The Challenge

FinCo, a rapidly growing financial technology company in Latin America, needed to centralize and automate its employee data management. With information scattered across multiple platforms, the company faced difficulties in obtaining a complete and up-to-date view of its human resources.

Our Solution

Strata Analytics designed and implemented a centralized Human Resources Data Platform, hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This platform leverages GCP’s scalability, security, and analytics capabilities to provide FinCo with a comprehensive solution.

This robust platform is built on a foundation of automation, employing CI/CD principles through Cloud Build and seamless integration with GitHub. This means every code change triggers an automated build process in Cloud Build, ensuring rapid and reliable deployment of updates to the GCP components.

Centralized data storage is achieved with BigQuery, Google’s fully managed and scalable data warehouse. BigQuery acts as the central repository for all HR data, offering powerful analytical capabilities and lightning-fast query performance. The integration with Looker further enhances the platform’s analytical prowess, empowering FinCo with in-depth analysis and custom reporting capabilities for informed decision-making.

Security is paramount, and the platform incorporates Secret Manager to securely store API credentials and other sensitive information. BigQuery also incorporates robust data protection measures, including row-level and column-level security policies to restrict access to sensitive information, ensuring that only authorized personnel can view this data. This ensures the platform’s security and protects FinCo’s valuable data.

Key Benefits for FinCo

  • Data Centralization: Consolidating all human resources data into a single repository for a unified and reliable view.
  • Automation: Eliminating error-prone manual processes through the automation of data extraction, transformation, and loading.
  • Advanced Analytics: Access to timely information and relevant analytics for strategic decision-making in human resources.

Key Infrastructure Components

  • BigQuery: Scalable and fully managed data warehouse, used as the central repository for all human resources data.
  • Cloud Functions: Serverless computing service, used to automate the extraction of data from various human resources platforms through APIs.
  • GCP Workflows: Orchestration service for efficient and reliable management of data extraction, transformation, and loading processes.
  • Secret Manager: Service for secure storage of API credentials and other sensitive data, ensuring platform security.
  • GitHub: Platform for hosting the source code for Cloud Functions and other automation scripts, facilitating collaboration and version control.
  • Looker: Business intelligence tool, integrated with BigQuery, that allows for in-depth analysis and the generation of customized reports for decision-making.
  • Audit Logs: GCP service that provides detailed logs of activities and data access, facilitating security monitoring and regulatory compliance.
  • Cloud Build: A service that executes builds as a serverless service, providing control over custom workflows for building, testing, and deploying across multiple environments such as VMs, serverless, Kubernetes, or Firebase.

Results

The implementation of the GCP-based Human Resources Data Platform has generated significant results for FinCo:

  • Increased operational efficiency in human resource management.
  • Improved data accuracy and reliability.
  • Faster and more strategic decision-making based on data.

Conclusion

The collaboration between FinCo and Strata Analytics has resulted in an innovative solution that addresses the challenges of human resource data management in rapidly growing companies. The platform, based on the GCP cloud, has not only optimized internal processes but also provided FinCo with the tools for strategic analysis, driving its continuous growth and success in the dynamic Latin American financial market.