TA limited number of software firms, including Authoria, have now recognized the significant hurdles companies face in managing the vast quantity of detailed information comprehensive succession planning requires. They have created solutions that offer different approaches to the information management challenges inherent these processes. Consequently, their solutions vary in both capabilities and flexibility.

Technology's Major Advantages

Information technology can be a powerful tool for managing the abundance of sensitive information comprehensive succession planning demands. One of the most significant advantages it offers is the ability to consistently communicate and implement programs throughout an organization, however broad and complex. Consistency in program design and implementation is key to identifying, developing, and retaining individuals who offer the greatest potential consistent with the enterprise's long-term strategic goals. A program that is administered consistently company-wide also provides stronger motivation to participants.

An often-overlooked advantage some HR applications provide is the ability to seamlessly link a wide range of HR information, including compensation, performance reviews, employment history, management development, and other relevant data. Effective succession planning requires an ability to view accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date profiles of selected individuals, a capability only well integrated applications can provide.

Another major succession planning benefit technology offers is its ability to quickly identify and report on levels of readiness and areas of deficiency. Reports that make competency gaps and position vulnerabilities easy to identify enable management to take timely corrective measures to ward off staffing crises. If management clearly identifies the full span of competencies success requires and the company's performance evaluations carefully assess individuals' progress against those objectives, technology offers an ideal tool for tracking and reporting progress, both at the individual and aggregate levels.

The powerful information sharing and communications capabilities new HR technologies offer are also major benefits. Companies can grant their managers and employees appropriately restricted access to data, enabling them to view, edit, and update selected elements anytime and from anywhere. This helps ensure information accuracy while providing convenient access to managers, as well as comprehensive analytical and reporting capabilities to senior management as needed.

Selection Criteria

In evaluating solutions to support succession planning and management development, it is advisable to carefully consider the following criteria:

1. COMPREHENSIVENESS: Is the application part of a comprehensive product suite, or instead, an add-on to an older system with limited capabilities?
2. LEVEL OF INTEGRATION: Is the application seamlessly integrated to enable the unrestricted flow of information across and between system components, or are special steps needed to wok among components?
3. USER-FRIENDLY: Is the application's design intuitive and easy or use, or cryptic and cumbersome?
4. ADAPTABILITY: Can you modify the application to fit your organization's approach to succession planning and management development, and how well will it interface with enterprise software?
5. TECHNICAL SUPPORT: What is the availability, quality, and cost of technical support?
6. VENDOR CREDENTIALS: How knowledgeable and experienced is the vendor in succession planning, management development, and other aspects of the HR discipline?
7. FORMAT FLEXIBILITY: Does the vendor offer both on-premise and on-demand options?

Experience consistently demonstrates the above factors to be critical for manager acceptance and ongoing use of the technology. Because no single department or individual can fully "own" the processes of succession planning and management development, whatever tool the company invests in to facilitate these processes must be broadly accepted and used. As always, the thoughtfully considered investment is likely to produce the greater return.

Authoria—A Proven Option

For many companies, Authoria Succession is already proving to be an outstanding solution to the immense challenges succession planning presents. The application is part of Authoria 2007, a seamlessly integrated suite of HR applications with an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. Authoria Succession helps a truly diverse array of organizations to:

• Identify leadership potential and timelines
• Track bench strength and talent depth
• Design and track career paths
• Reveal career path obstructions
• Detect duplicate candidacies
• Identify potential talent shortages
• Automate tracking and reporting
• Visualize planning with interactive charts
• Retain a succession planning history

Authoria Succession integrates well with most enterprise systems. It also has a high degree of flexibility so organizations can adapt it to fit their individual approaches to succession planning, management development, and performance evaluation and tracking.

A Core Leadership Responsibility

As we've seen, the task of succession planning, however complex and time consuming, is vital to long term organizational performance and survival. Anticipated demographic changes in the coming decade seem destined to make it even more of a factor in determining whether companies will whither or thrive. Today's corporate leaders seem beholden, therefore, to take whatever actions that may be necessary to ensure their organizations possess an effective management development pipeline and a well developed plan that identifies qualified candidates for all critical positions, both managerial and technical.