Authoria Press Releaseshttp://www.authoria.com/about/press-releasesPress releases provided by Authoria.en-usCopyright 2009, AuthoriaWed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400In househttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss/Authoria Delivers Latest Version of Next Generation Talent Management Platform Built Exclusively Around Customer Drivershttp://www.authoria.com/about/press-releases/authoria-delivers-latest-version-of-next-generation-talent-management-platformSupports ‘Decision Views’ Roadmap with Expanded Reporting and Business Goals Alignment Capability
Simplifies Multi-Vendor Data Challenges with Increased Product Flexibility and Integration Enhancements

Continually focused on building solutions that proactively meet the needs of its large enterprise customer base, Authoria, Inc. announces the newest features of their Authoria Talent Management™ (ATM) platform.  With this announcement, Authoria expands its ‘Decision Views’ product roadmap with enhanced visual analytics and reporting capability and it provides advanced employee and business performance management alignment and measurement features.  Addressing the data transition needs customers face when integrating with or moving away from first generation talent management providers, Authoria has also developed advanced integration applications (APIs) that enable the smooth and easy collection and transfer of previously captured employee performance information into Authoria’s next generation integrated talent management solution.

“We measure our success based on the impact our solution has on the productivity, profitability and performance of our clients’ businesses.  We have proactively pursued ‘real world’ customer feedback and informed input for every enhancement and new feature incorporated in our most recent releases,” said Jim McDevitt, CEO of Authoria.  “With the release of this new talent management platform, we have infused new capabilities and functionality designed to deliver meaningful insights about talent that help line managers and business leaders make fact-based decisions about their organizations based on timely information.”

Key product feature and functionality enhancements available in these releases include:

Decision Views Data Libraries – eliminate the restrictive analysis imposed by standardized report designs by providing a more flexible library of data views and reports.  By identifying the most critical sets of data and report libraries and by offering a “live” window into employee metrics, Authoria is enabling access to a more comprehensive, flexible, precise and actionable set of relevant current Decision Views, which can more specifically address the focus of an individual department, organization or industry.

Decision Views Career Management – enables individual, team or organizational career management and tracking through deep X/Y axis plotting and reporting.  This expanded Decision View allows an individual or business to track career progression through “9-box” and similar comparative performance and succession management reporting scenarios and act on the real-time analysis provided.

Decision Views Actionable Organizational Charts – offer customers expanded  capability within the organizational chart functionality to allow visualization of succession and career management views along with other select views surfaced from the underlying talent inventory.

Personal Business Objectives – goes beyond the traditional method of setting and tracking professional and career objectives by tempering “softer” objectives with quantifiable results that tie individual success to business success.  This feature allows managers to link individual employee objectives to business objectives, including integration to up-to-date business data based on actual business outcomes.  The results incorporate timely organizational metrics with target achievement goals to show employees personal attainment towards success updated throughout the evaluation period.  The ongoing process continuously refines and redirects employee efforts and productivity against business objectives and helps managers and executives execute better program and business decisions on an ongoing basis.

Recognition Board – allows employees and managers to call out achievement as it happens on a year-round basis and record individual accomplishments as they occur. Rather than wait for an annual performance review, Recognition Board enables immediate feedback and provides new insights into the team through Authoria’s Decision View reporting tools. The capability stores the recognition and coaching information as it is collected and allows full searching and insight into the information collected through Authoria’s reporting capability.  Individual employees who are the subjects of the recognition receive a notice, and the information is stored for reference as part of their Talent Profile.  This functionality enables peer-to-peer perspectives into employee performance.

Performance Transition API – seamlessly transfers prior employee performance history from legacy performance management systems to Authoria’s next generation talent management platform.  This new feature creates expanded accessibility to Authoria’s solution and delivers increased confidence about continuity and data integrity as customers shift from legacy systems to Authoria’s integrated solution.

“Our conversations with the market and customers suggest that the most meaningful enhancements to second generation talent management solutions will come through dramatic improvements in reporting and analytics, ever-increasing commitments to ease-of-use and year-round use and significant increases in flexibility and configurability,” said James Bowley, Head of Product Management.  “With three strong enhancements within our Decision Views cross-functional reporting product line, we are very pleased with the continued expansion of our visual analytics and reporting capability.  With our introduction of Personal Business Objectives and Recognition Board, we are creating an environment and process for year-round talent management adoption.  And, with our new API, we are naturally extending the flexibility of our solution to help customers old and new integrate with or transition easily to Authoria Talent Management.”

The company expects the delivery of these new features in Authoria Talent Management in November of 2009.

