How a Global Retailer Preserved 5+ Years of Historical HR Data During a Core System Migration, Ensuring Uninterrupted Analytics
Executive Summary
A large retail client, operating globally with 20,000 employees, faced a critical Workday-to-Oracle HRIS migration. This transition risked the loss of years of invaluable HR history, which was crucial for ongoing workforce planning and turnover analyses. Included’s People Data Cloud seamlessly ingested and retained all historical records dating back five years, ensuring uninterrupted analytics and preserving the full data lineage throughout the migration. This also eliminated the need for a costly separate data warehouse build.
Customer Snapshot
A global retailer with 20,000 employees across multiple regions, undertaking an HRIS consolidation to streamline operations and reduce licensing costs. Their People Operations team needed continuous access to five years of attrition, promotion, and compensation history for critical workforce planning.
The Challenge
System migration risk
Standard analytics tools captured only one-time snapshots, requiring manual reloads post-migration, leading to data loss and discontinuity.
Data continuity
Losing historical context would undermine ongoing workforce planning and turnover analyses, impacting critical business decisions.
Manual effort
Re-extracting corrected or backfilled records threatened weeks of catch-up work, potential errors, and significant resource drain.
The Turning Point
Included offered a turnkey People Data Cloud solution, designed for seamless historical data preservation during system changes. This included nightly delta loads plus full historical retention across system changes. Within one week, all legacy Workday data, dating back five years, was imported without issue. Crucially, permissions were pre-processed, ensuring that access controls carried over seamlessly, maintaining data security and integrity.
" Customer Quote
Included saved us weeks of re-mapping and manual loads when we switched HR systems. We retained five years of history flawlessly –and our analytics kept humming."
— Director of People Operations
(anonymized)
The Outcome
Uninterrupted analytics
The client never lost access to historic headcount, attrition trends, or succession planning, enabling continuous workforce planning and forecasting.
Automated deltas
Nightly scans detected and ingested updates (e.g., back-dated promotions, corrected hire dates) automatically, eliminating manual intervention and ensuring data accuracy.
Significant cost avoidance
Eliminated the need for a separate data warehouse build or professional services engagement for historical loads, saving over $100K.
Enhanced trust
Business leaders continued to rely on consistent, comprehensive data for critical workforce planning and forecasting, maintaining confidence in their data-driven decisions.
IMPACT HIGHLIGHTS
5+ years of historical data
preserved across HRIS platforms
Automated nightly full-delta loads,
eliminating manual re-loads
0 hours of downtime
for people analytics during migration
Significant cost avoidance,
bypassing a $100K+ custom data-warehouse project
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