With the start of the 16th annual HR Tech Conference in Las
Vegas today, SumTotal®
Systems LLC, the largest independent provider of integrated HR
solutions, announced the fall 2013 release of its Talent Expansion
Suite, the first context-aware solution for HR, featuring a user
experience that delivers hyper-personalized talent, learning and
workforce management information and actions to end users, when and
where they need them.
Delivered through the industry’s only fully touch-screen optimized user
interface (UI), this release extends the power and pervasiveness of
SumTotal’s best-in-class HR solutions. It also extends SumTotal’s award-winning
elixHR
Platform by combining context-aware computing functionality with
unsurpassed data integration and management tools, including
out-of-the-box connectors and a comprehensive HR master data model, that
work together to build context and provide just-in-time learning and
talent processes and analytics integrated with customers’ existing
enterprise solutions.
Information and Actions that Matter, When and Where They Matter
Employees today are increasingly distracted from their daily work by the
deluge of information and interactions invading their work environment,
much of which is not important or relevant to the work they are doing.
This increase in “noise” is having a significant impact on employee
engagement and productivity, as well as overall organizational
performance.
Traditional HCM software can contribute significantly to this problem
with employees, managers and executives having to figure out and locate
the information and actions that really matter for them and the
individuals they manage. Today, employees must often sift thousands of
possible activities and courses in learning catalogues to select a
course or development opportunity that might be right for them. Managers
have to consider countless possibilities for improving the productivity
and feedback of their teams. And, executives often have to wade through
volumes of inaccurate or disparate data to make strategic decisions.
SumTotal’s latest Talent Expansion Suite release helps employees filter
out the noise and focus on information that is truly relevant and
important at a given point in time. By collecting and correlating
information about the employee’s work environment, activities,
connections and preferences, SumTotal’s solutions can anticipate an
employee’s needs and actions and proactively deliver relevant content,
transforming data into actionable recommendations when and where
employees need them.
These right-place, right-time interactions, which can be exposed through
SumTotal’s solutions via portlets embedded in third-party applications,
like Salesforce, or through mobile devices, are helping employees get
better at their jobs and translating into increased employee engagement,
improved productivity and greater collaboration across organizations.
“Companies looking to take a more embedded, just-in-time approach to
enabling and engaging the workforce should give thoughtful consideration
to SumTotal’s’ contextual workforce empowerment capabilities,” said
Christa Degnan Manning, vice president of research at industry analyst
firm HfS Research. “The enhancements are also particularly in tune to
the trends of ease of use and social and mobile work environments.”
This release of SumTotal Talent Expansion Suite delivers more than
50 features and enhancements across the entire suite.
Key Features of SumTotal Talent Expansion Suite:
Context-Aware User Experience
SumTotal’s new context-aware user experience provides information and
actions that matter, where and when they matter. Key features delivered
through SumTotal’s current Talent Expansion release:
-
New User Interface
At the heart of the redesigned user
interface (UI) is a consumer-grade user experience (think Amazon or
Google) today’s users and employees have come to expect. The new UI is
highly intuitive, reducing clicks and providing critical information,
analytics and contextual guidance throughout the processes. For
example, users can quickly search a graphical carousel for a learning
catalogue or courses, and register and initiate multi-modal learning
plan from anywhere, with a single click. Managers can generate a
graphical tile view of contextual development activities and actions
for their teams and access a timeline view of their experience to
quickly make them more productive and effective. Users can also
quickly and easily report complex absences, like family medical leave,
using a personalized wizard interface that intuitively guides them
through the process.
-
Industry first fully optimized touch-screen experience
SumTotal’s
new UI leverages HTML 5-based responsive design, touch- friendly
access and delivers a common experience across all devices. Menus,
screens, portlets and the UI have been redesigned to provide optimal
experience based on the size of the device screen, whether iPad,
Android or Kindle. This release further enhances SumTotal’s unrivaled,
truly offline mobile capabilities through additional features
including the ability to track learning activity attendance or
initiate approvals, from any mobile device.