About Authoria
Authoria® helps the world’s most competitive employers achieve superior business results, by optimizing the way they recruit, develop, compensate, retain, and engage top talent. Designed for business managers as well as HR professionals, the company’s comprehensive talent management solutions enable more effective recruiting, performance management, compensation management, and succession planning across an organization. Authoria has a growing base of enterprise customers in a variety of industries. For more information, visit www.authoria.com.

Authoria and the Authoria logo are registered trademarks of, and other Authoria product names are trademarks of, Authoria, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries.]]>Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400Authoria and Citrix to Demo Authoria Talent Management on iPhone and other Mobile Devices at HR Technology Conferencehttp://www.authoria.com/about/press-releases/authoria-and-citrix-to-demo-authoria-talent-management-on-iphone
By deploying Authoria® with Citrix Delivery Center, Citrix users of Authoria Talent Management can complete their HR tasks on any device, anywhere, via any network available—wired or wireless, private or public, dedicated or dial-up.

Authoria’s CEO Jim McDevitt commented, “Many organizations have realized the incredible value that Talent Management software can bring to HR processes.  But employees in certain industries like healthcare or those who spend significant time out of the office find it hard to enter or view information in the Talent Management application.  We’ve worked with Citrix to address that challenge within their own organization and they are already enjoying the results.”

Who:    
Brandy Fulton, Vice President HR Operations, Citrix
Richard Berger, SPHR-Director Global HRIS, Citrix
Mike Ditson, Director of Product Marketing, Authoria

What:     Demo of mobile Talent Management application

Where:   Authoria booth # 714  - HR Technology Conference, McCormick Place, Chicago, Chicago, IL

When:     Wednesday, September 30th – Thursday, October 1st, 2009

About Authoria
Authoria® helps the world’s most competitive employers achieve superior business results, by optimizing the way they recruit, develop, compensate, retain, and engage top talent. Designed for business managers as well as HR professionals, the company’s comprehensive talent management solutions enable more effective recruiting, performance management, compensation management, and succession planning across an organization. Authoria has a growing base of enterprise customers in a variety of industries. For more information, visit www.authoria.com.

Authoria and the Authoria logo are registered trademarks of, and other Authoria product names are trademarks of, Authoria, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries.]]>Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400Authoria Announces 'Decision Views' Product Enhancements and Development Roadmap with Realignment of Organizationhttp://www.authoria.com/about/press-releases/authoria-announces-decision-views-product-enhancementsDramatically Advances Solution With Enhanced Visualization Reporting Capabilities
Targets New Customer Priorities for Multi-Million Dollar Capital Investment
Redefines Management Structure into Customer-Centric Leadership Groups

In a move designed to help its customers accelerate fact-based decision-making within their organizations, Authoria has strategically redefined the way it builds, delivers and supports its leading Talent Management solutions.  With visual analytics and predictive reporting capability, the company is announcing its new Decision Views methodology and development roadmap, which refocuses the company’s solution around key customer business drivers.  In addition, Authoria announces the reorganization of its management team and various executive promotions to more directly align its internal expertise with customer-centric product design, professional services, and technology operations enhancement initiatives.

“Authoria led the market as the first to deliver the power of an integrated talent management suite to customers.  Today, Authoria’s Talent Management is about propelling our customers to make demonstrative fact-based decisions for profit.  Authoria is enabling our customers to identify the key employee and organizational metrics that will drive their success.  We are simplifying our customers’ ability to link their business strategies with execution – not just so they can ‘execute,’ but much more important, so they can drive predictable and successful business outcomes by starting with fact-based ‘decision-making’,” said Jim McDevitt, CEO of Authoria.

Authoria has focused development initiatives on new features and advanced visualization reporting capabilities that offer a full view of the most important organizational data and metrics.  These initiatives are designed to help their customers identify business advantages and catalysts that drive effective execution and outcomes within their businesses.  This new focus is supported by the targeted investment of an additional $2 million in capital expenditures over the next 18 months in Authoria’s technology environments – an investment which will significantly enhance the customer experience.

Brandy Fulton, VP of Human Resources Operations for Citrix Systems, Inc., affirmed Authoria’s strategy commenting, “Authoria’s integrated talent management solution has given Citrix the intuitive user experience and direct administrative control HR needed to be responsive to our own internal customers.  These were non-negotiable requirements for us when we selected a talent management partner. Since then, the need for simple, yet sophisticated, reporting and analytics has taken center stage. Authoria’s strategic direction and latest features will give HR visibility into organizational and employee trends, enabling us to proactively advise our business leaders on opportunities for investment, organizational design, succession planning and resource allocation.  Our partners at Authoria sought us out and included us in the product roadmap process. We are extremely enthusiastic about their plans to enhance the robust reporting they have in place today with a more comprehensive set of visual analytics.”

