An Innovator Delivering Excellent Workforce Analytics for the New Era of Work: Sapience Analytics

Founded in 2009, Sapience Analytics emerged with a mission to address a fundamental challenge: understanding how various roles and functions spend their time at work. By offering what could be described as a “Fitbit for work,” Sapience Analytics aimed to empower employees with tools to manage their effort and time more effectively while providing leaders with critical insights into capacity and productivity. The company’s breakthrough came in 2020 with the launch of its Next Generation SaaS platform, which represents a significant evolution in people analytics. This platform was designed to present data in a way that is both accessible and actionable for leaders, managers, and employees. It arrived at a pivotal moment when the convergence of new ways of working, due to the pandemic, evolving workforce demographics, and the rise of insights-driven enterprises were reshaping the workplace landscape.

Sapience Analytics stands at the forefront of this transformation, offering solutions that are increasingly vital to modern enterprise workforce management. The company’s solutions include Sapience Vue^®, a comprehensive workforce analytics platform delivering visibility into workforce capacity. Organizations are able to optimize their most valuable asset — their people — without intruding on employee privacy to make informed decisions about resource deployment, future planning, and overall organizational success. In addition to Vue^®, the workforce analytics leader offers Sapience transparenSEE^®, a solution that addresses the limited visibility that most companies have to the activity levels of external labor, contractors, and project-based resources. Sapience transparenSEE^® delivers visibility into this growing area of a customer’s resources. The company’s newest solution, Whereabouts Works^™, enables enterprises to automatically track, validate, and report whether or not employees are working in the office according to the Return-to-Office (RTO) policies. As the nature of work continues to evolve, Sapience Analytics remains dedicated to equipping organizations with the insights and tools needed to navigate and thrive in this new era of work.

In conversation with Brad Killinger, CEO of Sapience Analytics

Q. Employee well-being and engagement are key aspects of your platform. How does Sapience Vue^® help managers identify and mitigate potential burnout among employees?

Enterprise leaders today face workforce pressures, most of which didn’t exist just a few years ago. A very real and significant challenge facing senior executives right now is determining which associates have capacity to take on more, and who might be at their absolute breaking point and at risk for burnout or even leaving the organization.

Sapience Vue^® helps executives answer this question by providing access to accurate, unbiased workforce insights on an organization’s associates. This enables identification of employees determined as having prolonged, excessive work patterns and offers company leaders the opportunity to proactively reallocate work assignments, eliminate non-value-added tasks or otherwise address potentially dangerous overworked situations.

Q. Sapience emphasizes the importance of privacy and security in its data collection processes. Could you elaborate on the measures you take to protect employee privacy while still providing actionable insights?

Application Security

From code to cloud, we proactively detect vulnerabilities and utilize the best in authentication technologies.

Data Security

Know that your data is safe through multiple layers of protection, including encryption and appropriate retention and removal requirements.

Infrastructure Security

Our architecture protects data in accordance with industry-standard SaaS cloud-based network monitoring and management.

Process & Compliance

We undergo annual independent accounting and auditing examinations to validate our protocols and compliance with industry laws.

Q. Sapience transparenSEE^® provides visibility into work activities and supplier performance. How does this transparency impact supplier relationships and contract negotiations?

Outsourcing is a strategy used by more than 75 percent of businesses, but studies find most contingent

workforce solutions contracts fail to deliver the promised value. Sapience transparenSEE^® provides businesses with valuable insights leaders can leverage to understand the true return on investment (ROI) of external labor. Workforce analytics helps minimize errors, for example, by addressing the Three-Way Match Gap, which aligns the purchase order, goods receipt, and the supplier’s invoice to establish clear benchmarks for leveraging external labor as a workforce strategy. Data becomes an equalizer between the buyer and the supplier enabling both sides to come to the table with facts that aligns actual work activity to invoices. With Sapience transparenSEE, many companies have been able to reduce their external labor spend by more than 30 percent.

Q. Do you have any new services ready to be launched?

Sapience’s Work Location Solution, Whereabouts Work^™, offers invaluable insights for leaders implementing a return-to-office policy, which requires compliance to working in the office. The solution delivers several key benefits:

• Accurate work location: Track and verify whether employees are working from the office or remotely, ensuring adherence to your location policies.

• Compliance assurance: Receive robust information to verify compliance with return-to-office mandates and address any deviations promptly.

• Data-driven decisions: Make informed decisions about hybrid work strategies based on automated, unbiased data.

• Customizable dashboards: Customize dashboards and reports to reflect multiple RTO policies within the business.

• Easy implementation: A simple implementation process ensures you are up and running within a few weeks.

• Privacy-first: Report solely on RTO policy compliance to protect employee privacy.

Without needing badge swipe data, the solution automatically collects data in near real-time and allows viewing of work locations from the individual level up to organizational hierarchies, including various aggregation dimensions like job family or department. Additionally, it offers the ability to set thresholds for what constitutes an ‘in-office’ day, accommodating different enterprise needs.

Q. What does the future hold for your company and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

In today’s competitive landscape, companies that have not yet adopted data-driven decision-making are at a significant disadvantage. The rapid shift towards data-centric strategies means that organizations are urgently seeking talent to lead their data transformations and efficiently analyze insights. According to Gartner, by 2026, data and analytics strategies spearheaded by Chief Data and Analytics Officers (CDAOs) will become pivotal growth drivers, distinguishing data-focused companies from their competitors. At Sapience, we witness firsthand how businesses across various sectors are pivoting to become truly data-driven. Leaders are increasingly leveraging workforce analytics platforms like Sapience to gain a clear understanding of their labor investments. Moreover, a recent Microsoft study highlights that AI adoption among knowledge workers has doubled in less than six months. Three-quarters of these workers are utilizing AI to enhance productivity, focus on key tasks, and save time. AI is transforming jobs in front of our eyes. Tasks that used to take hours now take minutes. The data generated from these AI interactions will become crucial for organizations to understand AI’s impact on their operations, necessary skill sets, and training needs. Utilizing workforce analytics platforms to assess AI’s impact on productivity and identify automation opportunities will be essential for staying ahead.

Finally, the upcoming wave of baby boomer retirements, many of whom hold senior roles, coupled with the entry of a new generation with different work expectations, presents a challenge. The generational divide is evident in debates like the nationwide return-to-office trend. Accurate data on workforce productivity will be crucial for guiding remote work policies and improving communication strategies, positioning companies that leverage this data advantageously against those that do not. 

Meet the leader behind the success of Sapience Analytics

Bradley Killinger, CEO

Bradley Killinger is a seasoned executive who assumed the role of President at Sapience Analytics in August 2017, quickly advancing to become CEO and a member of the Board of Directors in early 2018. At the helm, Killinger has been instrumental in driving the company’s global strategy and fostering substantial growth. His passion lies in promoting Sapience Analytics’ disruptive technology by effectively communicating its unique value proposition.

Killinger’s leadership philosophy revolves around being a great listener who values the input of both employees and customers, and building a culture that empowers people to excel in their roles. Prior to Sapience Analytics, Killinger held global leadership positions at major technology firms, including IBM, Oracle, and Unisys. 

“At Sapience, we witness firsthand how businesses across various sectors are pivoting to become truly data-driven. Leaders are increasingly leveraging workforce analytics platforms like Sapience to gain a clear understanding of their labor investments.”