Global Payroll Insight
Mastering the art of data visualization to serve user needs
Challenge
Getting complex questions answered
Our client provides global payroll calculation and administration services to its customers, harmonizing the entire management of foreign employment. As a part of these services, they wanted to supply a software solution that enables its customers to easily get insights into relevant metrics such as labor costs, terminated contracts, absenteeism, etc. across national boundaries.
Our client had already developed an initial product, built on a comprehensive back-end database. In a next step, our client was looking for the expertise to transform that solution into a set of intuitive global payroll dashboards that optimally serve its users’ needs and smoothly integrate them into their day-to-day work.
Approach
Interacting closely with our client and their customers to build a product that can be deployed in a snap
During a pilot phase, we collaborated closely with a selected number of our client’s customers. Starting from an initial set of specifications, we built the first prototype and shared it with target users to gather feedback. This user feedback proved to be invaluable in evolving efficiently towards a software product that excels in usability. In our view, such a user-driven approach is a key enabler for any successful data visualization project. For data dashboards to be usable, they need to primarily meet the expectations of their users.
In addition to the intense interaction with our client’s customers, we worked closely with people in various positions throughout the client's organization. Building a series of global payroll dashboards on Tableau Server to visualize the data from our client's back-end database just wouldn’t have been possible without an active cooperation with the IT department. At the same time, we remained in close contact with our client's product management team to ensure that the solution we built could easily and quickly be deployed for each of our client’s customers. To facilitate deployment, we implemented a set of scripts to automate that process.
These technical aspects proved to be critical, as they boosted our client’s efficiency in bringing the Tableau Server dashboards to the growing number of customers that want to use the global payroll management solution we developed.
Impact
Opening eyes for opportunities
Within a couple of weeks after the release of our Tableau Server implementation, the number of our client’s customers signing up more than tripled compared to the installed base of the initial solution.
In addition to that instant success, the global payroll dashboards also proved to be an eye opener for many other teams within our client’s organization. Amazed by the Tableau visualizations and their ease of use, employees began to see the many possibilities and benefits for their applications and needs. Many people within the organization were convinced that such dashboards could quickly help them to make progress, especially since our implementation had taken only a matter of weeks, not months. As a result, our client decided to use Tableau as a Business Intelligence tool within the entire organization.