Enabling and propelling these dramatic changes, Authoria has optimized its organization to build and support a distinctive solution for its customers who seek continuous improvement within their own business.

Engineering and Technology Operations

Andrew Smith will expand his role to include all technology deployment, including the hosted operations and production support functions, as he moves into his new role as Vice President of Engineering and Technology Operations.  Mr. Smith has more than 20 years of experience across a variety of technology areas including application development, network engineering and technology operations.  Most of Mr. Smith's career has been spent in the technology industry, as well as consulting in the fields of data warehousing and business intelligence systems.  Prior to joining Authoria he managed technology and development organizations at Lycos, Honeywell, Geac, and Stratus Computer.

“We know full well that the success of our own business comes directly from the satisfaction we deliver to our existing customers and from the relevant promise we present to our new ones,” said Mr. Smith.  “By combining Engineering and Technology Operations into one group, we are linking our development initiatives directly with customer execution.  This check and balance accountability under centralized leadership encourages a more dynamic and informed development process.  With this change, we are ensuring that our development agenda is driven by ongoing discussions with our customers and responsive to shifting market dynamics.”

Frank Treu joins Andy’s team as Vice President of Technology, with responsibility for Technology Operations.  With thirteen years of system and network administration in both hosted and SaaS environments, Mr. Treu has garnered significant network operating center experience from well-known companies, including Verisign and Lycos, among others.  He will lead the technology and hosted support operations for Authoria’s production environment.

Marketing and Product Management

As part of Authoria’s realignment, the company is also uniting Product Management, Product Marketing and Field Marketing into one integrated team led by Alys Scott, whose role has been expanded to Vice President, Marketing.  Ms. Scott brings 20 years of experience from the strategic marketing and communications disciplines.  Most of her career has been in the software industry, with time spent on both the corporate and on the research and consulting agency sides.  She has worked in different management capacities at International Data Group, Shandwick Public Relations, Geac, Miller Consulting, and Entex Information Systems.

Product management decisions will now move from Engineering to Marketing. Customer experiences will now directly lead product roadmap and enhancement decision making.

Commenting on the expanded organization, Ms. Scott said, “This new organization design will infuse additional creativity and innovation into all product management and marketing strategies.  The team will generate new product initiatives, but, importantly, it will also focus on our product direction for existing customers as we further our commitment to help them increase the impact and enhance the value of their existing solutions.”

Earlier this year, Gartner Research surveyed hundreds of customers about their experiences with 12 different EPM (Employee Performance Management) attributes or capabilities for their EPM Report.  The highest number of respondents expressed major disappointment with analytics and reporting capability.  Jim Bowley, Authoria’s Head of Product Management, commented on how Authoria’s strategy addresses this business need. “We have spent much of the last six months talking with our clients, and we have seen the expansion of our advanced, integrated visual analytics and reporting at the top of the development list.  We’re focused on grounding our roadmap in the real-world usage of our clients.  By listening to them closely, we know that our customers are looking for actionable, fact based ‘Decision Views,’ on which they can make immediate decisions to impact the future growth and success of their organizations – and, importantly, the people within them.”

These two newly consolidated groups with executive-level accountability report directly to Mr. McDevitt.

About Authoria
Authoria® helps the world’s most competitive employers achieve superior business results, by optimizing the way they recruit, develop, compensate, retain, and engage top talent.  Designed for business managers as well as HR professionals, the company’s comprehensive talent management solutions enable more effective recruiting, performance management, compensation management, and succession planning across an organization.  Authoria serves more than 300 large organizations and 4 million managers and employees with our on-demand Internet-based solutions.  Customer companies include Aetna, Alcon, and Citrix.  For more information, visit www.authoria.com.]]>Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400Authoria Powers Citrix's Talent Management Strategyhttp://www.authoria.com/about/press-releases/authoria-powers-citrixs-talent-management-strategyCitrix Users Report High Levels of Satisfaction After Implementing Authoria Performance

Believing that its people are the company's most sustainable competitive advantage, Citrix Systems, Inc., a leading provider of virtualization, networking and software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies, is implementing Authoria Talent Management Suite 10x. In order to maximize the potential of employees at all levels, Citrix Human Resources needed an integrated approach to compensation, performance management, employee development and succession planning. The Citrix team chose Authoria based on its flexibility, configurability, ease of use and SaaS model.

With a long history of developing and applying innovative technology to solve business problems, the company was looking to implement a Talent Management system capable of supporting a robust new Career Path program. A key requirement was that the Citrix HRIS team be able to directly configure the system to suit a wide variety of job families and talent management cycles, without having to deal with the complex coding, forward compatibility risk, or expense of customization.

