HR Data Platform

Context

Enterprise people data needs to serve reporting and decision-making while respecting the sensitivity of employee information. This anonymised account focuses on the business-analysis decisions around that challenge.

Problem

HR reporting relied on fragmented processes, manual data preparation and complex access models. Understanding a reporting need also meant understanding the source, meaning, ownership and permitted use of the underlying data.

My Role

As Business Analyst, I worked across business, data, architecture, engineering, governance and testing teams to frame requirements, understand data flows, define governance and access needs, coordinate validation and translate business needs into implementable decisions.

Stakeholders

The work crossed HR reporting users, data owners, architects, engineering teams, governance specialists and testers. A shared definition of the data and its intended use was the connection between these perspectives.

What I Needed to Understand

Which decisions the reports supported; where the source data came from; what each field meant; how refresh expectations differed; and who should see which level of detail.

Approach

Connect the reporting need to the data flow, then make access and governance requirements visible alongside functional requirements. Keep open questions, dependencies and validation criteria close to the delivery decisions they affect.

Key Requirements / Decisions

Data meaning, classification, refresh expectations, access boundaries and ownership all need explicit agreement. Workday, Databricks, Power BI, Collibra and Immuta describe the environment; the requirements explain how it should serve its users.

Process / Data Flow

A conceptual view of the flow, simplified for this public case study.

1. 01Workday→
2. 02Landing→
3. 03Databricks→
4. 04Governance / classification→
5. 05Policy-based access→
6. 06Power BI

Challenges & Trade-offs

Easier access and stronger control must be designed together. More detail is not always more useful: the right data granularity depends on the reporting purpose and the user’s authorised role.

Validation / Testing

Validation connects source-to-report reconciliation with user scenarios and access rules. A report is only usable when its data, interpretation, refresh behaviour and visibility match the agreed need.

Outcome

The outcome themes are faster preparation, improved reporting refresh, stronger access controls and clearer governance. This public account intentionally avoids client identifiers, confidential implementation details and unverified numerical claims.

What I Learned

A data platform is also a shared-understanding problem. Definitions, ownership and access decisions deserve the same attention as the movement of data.