3. Delivering the Right Field Information
at the Right Time for Decision-Making
In order to respond quickly to market opportunities and competitive pressures, organizations are moving toward
knowledge that empowers people throughout the enterprise to make rapid front-line adjustments or long-term
strategic corrections. This requires fast, easy access to the right information in the right format.
As businesses collect and maintain more and more operational data, extracting the “right field information” and
presenting it in time for decision-making is a difficult task for most managers. For effective and efficient decision-making,
managers need the assistance of decision support solutions. It is imperative to recognize that the spectrum of
“information interaction” is very broad (See Figure 1), ranging from simple data access and status reporting, to data
exploration and knowledge discovery, to advanced data interpretation and predictive business modeling. Therefore, a
true end-to-end operational decision support solution provides the right business intelligence tools, the right
interface, and the right access to data to address these user activities.
Figure 1 Spectrum of Information Interaction
Source: The Applied Technologies Group, 1999.
Purpose of a WFM Decision Support System
The main purpose of a WFM decision support system is to provide information to business users for decision-making.
It should let knowledge workers access data in a manner that supports the "unique" way they approach their
operations, but it should also meet the following business requirements:
Automate Data Collection—A WFM decision support system should automate the collection of workforce
management data for reporting purposes. By automating the data collection, it eliminates inefficiency and wasted
time involved in manually merging several data sources (paper or digital). The primary data source, the foundation of
a WFM decision support solution, should be a normalized relational database.
Extract and Transform the Relevant Workforce Management Data—Relevant data should be extracted from the
primary database, transformed and delivered to the target data mart at a specified time interval. The process creates a
logical, multi-dimensional model of the target data mart, aggregates the data for this model in a single pass, and
delivers it to the target data mart suited for enterprise reporting and trend analysis.
Supply a Set of Key Performance Indicators—KPIs are business measures that can be used to compare and contrast
various dimensions to uncover the true drivers of the business. KPIs as dynamic business measures should enable
multi-dimensional analysis and performance reporting through an On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) module
and let users “slice and dice”, “drill down”, and view these KPIs in any combination they want.
Self-Service Information Access—The solution should serve as an easy self-service portal where KPIs should be
instantly available in the right format for decision-making. Self-service information access should be provided to
users on thin-client computers. This means that every user in the enterprise can turn to the solution as a way of
managing and organizing the KPIs they wish to scan and view with single-click web access.
