UKG has unveiled People Fabric, a new data and intelligence platform designed to unify its suite of human capital management (HCM) and workforce management (WFM) solutions. This initiative aims to provide real-time insights across various aspects of employee experience, including HR, payroll, and workforce operations.
The development of People Fabric addresses the complexities of UKG's backend systems, which comprise 126 application teams and over 12,000 database instances. Historically, data was processed through custom pipelines that were not optimized for real-time use, leaving a gap in the demand for instant insights and automated workflows.
Unifying Systems with AlloyDB
People Fabric's foundation is built on a single canonical data model that standardizes data across the UKG suite. AlloyDB for PostgreSQL was selected as the core operational database due to its ability to quickly ingest changes and scale efficiently. This choice enables millisecond-level read-after-write capabilities and supports AI functionalities.
To facilitate this, UKG developed a custom change data capture (CDC) framework to extract and transform data from existing operational databases into the canonical structure required by AlloyDB. This real-time data backbone allows applications to perform near-instant queries and supports AI-driven decision-making processes.
Enhancing Workforce Intelligence
With People Fabric, UKG provides a comprehensive view of people, work, pay, and culture data, which is continuously updated. This unified context enhances assistive experiences, enabling leaders to pose questions in plain language and receive holistic answers.
Leveraging Google’s Agentic Data Cloud, the platform integrates analytical and transactional data, empowering AI agents to act on live workforce signals. This capability allows for efficient handling of multi-step workflows across various functions, such as HR and payroll.
Impact on Development and Management
For engineering teams, People Fabric serves as a database-as-a-service, streamlining development processes and reducing the complexity of managing individual microservices. The transition of core data off on-premises systems has resulted in significant cost savings, which have been reinvested into the platform.
Currently, over 1,000 organizations are utilizing People Fabric, with an additional 1,000 in the implementation phase. As UKG continues to enhance the platform, it aims to foster deeper automation and more responsive analytics.
Conclusion
UKG's introduction of People Fabric exemplifies how organizations can leverage advanced data solutions to unify operational and analytical data, establishing a robust foundation for real-time workforce intelligence.
