Comprehensive, Performance-Driven Solution Gets High Marks for Configurability and Ease-of-Use
HR TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE, PHILADELPHIA, Penn. (October 8, 2003) - Workscape, Inc. a proven provider of benefits and workforce management solutions, today discussed details of marketplace reception for its newly released Compensation Planner solution, available beginning April 2003 as part of the Workscape Enterprise 4.2 application suite. Compensation Planner, a Web-based solution that streamlines the entire process of balancing compensation, performance, departmental budgets, and approval processes across company units and business lines, continues to be embraced by a growing number of mid- to large-size enterprise customers, including General Motors, LSI Logic, and Union Bank of California, just to name a few.
2003 has been an especially significant period for the company, with strong new business momentum culminating in a record third quarter* for Compensation Planner bookings. Customers selecting Workscape for new or expanded deployments of Compensation Planner this year include AdvancePCS, Honeywell, Amgen, Dex Media, and Northrop Grumman.
"The success of Compensation Planner reflects a burgeoning trend among senior HR professionals: the need to more aggressively align employee compensation with both company and individual performance metrics," said Tim Clifford, president and CEO of Workscape. "However, this trend, in combination with shrinking pay budgets and the need to design and allocate more variable pay components across the organization, makes successful compensation planning increasingly complex. Workscape's Compensation Planner, in response to these challenges, has been designed to support each organization's unique business processes and enables them to administer compensation plans that are on strategy, on budget and on time."
Clifford also noted that the adoption of Compensation Planner by high-visibility companies was driving increased interest in Workscape's expanded product line of complementary applications for both workforce management and benefits administration. "Given the tight economic environment and the tremendous resources associated with executing a company's annual merit review cycle, compensation planning is often a key point of entry from which to test the rewards of automating HR processes through self-service," he added. "With the success of Compensation Planner, we are seeing a healthy pipeline of other new business opportunities from both new and existing Workscape clients."
Compensation Planner, today Workscape's fastest-growing product, delivers important efficiencies to the entire compensation planning process, including support for merit increases (both percent and lump sum), equity pay adjustments, promotion increases, variable pay (bonus) awards, and stock option grants. The product provides deep functionality by accommodating an unlimited number of compensation plans, multiple compensation types (salary, bonus, stock options) within a plan, multiple forms of variable compensation with multiple weighted objectives, and international compensation practices (including currency and conversion rates).
Compensation Planner presents content via an intuitive interface that includes dynamic pop-up windows and calculators to assist in reinforcing compensation strategy and in supplying market, competitive information and corporate guidelines as needed. Compensation Managers can easily define and set parameters pertaining to plan budgets, guidelines and alerts prior to usage by line managers through the Plan Administration module. Working together, these comprehensive product features result in minimal user training, more effective decision making by managers, and ultimately, increased workforce performance.
Enhancements available in the latest release include a new Plan Administration module; expanded reporting capability; support for multiple comp plans with multiple variable pay components and multiple weighted objectives; competitive market data displays; enhanced bonus calculators providing dynamic decision support for line managers; and a new "Apply Guidelines" modeling feature which automatically distributes a manager's available budget dollars according to the company's prescribed pay guidelines.