SystematicHR  links to CedarCrestone's whitepaper research regarding the dollar value of human capital automation.  Some good figures in there in case you were wondering what it costs a large firm to change someone's salary for instance, or approve a promotion.   

My takeaway: no surprise, organizations with data warehousing capability show superior return.  Also key: HR Help Desk systems and Competency Management systems.   I see the former as any workflow or task/ticket system - essential for coordinated efforts by small groups, yielding high productivity. 

Yes its true- if you can slice and dice data and use whatever systems you want to use, whenever you want to use them, and still get reliable numbers from your data warehouse, you are going to get your mission done faster, cheaper, and better than the other blokes.

I have been writing (esp. in context of Vurv/Taleo) about my contrary opinion that Talent Management is in a race with advancing data technique; firms with high powered HR data warehouses really don't/won't care if all the application interfaces or databases are from a single vendor.