Why Buy Succession Planning Software?

Success Associates’ models and process are simple enough to use with a combination of common MS Office tools - many of our customers have done just that over the years. But like anything else in life, the right tool for the job gets it done efficiently, accurately, completely and in the least amount of time. Our unmatched client experience working with both succession planning processes and various succession planning software modules on the market guided our design of this niche solution software-as-a-service offering. The pragmatic and powerful succession planning process we share through our seminars and workshops is mirrored in our software every step of the way - from entering succession data and individual development plans to easily creating cycle over cycle metrics reports.

Software Platform

The Success Associates platform has been carefully architected using state of the art Microsoft technology. With a 100% web native approach, the Success Associates software is well suited for our ASP/Subscription deployment methodology. All user and administrative functionality is 100% web based, requiring nothing more than a web browser. All functionality is integrated via a single platform with time saving workflows, query/search, reporting, administration, configuration, and setup. The initial configuration to adopt your organization’s terminology and logo within the software is done for you by us at no charge.

Our platform uses XSLT templates and XML for presentation of data. Deployable on a web server farm, Success Associates offers improved performance, scalability, and fail-over support. Success Associates conforms to Microsoft's DNA Architecture and supports dual firewalls offering more robust security, as demanded by today's Hosted/ASP/Subscription, intranet, and extranet deployment scenarios.

Reporting

Success Associates uses the world class reporting tool, Crystal Reports (Business Objects). In addition to the inherent strengths of Crystal, the Success Associates platform offers ad-hoc reporting, report wizards, and report libraries. Point-in-time, effective date, and historical reporting provides past or future-oriented snapshots of your organization for trend analysis and business planning. An extensive library of unique and standard pre-defined reports is included.

Success Associates also uses a world class charting tool, HR Charter, available from any point throughout the application. There's no faster or more effective way to visualize the shape of your business. Organizational charts help you think more intuitively and strategically about how structural changes such as promotions, mergers, downsizing and acquisitions might affect your organization. As organizations become increasingly more complex, you need a flexible, powerful charting tool to display succession planning data. HR Charter automates the tedious and time-consuming process of generating charts. A selection of pre defined box styles containing data relevant to succession planning and development are at your fingertips and the output is on screen or a neatly printed (and indexed) book of charts.


Search and Query

Powerful search capabilities quickly locate information about people, positions, and organizational units. Records can be easily grouped into sets for data entry and reporting. Sets can be saved for individual users or shared with other defined users. Layered and conditional query design is simple and available for comprehensive use. Filters can be used to run against any form or report facilitating repeat activities. We have anticipated most of the filters you will need and have pre loaded them to the system.

Configuration

The Success Associates platform is truly configurable making rapid implementation a reality. In addition to providing a menu of configuration choices, a limited number of custom fields are available for your use. The fit to your organization is unique - but the framework is not. Why reinvent the wheel? You don’t need a thousand possible tools you need one great one.  

Workflow

An integrated workflow engine streamlines administrative processes. The linking together of forms and reports has been configured for data entry facilitation and configuration of navigation menu trees allows for suppression or availability of functionality. That is, if there is an aspect of functionality you won’t use and therefore don’t want to see, we can hide it and unhide it later.

Security

Advanced security based on hierarchy of user roles and sub-roles eases security administration and provides for the higher levels of granularity required for enterprise-wide use. All forms, reports, screens, filters, workflow processes, and data elements can be secured to the user/group level. Record and row-level security is available.

Data Integration

An efficient way of getting started is to map an output file from your Human Resources Information System (HRIS) or your Payroll system to our standard MS Excel DTU (Data Transfer Utility). The Success Associates DTU (Data Transfer Utility) facilitates an initial data load and successive data refreshes to accommodate uploading employee and position data, position control(optional), hierarchy, new hires, terminations, change of titles, etc.

Position & Hierarchy Control

Don’t have position control? Not a problem. Success Associates software creates it for you behind-the-scenes. Employee, position, and organizational database structures address both private and public sector requirements and enable position control to handle complex tracking of items like multiple incumbencies, multiple incumbents, vacancy tracking, and complex relationships like candidacy and candidates. Position management allows for organizations to uniquely define each job within the organization, dramatically improving the effectiveness of workforce and talent management activities. Use Success Associates tools to manage multiple hierarchies (supervisor, mentor, dotted line, divisional, etc.) and their relationships.

Roles Management

Our software has the capability for comprehensive self-service (administrator, manager and employee roles) however our offering is strictly limited to multiple levels of administrator roles and an optional executive “read only” role at this time. In our experience, a limited number of people, usually 2 to 5 administrators per country or corporate entity or division manage the data for the process. An intuitive, easy-to-use interface ensures that users can quickly access information and complete tasks with little or no training. Online help provides all the assistance that's needed. The roles-based approach automatically presents the user with the appropriate interface (and data) according to his or her role and country/entity of location. Different administrator roles can be set up with varying levels of data access as described in the security section above.

HR Global Data Warehouse

Success Associates offers a robust platform for collecting and aggregating succession planning and development planning information across the entire reach of your organization. Once all of your organizational data is in the Success Associates database, which is completely hosted and managed by Success Associates, powerful reporting and analysis tools can be used to derive incredibly useful information. Unicode and double-byte character sets are supported.

Metrics

Due to the strength of the Success Associates platform with all functionality and data fully integrated on one platform and one database, combined with the power of integrated Crystal (Business Objects) Reporting, HR Analytics is finally a reality. The ability to mine, analyze, and report against data, using the Success Associates analytics, allows you as process champion to become a true strategic partner in driving enterprise objectives. Scalable and measurable key process indicators, metrics, and trends can be available within mouse-clicks.

Application Integration

Success Associates provides the capability to integrate with other applications. Native support for exporting data to Adobe, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and other applications exists through the solution. Finally, Success Associates supports the use of Inline Frames to imbed Success Associates software within other web-native applications and HR portals or vise versa.