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Discussion 161 data that many contemporary organizations already possess in their HRIS, allowing the analysis of patterns over several years and a quantification of long-term impact. However, the data issues encountered in the HRIS in Chapter 6 also illustrate the challenges contemporary people analytics teams may still face. My overall conclusion would be that perfect data does not exist and that people analytics can already result in considerable insights based on the HRM data collected in standard HRIS, complemented with ad hoc additional data collection. 7.4.2.3 People Analytics Culture Third, organizations are advised to create a culture where analytics is fully embedded. In the best-case scenario, any HRM initiative is accompanied by an analytical strategy including testable research questions, data collection before, during, and after the intervention, a clear analysis procedure, and continued monitoring after implementation. Although this strategy might not be viable for every minor policy change, it is definitely necessary for large scale projects. Crucial would be that not only the people analytics project team is analytically skilled, but that the whole HRM community knows what is (not) possible so that they can ask the right questions and spot opportunities on a daily basis. 7.4.2.4 Expatriate Management Fourth and final, Chapters 4 through 6 discuss detailed practical implications for expatriate management in organizations. An additional implication for practice would be that organizations should aim for evidence-based expatriate management and assess to what extent their global mobility policies are achieving their objectives. Here, analysis using clever proxies and data stored in HRIS can already result in many interesting insights. For instance, if expatriation is used mainly for managerial development, the rate of change in performance and potential evaluations of managers over time could be analyzed in light of whether they were internationally assigned are not. Similarly, longitudinal changes in job level and salary grades could be assessed to inspect the implications of expatriation for careers. Here, organizations should compare the implications of different forms of expatriation (e.g., long-term, short-term, commuting, hardship) to estimate their cost-effectiveness. In all cases, organizations should also test whether employees are more or less likely to leave during or after assignment. Not only does this hint to what extent investment in global mobility is cost-effective, but it may also display whether well-being, adjustment, repatriation, or career issues exist. Overall, the HRIS data collected in many contemporary organizations already provides a good foundation to make expatriate management more evidence-based. 7.5 Future Research Based on my dissertation, I have several general recommendations for future research on people analytics in general, and people analytics applied to expatriate management research.