Better workforce data changed the conversation at Patterson Cheney

How a leading vehicle dealer cut workforce reporting from hours to seconds with ELMO Software. Now real-time data is helping HR tackle succession planning.

For years, Patterson Cheney faced a familiar HR problem: plenty of workforce data, but no easy way to turn it into useful information.

One of Victoria’s largest automotive and truck dealership groups, Patterson Cheney spans cars, trucks and luxury vehicles across 14 locations and multiple brands, with about 950 people keeping the business moving.

Managing a workforce of that scale also created a data challenge. Information was spread across different systems and spreadsheets, leaving its HR team spending hours each month compiling even relatively basic reports. By the time those reports were ready, the information could already be a month old.

“We would spend a significant amount of time each month just doing very basic reporting from a variety of different spreadsheets. And it was never current; it was already a month old,” said Daniel Waixel, Head of People and Performance at Patterson Cheney. “This same reporting now takes seconds.”

It’s a challenge that extends well beyond Patterson Cheney. ELMO Software’s 2026 HR Industry Benchmark Report found 28% of Australian HR professionals identify a lack of real-time workforce data and insights as a barrier to operating more strategically.

For Patterson Cheney, addressing that problem started with bringing its workforce information together.

The organisation implemented ELMO’s recruitment, onboarding, HR Core, performance management, learning management and Insights solutions, creating a connected source of workforce data across the employee lifecycle. The platform was deployed in three months with ELMO implementation partner StackPilot.

It has given Patterson Cheney real-time visibility across measures including headcount, turnover, tenure, recruitment pipelines, learning compliance and succession risks. But for Waixel, the bigger change has been what the organisation can now do with that information.

“The biggest shift isn't just the time we've saved. It's the quality of information we now have access to and the ability to identify workforce trends and risks that simply weren't visible before.”

From reporting to workforce planning

One of the clearest examples came on the day ELMO Insights went live. Waixel typed a simple question: show me the age breakdown of the entire workforce, in ten-year brackets. A task that once meant an hour of formulas across multiple spreadsheets came back in seconds in plain English.

Then he asked a follow-up: now show me for managers. The answer revealed 27 managers, nearly one-third of the leadership group, were aged between 50 and 60. It was the first time he had been able to ask that question at all. What had sat hidden in employee data became a practical succession-planning question.

“Those insights immediately changed the conversation,” Waixel said. “Those managers should be thinking about their retirement plans, and that means we should be thinking about their succession plans. We started asking the important questions: Are our 2ICs good enough? Where do we need people now to make sure that when that manager slows down or retires, their people are ready? Are we transferring the knowledge appropriately?”

ELMO Chief Customer Officer Sarah Dart said the experience reflects a challenge she sees among organisations trying to make better use of the workforce data they already hold.

“HR teams are often managing an enormous amount of valuable data, but if accessing it requires hours of manual work, it limits how useful that information can be,” Dart said.

“The opportunity is to give HR leaders and managers a clearer view of what is happening across their workforce so they can spend less time pulling information together and more time deciding what to do with it.”

Building the foundations for what comes next

The change at Patterson Cheney has extended beyond reporting. Automated workflows now support managers through recruitment, onboarding and people management, while compliance training and annual refresher requirements can be automatically assigned and tracked.

For HR teams considering how AI could support workforce decision-making, Dart said having connected workforce data is an important foundation.

“When your people data is connected, AI has much greater potential to surface patterns, answer workforce questions and help HR make informed decisions faster.”

For Patterson Cheney, the next steps include expanding leadership development, compliance automation and workforce planning. The technology may have reduced a monthly reporting task from hours to seconds, but the more significant change is what happens after the report is produced: HR has better information to ask better questions about the workforce it needs next.

Visit ELMO Software to learn how its AI-powered natural language insights engine can help inform workforce decisions in real time, without spreadsheets or data expertise.

Want to see more stories from trusted news sources?
Make HR Leader a preferred news source on Google.