Plateau Announces Industry's First Talent Management Outsourcing Services : Plateau's Comprehensive Services Includes New Talent Management Proces

ARLINGTON, Va. (Business Wire EON) June 23, 2008 -- Driven by a slowing economy and rising costs across the board, organizations are being forced to focus their resources on maximizing productivity. Faced with reduced budgets, limited resources and increased responsibility, HR professionals are finding it especially difficult to effectively roll-out and manage talent management processes and applications across their organizations.

"Companies are discovering that outsourcing can help them implement an infrastructure that reaches more employees at far lower costs and allows staff to focus on company-specific needs and performance consulting," said Josh Bersin, President of Bersin & Associates, a leading research and advisory firm focused on enterprise learning and talent management research. "Plateau's Talent Management Outsourcing services certainly address some of the major pains facing organizations and can help reduce the heavy administrative burden being shouldered by many of today's HR professionals."

Utilizing Plateau Talent Management Outsourcing, organizations can achieve significant time and cost savings while freeing up HR and IT resources to focus on other critical initiatives within their organizations. By offloading the administrative burden associated with managing their talent management infrastructure to Plateau experts, organizations can significantly reduce or eliminate the need for dedicated infrastructure resources. Ideal for small organizations and large enterprises across all industries, Plateau Talent Management Outsourcing provides guaranteed support uptime and availability to ensure expedient issue resolution. And, because most companies have unique organizational and industry-specific requirements, Plateau's new service offering allows customers to deploy talent management best practices tailored to fit their needs.

Talent Management Process Outsourcing

Plateau Talent Management Process Outsourcing is the industry's first and only service that allows organizations to completely outsource all administrative user tasks to Plateau experts. Because any administrative task can be scoped in, customers determine which tasks they wish to outsource according to their specific business needs. To take advantage of this service, customers need only complete a simple, customizable online form detailing the tasks they wish to outsource.

Available immediately for Plateau's Learning and Performance modules, Plateau Talent Management Process Outsourcing reduces administrator staffing and overhead costs while expediting tangible business results. Highly seasonal or cyclical business processes like performance reviews can be managed without having to retrain or add staff. Plateau Talent Management Process Outsourcing provides a one-stop shop for support and administration across all of Plateau's application functions and is especially ideal for SaaS, and iContent customers.

In addition to Talent Management Process Outsourcing services, Plateau unveiled comprehensive Talent Management Support Services focused on providing enhanced end-user support and advanced administrator support:

Tier 1 End-User support provides customers with phone access to a central Plateau support desk to resolve simple "how-to" support issues, such as login and password resets. Having access to this type of service allows customers eliminate the time and resource costs associated with establishing and facilitating their own internal talent management help desk. Organizations utilizing Plateau's outsourcing support services can also reduce costs by eliminating the training and communication that is required to provide quality support for end-users. By assuming the help desk responsibility, Plateau experts can ensure the highest level of support from version to version and minimize lapses in support that can occur when administrators and help desk staff are completing training for upgrades and new product versions. This service is especially valuable for organizations that require additional support to manage volume spikes that often result during large and complex implementations. Plateau's Tier-1 End-User support outsourcing tracks key metrics and can provide administrators with trend information and details around software adoption and usage rates. Tier-1 End User Support also includes Over-Flow support. This flexible service offering is available for customers whose Plateau talent management solutions are supported in-house, but who may require back-up assistance during usage spikes or high volume occasions. Over-flow support is offered in the Standard Tier 1 support level and can be purchased on a per incident basis or in incident blocks.

Advanced Admin Support saves customers time and money by giving administrators the option to work directly with Plateau's "Just-in-Time" administrator experts for immediate answers to and guidance on issues related to their Plateau deployment. Through this service, administrators have access to product and subject matter experts who know the products and can advise on best practices and specific use cases. Available for Learning and/or Performance modules, advanced admin support provides a cost-effective alternative to training, reduces the impact of administrator turnover and eliminates the need for large or decentralized organizations to have "super-administrators" who support other, part-time administrators. This offering allows customers to control costs by allowing them to determine response levels and thus, control Plateau's level of effort on a case-by-case basis. "With talent management fast becoming a strategic, C-level priority, demand for software and solutions that help organizations manage and optimize their talent is rising. Unfortunately, as these initiatives grow and expand, organizations are discovering that administering and managing their talent management solutions and infrastructure is overloading their internal resources," said Shelly Heiden, EVP Global Operations, Plateau Systems. "Plateau Talent Management Outsourcing leverages the knowledge and experience of Plateau experts to help customers build and maintain their talent management system faster, more cost-effectively and with zero risk. Adding Plateau Talent Management Outsourcing to our already comprehensive Global Services offerings, allows us to offer our customers a full cycle of talent management services from strategic planning, to getting started, to maintaining, to simply getting the most out of their talent management systems."

About iContent

iContent is the industry's first content-as-a-service-solution, providing organizations with a single place to buy, manage, and store third-party and custom developed content. Offering more than 30,000 pre-packaged titles and managing thousands of custom courses for organizations, iContent speeds the availability and delivery of content, while simultaneously decreasing the time and labor costs associated with managing and storing learning and talent management content. Companies worldwide are realizing substantial benefits from adopting iContent as the preferred solution for on-demand content. View more information about iContent at http://www.plateau.com/icontent/.

About Plateau

Plateau is a leading provider of talent management software, content and services designed to increase workforce productivity and deliver more efficient business operations. 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 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.