Have you heard?  If you are booking your travel through Orbitz on your Mac, you’re probably paying more than your PC using neighbor.  Not cool in my opinion (but I love my Mac).  Even though I totally disagree with this, I highly doubt Orbitz executives woke up one morning and said, “Let’s charge Mac users more.”  They had to come up with this analytically.  Their reasoning was that Mac users generally spend more on a hotel room.  They must trust their analytics. They knew this information would get out (we are in the world of social media) and some Mac users will probably stop using Orbitz.  The opportunity to gain must outweigh the risks. 

Obviously, for marketing, analytics is the way to go.  If you haven’t heard of the Orbitz example, you had to hear about Target figuring out a teen girl was pregnantbefore her family.  Companies are able to predict what we might be interested in, or need, based on our buying patterns.  This thought intrigued me, so when I saw the opportunity to join a webinar from Bersin & Associates on human resources data, I took it.  I will honestly say that my understanding is definitely stronger in gathering and using data for marketing.  HR analytics is new to me, but here are some key points I took away from the webinar:

o   HR Analytics should help us hire, manage, train and move employees to help solve business problems

o   An effective HR Analytics program will take years to build and use effectively

o   Your HR department will probably not be able to accomplish this by themselves

o   Start small with something you need now (ex. How can we decrease turnover?)

If you’re interested in learning more, I’m sure the staff at Bersin & Associates could help you out.  My suggestion – if you’re not thinking about it, you should start.  Sit down with your marketing department and see what they’re doing, ask IT to pull reports, and find a way to manage the data.  Keep it fresh so it is available and ready for when you need to solve a problem within your company.  You’ll have one place to look for ideas on decreasing your turnover.  Is it highest in a certain department, age group, gender, or geographic location? 

I thought this was an interesting topic, what do you think?

Erica L.