For the modern enterprise, people are important — much more important than individual products or services. However, when it comes to measuring just how important people are, in a quantifiable way, many dimensions of measurement and analysis come into play and make clear and actionable understandings via workforce data difficult to achieve and manage. The implications for a contingent workforce program are clear: a mature and robust workforce or talent analytics tool is essential.

But how far along a talent management maturity model will a workforce analytics tool get you? Operational reporting tools and, in many cases, advanced reporting tools for dashboards and benchmarking are readily available as complimentary, built-in or add-on components of all the major vendor management systems on the market today. But for higher levels of data intelligence, strategic and predictive analytics — those that enable an enterprise to optimize its workforce, build predictive workforce models, integrate with strategic business planning and make big workforce decisions — then we need to think big: Big Data.

Big Data is a buzzword that many have heard but few understand. That’s because very few enterprises have matured to the point where predictive workforce analysis is achievable through existing data sets and data management tools. Also required are knowledgeable workforce business experts who can “marry” the data with the business problems to be solved, opportunities to be exploited and business decisions to be made.

You may have even heard of a backlash against Big Data: It has failed to deliver the benefits promised, it’s just mumbo jumbo and Big Data is only for Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook. Don’t believe a word of it; just as the war for talent is being fought every day, so the war for data is also being waged, every day. Workforce programs that ignore Big Data and choose not to unlock the secrets of workforce performance will be overtaken by those that do.

Big Data is distinguished from other data concepts and terminologies by three main attributes (originally defined by Gartner): volume, velocity and variety. The “3Vs,” as they are known, describe scenarios where data volumes are growing, the velocity of data is increasing, and the variety of data types and sources is expanding. In other words, with business data volumes growing faster than ever, the velocity of data exchange increasing inside and external to an enterprise and the number of data sets available for analysis expanding rapidly, the challenges a workforce program has to measure progress towards strategic goals in any way more than in an annualized way, or via a quarterly review, are becoming ever more difficult to resolve.

Data informs you of your world as it was in the past (e.g., a market intelligence report on employment trends could be compiled on a quarterly basis), but with the “3Vs,” how does one make informed workforce optimization decisions much more real-time and much more predictive in nature? How do workforce program leaders respond to the strategic business requirement to be much more analytical, evidence-based and predictive? The answer lies with Big Data.

The value of Big Data for workforce optimization is very much a work in progress, to date only a minority of big players have made Big Data central to their workforce planning processes. But industry evidence suggests the value of workforce data and the transformational potential of Big Data are almost limitless. Big Data is here to stay and will transform the way we measure and manage talent and predict workforce optimization strategies. Without a doubt, the need for and use of Big Data will move up the contingent workforce capability and maturity agenda and high performance workforce solutions will place Big Data central to their insight and foresight needs across the entire enterprise.