Augmenting global mobility

‘Augmenting’ is defined as making greater in size or value.

The right technical platforms are crucial for business in that they must contain the right capabilities, be operationally efficient, financially viable and sustainable for the future. One of the biggest challenges is the obstacle of legacy systems and, traditionally, the inability to get systems to ‘talk’ to each other. The amount of data and analytics available is huge yet often remains disconnected.

This is no different in HR than in any other parts of the business. However there have been significant technological developments that can be applied beneficially to HR systems.

We are seeing a greater use of Centres of Excellence (CoEs) and outsourcing which means that our network, or ecosystem, is becoming more devolved. The use of advances in technology, such as RESTful APIs for systems to communicate in a fast and easy way, become more important in making the connections.

In the Global Mobility community, the network is extensive – both inside the organisation and with external parties. At MAI we believe that we have the tools to enable the Global Mobility function to add greater strategic value to the business. Below we have provided some examples of how technology can help augment your global mobility programme.

Managing the global workforce
What is a ‘mobile’ employee? Traditionally we talked about Expats with connotations of cash premiums and club membership. We then moved on to International Assignments and Transfers reflecting the more cost conscious environment that came about in the early 2000’s. More recently, and partially accredited to technological advances, we have a different mobile workforce – and it’s not just millennials.

Ways of working have evolved and how organisations and employees work internationally has changed with it. For global mobility teams, business travellers may have been unwanted guests, but increased compliance obligations and corporate risk profile has meant that they can no longer be ignored.

Global mobility is learning to embrace this changing demographic but still struggles with how to police it. The first step is the ability to track the data of every employee in the organisation without prohibitive cost. It is important to get this data into your global mobility platform to proactively monitor behaviour against pre-determined criteria.

Augmenting the employee experience
The employee experience has often been outsourced to relocation service providers who frequently do an excellent job in supporting employees and their families. We are seeing the use of technology in this industry providing innovative ways to engage with the employee and giving them greater control of their move.

Imagine if you could have all of this in your own global mobility platform? This is not about replacing the vendors in your ecosystem but utilising technology to go one step further. Bilateral sharing of information in a fast and secure way, pulling data from other systems and sources that your vendor would not normally be able to access.

Introduce the employee and their family into the equation through specific user access levels to enable them to obtain information pertinent to their move, manage services and ensure that all information is correct.

Improving financial management
Cost has been a significant focus of organisations over the last decade and we have seen mobility come under significant pressure to reduce, or at least justify, cost. However organisations have been slow to take up or develop this critical service.

An accurate estimate of the cost should be available for any move and not seen as a premium service. The ability to present multiple cost estimate scenarios to the business will enable them to make informed decisions. Furthermore, this initial estimate should not be left to gather dust in a file but should be constantly reviewed to reflect actual costs and changes to compensation throughout the lifecycle of the move. By connecting your global mobility network you can retrieve and share real-time data and overlay it with demographic data such as performance, gender, age, etc.

Only by doing this will you be able to present accurate reporting to the business. With accurate cost reporting comes the ability to set and review budgets with the business and provide financial forecasting.

Enhancing your strategic influence
We have focused above on the importance of cost analysis within global mobility. However the demands to look further to help the business make even more informed decisions are growing. We are increasingly hearing about ‘Big Data’, something that is defined as data sets so large and complex that traditional data processing is inadequate to deal with them.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is more readily available and can be used to harness this complex data. AI is not solely for financial analysis and is already available in global mobility.

AI can come in many forms and below are two examples that can assist global mobility:

Chatbots to support the global mobility team as an additional 24/7 resource – enhancing the employee experience, answering questions and guiding them to information that they need – addressing the mundane questions you could do without.

Using predictive analytics - the analysis of huge volumes of data to enable future predictions - from simpler aspects like demographics and cost forecasting to more complex analysis about who is the best candidate for a move, most likely to succeed and what support they may need.

‘mai-assignment’ is the latest product from MoveAssist, a leading global mobility software development company, founded in 1997. This software has been developed in line with our key principles:

• Providing an appealing and intuitive experience for all users within your global mobility ecosystem - configurable to your individual requirements
  
  
• Understanding and managing cost is core to providing effective strategic global mobility
  
  
• Modern global mobility is no longer only about traditional assignments and technology needs to be accessible for the whole global workforce

These principles are underpinned by our simple and transparent pricing.

MoveAssist is a technology company focused on providing market leading technology solutions agnostic of service delivery – we fit into your environment.

We are proud of our innovations such as the first global mobility chatbot, MAIA. As a market disruptor it is encouraging to see this reflected in improvements across the global mobility industry.

For more information, please visit mai-assignment.com.