美国工资条的秘密

    问：就在今天早上，随着ADP发布最新一期就业报告，美国股市和美元同时出现下跌。你也参与了编写这份报告，而且这份报告已经成了ADP品牌的一个重要部分。其中有什么经验是值得其他企业借鉴的吗？

    答：当我们六年前刚开始这项工作的时候，我们想建立一个非常高质量的标准。它要能够反映出我们作为一家企业，致力于给客户提供最高质量的服务的抱负。于是我们非常努力地做这件事，不仅仅是为了编制一个短期的东西，只在媒体上报道一次就完了，而是想建立一个可持续发展的东西、一个公共产品。它不仅对媒体很重要，而且对金融市场和政府也很重要。不过，我们从来没想过拿它来赚钱。

    有些人说它没有预测到美国劳工统计局的就业数字，这个数字一般要比你们的报告晚两天出台，你怎样回应这个问题？

    简单来说，我们在编制报告中的数据时，使用的是实时处理工资交易所得的数据，所以它的根据是一段时间内那些拿到了工资的人。政府使用的方法是对企业进行问卷调查。这两种方法的结果会稍有不同。我们的目标是要预测那一时刻的真实就业水平，所以我们可能比劳工统计局的数据要早一些——而且他们在两三个月后会对数据进行调整。我们希望能提前看看经济的运行情况。

    问：的确政府后来调整过的数据一般更接近你的初始数据。现在企业能够获得的数据比以前多得多了，这在理论上讲对财务总监们来说是件大好事。在实际中，要想利用这些数据，会面临哪些挑战？

    答：今天的数据资源可以说是无穷无尽，不过怎样才能做出一个有意义的决策？怎样才能让它对企业有利，而且有可操作性？这是首要的挑战。我自己作为一个CFO是这样看，从许多客户对数据的请求来看，他们也是这样认为的。

    他们感兴趣的是什么？

    很多客户请求的是一系列人力资本管理数据。这不仅仅是我们每月发布的就业数据。客户对理解薪资建设很感兴趣。我应该在我的公司提供哪些福利？我应该怎样跟我的竞争对手相比？研究得越细，也就是这些数据对某个特定客户越有用，他就越容易成功。

    作为一名CFO，你是如何使用所有现有数据的？

    答：我们使用了详细的就业报告，还聘请了一些统计学家来指导我们的销售团队，让他们来鉴定潜在商机和客户的潜在需求。如何最大程度利用现有数据？在这个问题上，我们和所有其他公司一样，也面临着类似的挑战。

    领导力系列：本专栏收集的是《财富》高级编辑吉奥夫•科尔文对一系列企业高管的专访。您可访问fortune.com/leadership观看采访视频，以及科尔文采访嘉信理财、通用电器、宝洁、太平洋投资管理公司、诺华制药、全食公司等知名企业掌门人的视频。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    As we sit here this morning, the stock market and the U.S. dollar have fallen on the release of the newest ADP employment report. You helped develop that report, which has become a great bit of branding for ADP. Are there lessons here for other companies?

    When we started this six years ago, we wanted to create a very high-quality measure that would reflect our aspiration as a company to deliver the best quality possible to our clients. We worked very hard not to create something just for the short-term benefit of a media splash. We wanted something sustainable, a public good that would be relevant to the media, to the financial markets, and to the government. We never felt that we wanted to make money off it.

    Some people say that it doesn't predict the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment number, which generally comes out a couple of days later. What's your response?

    In a nutshell, we use our real-time payroll-processing transactions to calculate the report, so it is based on those people being paid in the period that we're trying to cover. The government uses a method that collects surveys from companies. The two different methods have slightly different results. Our objective is to predict the true employment level at that moment, and so we may be a little bit ahead of the government data that the BLS updates in the months to follow -- they adjust the data two or three months following. We hope we give an advance look into the economy.

    And in fact those later government revisions often get closer to your initial number. More broadly, companies have access to a lot more data than ever before, which in theory ought to be a tremendous boon to CFOs. In practice, what are the challenges in taking advantage of it?

    Data sources are endless today, but how do you make a decision relevant? How do you make it matter for your business, make it actionable? That's the primary challenge. I see it as CFO for my own company, and we see it also in the requests from our clients.

    What are they interested in?

    We get many requests regarding the broad set of human-capital management data. It's not only employment data that we publish every month. Clients are interested in understanding wage developments. What type of benefit offerings should I provide in my company? How do I compare in these offerings to my competitors? The more specific you can be, so that the information becomes relevant to that specific client, the more successful it will be.

    As CFO, how are you using all the data you have available?

    We use detailed reports about employment and hiring statistics to direct our sales force, to identify opportunities for us to grow the business, and also to identify potential needs that our clients may have. We have the same challenges that all other companies have in making the most sense out of a vast array of data.

    The Leadership series: This is the latest interview with a top executive by Fortune senior editor-at-large Geoff Colvin. See video excerpts of this interview at fortune.com/leadership -- plus find Colvin interviews with Charles Schwab, the team of Jeff Immelt (GE) and A.G. Lafley (P&G), Pimco's Mohamed El-Erian, Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez, Whole Foods co-CEO Walter Robb, and many more.