In the last several months, Citrix has rolled out the performance management component of Authoria Talent ManagementTM. In a recent survey of Citrix employees using Authoria Performance, 83 percent of those surveyed preferred Authoria over its previous system. In addition, 88 percent found the Authoria system easy to use, in particular, the self-evaluation and goals features. Respondents included employees across the full spectrum of the business, including product divisions, HR, sales and services, and consulting.

"We needed a talent management partner who would help us understand how our employees are contributing to our success, reward them for their efforts and help them grow their careers as part of the Citrix Systems team. Authoria's Employee Profile was especially appealing to us, as we were looking for ways to identify and cultivate future leaders, as well as to encourage our employees to take charge of their own development," said Brandy Fulton, VP of HR Operations for Citrix. "While we were definitely looking for a partner who understood the strategic value of talent management, we also needed a solution that would provide us with the usability and control to be as responsive as possible to our own internal customers. Authoria's ease-of-use and configurability have made a remarkable difference to us. Because we can make changes in house quickly and independently, Citrix employees see the HR team as more responsive to their needs than ever before. That said, when we need the Authoria team, they are there. As a SaaS vendor ourselves with Citrix Online Services, we place tremendous emphasis on the ‘last S' in software-as-a-service. Authoria's dedication to customer satisfaction makes this a true partnership."

Authoria Talent Management Suite 10x helps HR professionals to easily automate performance, compensation and succession planning, and align talent management with an organization's overall strategies. With Authoria, line-of-business managers can access tools they need to manage and develop their employees on a daily basis.

"Talent Management is not just a function of HR—it's a part of the whole organization," said Jim McDevitt, chief executive officer, Authoria. "Understanding how your employees work, where they want to grow and how they are being compensated, provides insight into how your organization is being run, where inefficiencies lie and what goals need to be set. An important part of that is making sure your Talent Management solution is easy to navigate and helpful for all users, not just those in the HR function. Citrix is a great example of an organization deriving value from our Talent Management solution."

About Authoria
Authoria® helps the world’s most competitive employers achieve superior business results, by optimizing the way they recruit, develop, compensate, retain, and engage top talent. Designed for business managers as well as HR professionals, the company’s talent management solutions enable more effective recruiting, performance management, compensation management, and succession planning across an organization. Authoria serves more than 300 large organizations and 4 million managers and employees with our on-demand Internet-based solutions. Customer companies include Aetna, Alcon and Boeing.

]]>Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400The Future of Talent Management Presented by Authoria, Hyatt and Knowledge Infusionhttp://www.authoria.com/about/press-releases/the-future-of-talent-management-presented-by-authoria-hyatt-and-knowledge-infusionAuthoria Hosts Chicago Event with Large Customer and Industry Luminary to Examine Talent Management Landscape in Second Half of 2009

As part of its commitment to bringing customers thought leadership within the Talent Management market, Authoria, Inc. has organized an educational event featuring insight from Jim McDevitt, CEO of Authoria, Jason Averbook, CEO of Knowledge Infusion and Jason Ryan, manager of executive compensation of Hyatt, a current Authoria customer. The discussion will provide insight on Talent Management from three convergent viewpoints. It is also one of many regional opportunities Authoria has developed to bring its customers together and to introduce those seeking the benefits of a talent management solution to the most current industry thinking from the user and visionary perspectives.

Event attendees will get an industry expert, a vendor and a practitioner's view of integrated Talent Management, thereby providing a well rounded view of the challenges facing HR professionals today. As part of its pledge to provide its customers with the highest level of service and education, Authoria organized the event to illustrate how forward-thinking HR professionals and Talent Managers are getting ahead of the curve by becoming architects of their organizations' future.

Authoria's CEO Jim McDevitt commented, "Our customer base is made up of large enterprise companies with sophisticated support needs and complex Talent Management requirements. As such, we make it a top priority to provide worldwide, around the clock customer support and educational resources that equip them with the resources they need to succeed. This breakfast is just one of many initiatives we have underway to support our customers."

  • Who:
    Jason Ryan, Manager of Executive Compensation at Hyatt
    Jason Averbook, CEO at Knowledge Infusion
    Jim McDevitt, CEO at Authoria

  • What: "Talent Management Today – Three Perspectives."
  • Where: Park Hyatt, 800 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago
  • When: Thursday, June 18, 2009 from 8:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

For more information, or to register, please visit www.authoria.com/talent-management/chicago

About Authoria
Authoria® helps the world’s most competitive employers achieve superior business results, by optimizing the way they recruit, develop, compensate, retain, and engage top talent. Designed for business managers as well as HR professionals, the company’s talent management solutions enable more effective recruiting, performance management, compensation management, and succession planning across an organization. Authoria serves more than 300 large organizations and 4 million managers and employees with our on-demand Internet-based solutions. Customer companies include Aetna, Alcon and Boeing.

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