Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Informatica Pioneers Innovative Career Development Initiative With Plateau Learning Management System


Plateau’s Solution Empowers Informatica’s Employees to Own Their Career


Arlington, VA. – 28 March 2007  Plateau Systems, a leading provider of software for developing, managing and optimizing organizational skills and talent, today announced that Informatica, a leading provider of data integration software, has selected and deployed Plateau’s Learning Management Systems (LMS) as the strategic framework for its forward-thinking career development initiative. Informatica will leverage Plateau’s fully hosted LMS as the foundation of its new paradigm that focuses on aligning and integrating learning as a continuous career development goal for its more than 1200 global employees.


In contrast to the traditional “ladder” or hierarchical approach that has long defined career development and advancement, Informatica focuses on empowering employees to take charge of their careers.   With Plateau LMS as the foundation enabling this new paradigm, Informatica will be able to link targeted learning to core competencies, emphasizing job enrichment, competency enrichment, opportunities for lateral movement and temporary global assignments for cultural awareness and growth – with the ultimate goal of empowering employees to define their career development goals and drive their own career path.


Over the past fifteen years, corporations have expanded globally.  Competition has heated up, outsourcing trends have increased, and strategic agility is now critical for corporate success.   Corporations have also become less hierarchical and more flat in structure, resulting in fewer management levels and fewer traditional promotional opportunities.  In addition, the hyper-pace of evolving technology means that some skills can be obsolete within two years.  As a result, a new career paradigm has emerged, defining successful employees as ones who drive their own skill growth, set their own career goals, maintain their expertise proactively, and recognize that a career path is defined by continuous competency enrichment, opportunity breadth, cross-cultural awareness, and lifelong learning.  Providing a learning infrastructure that empowers employees to embrace this new career paradigm has elevated the strategic value of Learning Management Systems.  Learning Management Systems provide a framework for delivering this new career paradigm and infusing its philosophy of employee learning empowerment within the corporate culture.


“As a growing, mid-size company in a competitive environment, Informatica is committed to dynamically developing and advancing employees in ways that support their professional and personal  goals by providing more control over their career development,” said Dr. Linda Pfeifer, Director of Global HR Learning and Performance at Informatica.  “We see this new career paradigm approach to lifelong continuous learning as a key driver to motivating the workforce and are committed to providing  and nurturing a culture of risk-free learning that embraces this approach. Plateau LMS enables us to unite and build a new culture around this new career paradigm by offering a holistic approach to developing, managing, rewarding and optimizing our employees.  With Plateau LMS, we have the opportunity to offer scalability as our company grows, and as new market opportunities emerge, we may better retain key talent and streamline our development of job-based skills, all of which deliver time and cost savings for Informatica.”


After a thorough evaluation of LMS providers, Informatica selected Plateau as the infrastructure for its new initiative as the vendor that could best deliver enterprise-class depth and breadth of functionality within its solution.  By providing a single, centralized point for delivering, managing, tracking and reporting on employee learning activities, Plateau’s solution enables Informatica to more effectively administer training while reducing related overhead. 


Plateau’s LMS integrates learning and career development, providing a closed-loop process that helps Informatica’s managers fill employee development gaps through targeted learning activities.  By bundling e-learning directly into their offering, Plateau allows Informatica to apply its curriculum design directly into the LMS framework, creating a cost-effective and easy-to-use solution for the organization.  Informatica’s curriculum model accelerates job-based development through focused behavioral assessment that aligns skills gaps with the most effective learning solutions.


“Informatica recognizes that innovation in critical for creating effective, employee-focused learning strategies that help develop and cultivate organizational talent,” said Paul Sparta, Chairman and CEO of Plateau. “Plateau provides a solution that perfectly complements Informatica’s new career development paradigm while enabling the company to increase its workforce productivity and drive overall business performance.”


About Plateau

Plateau is a leading, global provider of adaptable, web-based software for developing, managing, rewarding and optimizing organizational talent 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, with offices across the  United States, Europe and Asia Pacific.  For more information, please visit www.plateau.com.


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