To help advise customers on how to prepare their data for uploading into our platform we recommend they use the industry standard approach of Extract, Transform, Load (ETL). It's a method used to transfer data from one system to another. Here's a breakdown of each step:

Extract

This is the first step in the process and is where the user extracts the data from the system which holds their data. The most common system where our customers hold their people data is their HRIS platform, e.g. Workday, BambooHR, etc. 

Transform

Once the data has been extracted, it often needs to be transformed to meet the requirements of the new system where it is being uploaded to. An example of this would be your HRIS where you probably have the start date for each employee. Having the start date in our platform would not be advisable as there is little value in analysing the results by people who started on say the 1st December 2023. Here we would advise customers to think about bracketing start dates, e.g. 2023 or 2020-2024. This allows the platform to aggregate results into these brackets and provide you with more powerful insights.

The other reason for transforming the data is to ensure there is consistency within the data. Transformation tasks can include cleaning the data, e.g. removing duplicates or correcting errors. A common error we see in an organisation’s people data is departments having multiple names, e.g. the IT department being called IT, I.T, I.T. or Information Technology.

Load

Finally, once the data has been transformed it can be loaded into the target destination. In our example this would be our platform. 

In short the ETL approach enables organisations to integrate data from one system and then clean and prepare it so it can be loaded into a new platform.

An example of ETL in action

The most common example of ETL we see is when customers wish to upload their people data into our platform.

They will download their data from their HRIS platform. Then they’ll transform the data to remove errors, ensure there is consistency and transform it into the right format so it can be uploaded. Finally they’ll upload the data into our platform.