Plateau Systems Introduces Next Generation of Flagship Talent Management Suite : Expanded Features in Plateau Talent Management Enhance Planning Cap

ARLINGTON, Va. (Business Wire EON) September 15, 2008 -- Plateau Talent Management 5.8 Service Pack 5 (SP5) provides key enhancements in several areas of the suite including improved talent management planning, enhanced real-time visibility into talent management operations and additional learning evaluation capabilities. With these expanded features, Plateau customers can better maximize their company's talent, make more informed decisions and more effectively and accurately measure the value of learning for both the individual and the company. Highlights of Plateau Talent Management 5.8 SP5 include:

An expanded Talent Profile that includes additional information from Plateau Talent Management and employee social interests and communities, giving you a more complete picture of your company's talent. Dynamic Talent Pools that broaden succession planning capabilities to enable talent identification, risk assessment, team building, internal recruiting and bench strength development. Plateau Report Designer ? a fully integrated robust reporting tool that allows for interactive reports to be built using a visual design environment, giving you greater control over the layout and content of your reports with full application security and without third-party reporting software Enhanced survey features and additional reports that complement exam functionality in Plateau Learning, allowing a more comprehensive understanding of training effectiveness. Enhanced global commerce capabilities with full support for multiple currencies, which allows companies to manage content pricing and costs in a global deployment. According to a recent Bersin & Associates research bulletin, The Economic Benefits of an Integrated Talent Management Suite, those organizations with integrated talent management suites had returns on investment up to 250 percent higher than those with standalone systems for performance management, learning management, and recruiting. This bulletin also includes a review of Plateau Talent Management 5.8 SP5 and states, "These features clearly position Plateau for the 'next generation' of talent management system applications, which integrate the HR-driven needs for management and planning with the employee's need for social networking, collaboration and expertise location."1 To read the Bersin & Associates bulletin, click here.

"The talent challenges plaguing today's global economy require an integrated approach to talent management that enable organizations to align talent management efforts with their business objectives," said Paul Sparta, chairman and CEO, Plateau Systems. "The expanded features and enhanced user experience we're delivering in this latest release of the Plateau Talent Management Suite directly address these growing talent demands, and provide the relevant features our customers need in order to make integrated talent management a reality."

Dynamic Talent Pools

Successful talent management and succession planning initiatives require an understanding of the characteristics, potential and areas of risk in your workforce and your ability to develop strategies on how to grow and retain talent or mitigate the effects of talent losses. With the expanded Talent Pools functionality in Plateau Talent Management, organizations can use pool-based planning to enhance succession management capabilities and to address broader talent management problems associated with talent identification, risk assessment, team building, internal recruiting and bench strength development.

Talent Pools are created using flexible, multi-dimensional searches of employee talent profiles. Once groups of employees are defined, organizations can manage, track, analyze and associate activities or succession plans with the pool members over time. Managers can use the resulting talent pools as a workbench when considering candidates for new positions and use the Talent Pool's personalized display capabilities to enhance the decision-making process. Because Plateau Talent Pools are dynamic, additional candidates can automatically be added to the pool as soon as they meet the pool's criteria. Pools also serve as a launching pad for additional information on each pool member or group of members. Managers can use Talent Pools to review individual members' talent profiles or group several members together to compare relative competency gaps and compare qualifications. With Talent Pools, managers can group high potential and critical employees based upon performance data from Plateau Performance, placing the focus on tracking, developing and retaining critical employees. To facilitate employee development, managers can assign training and learning activities directly from Talent Pools.

According to the Bersin & Associates research bulletin, "Plateau's product has now reached the level of maturity and richness that any Plateau LMS customer should strongly consider implementing Plateau's talent management features before selecting another product."

The report further states, "Plateau LMS customers who implement Plateau's talent management software can quickly leverage all of the employee training history, demographic information, employee hierarchy data, and security and domain information in their talent management solution."

Plateau Report Designer

Plateau Report Designer is an integrated enterprise-class report development platform that allows users to address unique customer reporting requirements. Plateau Report Designer frees customers from the additional expense and provisioning associated with the deployment and integration of third-party reporting tools. The reports provide real-time visibility into talent management operations and help address key questions regarding learning adoption and costs, performance review compliance and a broad range of other operational questions. Plateau Report Designer provides a flexible means to modify standard reports, produce ad hoc reports based on existing reports, create new reports and build completely new reports using a variety of chart styles.

Availability

Plateau Talent Management 5.8 SP5 will be generally available later this month. Additional information on the features available in Plateau Talent Management 5.8 SP5 is available online at www.plateau.com/SP5. For more information on Plateau, visit www.plateau.com.

About Plateau

Plateau is a leading provider of talent management software, content and services designed to increase workforce productivity and drive business success. Plateau's award-winning software is powering talent management initiatives across some of the world's most successful organizations, including the American Red Cross, General Electric, the Internal Revenue Service, Capital One Services and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Industry analysts at Bersin & Associates, Forrester Research and other leading information and technology research and advisory firms continue to recognize Plateau's leadership in delivering best-in-class functionality, technology and customer satisfaction. Plateau is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia and has offices across the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit www.Plateau.com.

1 Bersin & Associates, "The Economic Benefits of an Integrated Talent Management Suite," Aug. 21, 2008, http://www.bersin.com/Lib/Rs/Details.aspx?Docid=10337574.