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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Plateau Systems, the Plateau Systems logo, Plateau Performance, and Plateau are the property of Plateau Systems Ltd. All other names and brands are the property of their respective holders.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Plateau Systems Acquires Compensation Management Pioneer Nuvosoft, Inc.


Leading Performance, Learning, Career and Succession Management Provider Adds Advanced Compensation Management to Deliver IndustryĆ­s First Best-of-Breed Talent Management Solution


Arlington , VA. – February 21, 2007 – Plateau Systems, a leading provider of software for developing, managing and optimizing organizational talent, today announced that it has acquired Nuvosoft Inc., a privately-held provider of web-based compensation management software. By combining Plateau’s award-winning learning, performance, career and succession capabilities with Nuvosoft’s advanced compensation planning and incentive management functionality, Plateau will deliver the industry’s first best-in-class talent management solution.


“The strategic acquisition of Nuvosoft validates and underscores Plateau’s ongoing commitment to delivering best-in-class talent management solutions,” said Paul Sparta, Chairman and CEO of Plateau. “By offering advanced compensation capabilities with our existing best-in-class learning, performance management and career and succession planning solutions, Plateau is providing organizations with a unified approach to developing, managing, rewarding and optimizing talent. As we continue to deliver superior talent management solutions that can be deployed individually or as part of a full talent management suite, we enable current and prospective customers to future-proof and expand their investments in a way that makes sense for their organization.”


According to The Yankee Group, a leading industry research firm, the worldwide market for talent management solutions, which includes employee learning, performance, career and succession planning, compensation management and recruitment, is expected to surpass $2.3 billion in 2006, growing to more than $4.0 billion by 2009. Yankee forecasts 19.6% growth in compensation management over the next four years, attributed to more performance-based compensation programs and the emerging pay-for-performance initiatives.*


“The ability to enable consistent, reliable and standardized compensation processes that are linked to key performance drivers of individual and organizational strategies can affect many facets of the business,” said Jason Corsello, Business and IT Services Director at The Yankee Group. “Integrating a talent management vision—maintaining visibility, control and alignment of performance and compensation tied to business outcomes—has become critical to the success or failure of today’s organizations.”**


Global customers including Nintendo, State Street Bank, BOSE, and Lucent Technologies are currently using Nuvosoft’s award-winning solutions to facilitate compensation planning and incentive management across their organizations.


Plateau Compensation™ will offer Nuvosoft’s comprehensive compensation management capabilities as three integrated applications that may also be purchased individually:



  • Plateau Compensation Planning
    Automates and enables complete planning and management of wide range of compensation programs including salary, merit increases, market adjustments, lump sum payments and other discretionary pay components.

  • Plateau Short-term Incentive
    Facilitates planning and administration of sophisticated short-term incentive programs that involve business guidelines and rules, such as eligibility requirements, for bonus pool funding and allocation.

  • Plateau Long-term Incentive
    Allows compensation managers to plan and administer both market-based and performance- based long-term incentive programs, such as company stock plans and multi-year executive reward programs.


Plateau Compensation is an advanced, flexible and intuitive compensation planning and management system that allows organizations to build, administer and update simple and complex, policy-based compensation plans, in real-time. This inclusive web-based system allows compensation managers to implement state-of-the-art pay for performance programs that tie employee, group and division goals to company financials. Plateau Compensation enables managers to easily and cost-effectively reward top performers and increase workforce productivity. 


IES (Integrated Electrical Services), the largest provider of electrical contracting solutions in the United States with nearly 7,000 employees and 120 locations nationwide, recently selected and will deploy Plateau's full talent management suite of solutions, including Plateau Compensation, Plateau Performance, Plateau Career and Succession Management and Plateau Learning, as the foundation of its enterprise-wide talent management strategy.


"Plateau distinguished itself by offering an end-to-end talent management solution," said Russell Zech, Director of Workforce Development at IES. "By deploying an integrated solution that links employee performance, training, development and compensation, we hope to accelerate our talent management strategy and expedite the achievement of our corporate human capital management goals, which are critical to the continued growth and success of our organization." 


The product provides compensation administrators and company executives with a detailed real-time view into the planning process, while ensuring that managers have the information they need to make informed compensation decisions. Executives and managers can also leverage the product’s p owerful reporting capabilities and customizable templates to generate bonus distribution reports for employees, business managers, senior management and compensation managers. With its unique ability to support virtually all compensation scenarios, which can be based on unlimited variables, Nuvosoft’s powerful compensation capabilities provide managers with real-time visibility into how compensation decisions impact overall departmental and corporate budgets.


Plateau Compensation supports multiple currencies and can be globally deployed. As with all Plateau solutions, Plateau Compensation products can be purchased and deployed stand-alone or as part of Plateau’s integrated Talent Management offering that includes Plateau Learning™, Plateau Performance™ and Plateau Career & Succession™. All Plateau Compensation applications are available immediately. For more information, visit www.plateau.com/prod/compensation.htm.


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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Plateau Systems, the Plateau Systems logo, Plateau Performance, and Plateau are the property of Plateau Systems Ltd. All other names and brands are the property of their respective holders.




* Fueled by Strong Demand, Worldwide Talent Management Market Will Surpass $2.3 Billion in 2006 , Yankee Group, April 2006 , Jason Corsello


* * Compensation as the Foundation to a Talent Management Strategy, Yankee Group, October 2006 , Jason Corsello