency

With clean data and standardized processes, agencies can begin working their way right on the maturity curve, making better decisions and performing more strategic workforce planning. That lays the foundation for implementing AI and other innovative technologies, which can expand that strategic planning beyond just the workforce, and into other areas of the business. The most expensive component of any organization is its people; what does this strategic planning mean for finance? What implications does it have for customer service, or product delivery? Fully modernized HR lays the foundation for agencies to optimize all areas of their business by starting with the people.

To explore more on the foundation of HR modernization, we invite you to read our previous article on unlocking HR data for better workforce planning.

For more insights and resources, visit our KPMG government and public sector page. Take the first step towards transforming your HR operations today!

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