-
Extensible Portal and Portlets for Contextual Access from Anywhere
or any System
Right-place, right-time experiences and
interactions can be delivered within the SumTotal portal through more
than 100 pre-configured cross-functional portlets that allow users to
access contextually relevant information and actions from SumTotal in
whatever software or systems they are already working, including
customer relationship management (CRM) and point-of-sales (POS)
systems. This release makes context-aware information directly
accessible to users immediately and consistently, increasing their
productivity and effectiveness. Customers can also leverage the
SumTotal portal to expose information from other systems and provide
unique, highly personalized experiences for their division, team or
group.
-
Social Enhancements
Continuous feedback via an
employee’s social wall and conversation days allow users to review
social feedback as part of an assessment, solicit input from others,
evaluate and develop employees in real-time, and connect managers and
employees to additional perspectives. Expanded social recruitment
capabilities allow recruiters to extend their reach through social
and job-board integration (Bullhorn Reach Social Recruiting, social
and third-party job postings, LinkedIn profile merging), a
configurable question library, CARCO bi-directional background check
integration and improvements to knock-out logic and candidate scoring.
-
Enhanced Reporting and Analytics
Building on SumTotal’s
world-class predictive analytics capabilities, this latest release
delivers an expanded data model and visualization capabilities with
enhanced, new cross-platform real-time reporting for managers and
administrators.
“Context is the future, and SumTotal is there now. As the only vendor
that can aggregate and correlate data from multiple disparate internal
and external systems and extract context from complex, dynamic
environments to deliver right-time interactions on an employee’s device
of choice, SumTotal is in a unique position to make context-driven
interactions a reality for employees,” said Hardeep Gulati, COO at
SumTotal Systems. “Our new Talent Expansion Suite release addresses key
challenges every HR organization faces by improving adoption of their
initiatives with a context-optimized user experience, providing
additional value to employees and organizations with pervasive
just-in-time access from any system or device, and leveraging their
existing investments by easily integrating with their current processes
and systems to drive more effective employee engagement and
productivity.”
As a result, Gulati said SumTotal delivers tools that people use because
they want to, not because they have to, and helps people become better
at their job and expand their talent in real time.
HR Tech Demos
HR Tech Conference attendees can see and experience SumTotal’s solutions
firsthand and hear from customers US Airways and McAfee at booth 311:
SumTotal will also host a demo presentation showcasing the new UI on
Tuesday at 12:30-1:30 p.m. in Demo Room 1 on the show floor.
HR Executive magazine editors will honor SumTotal elixHR Platform
as a Top HR Product of 2013 during the HR Technology Conference Awards
luncheon on Monday, October 7, For more details, see http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/connect/press-releases/sumtotal-elixhrtm-platform-named-top-hr-product-human-resource-executive-editos/
More Information
For more information about SumTotal Talent Expansion Suite and its new
Context-Aware user experience, visit http://sumtotalsystems.com/context-aware
Read about SumTotal’s Talent
Expansion™ Applications, elixHR™
Platform or view the Talent
Expansion video. For additional information, visit www.sumtotalsystems.com.
About SumTotal Systems
SumTotal
Systems, LLC, the largest independent provider of integrated HR
solutions, is increasing the performance of some of the world’s most
successful organizations, including AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN[ADR]; London:
AZN), Amway (KUL: AMWAY), and Seagate (NYSE: STX). The only HR solution
provider to deliver Talent Expansion, a whole new approach to
discovering, developing and unleashing hidden potential within our
customers’ workforce, SumTotal delivers employee enablement solutions
that help organizations become great places to work. SumTotal’s
people-focused applications, available on premise and in the Cloud,
enable contextual, just-in-time development designed to advance
employees’ skills and knowledge. Today, more than 3,500 organizations,
including several of Fortune’s “Best Places to Work,” rely on SumTotal’s
on premise and cloud-based Talent Expansion applications to enable their
employees.
SumTotal, the SumTotal logo, and elixHR are registered trademarks or
trademarks of SumTotal Systems, LLC, and/or its affiliates in the United
States and/or other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their
respective owners.
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Copyright Business Wire 2013