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-winningelixHR 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:
- US
Airways Director of Learning and Development Jason Maxwell:
Monday at 4 p.m. and Tuesday at 2:30 p.m.
See the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p82xW7QGbPU&feature=youtu.be - McAfeeDirector of Talent Management Operations Berly Paz: Monday at 11 a.m. and Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnUDgWS-lE8&feature=c4-overview&list=UU68ezn_f1xIKWZ9G10nElTg
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.
Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/multimedia/home/20131007005661/en/
Contacts:
Wendy Werve, +1 703-622-3605
wwerve@sumtotalsystems.com
