Making sure that the best person is appointed for a role is anything but easy. Faced with a pool of possible candidates all with different skills and varying levels of experience and future potential makes final selection a daunting task. Itís quite normal therefore for many managers to resort to gut instinct and guesswork when appointing staff.
Succession Planning is becoming a much more prominent issue for all businesses and with the move to flatter management structures it is now crucial that potential successors are identified early in order that disruption is minimised when key people leave the business.
A recent report by the management consultancy McKinseyís* finds that ìÖ it is no surprise that a systematic and continuous approach to fitting the right person to the right job at the right time has long been the Holy Grail of workforce organization.î A software program developed by a Pembrokeshire based company aims to change all this and help companies make substantial advantages in terms of productivity and personnel development.
Succession Wizard was first released in early 2002 by Norchard Solutions and, following a recent major upgrade, sales are already running 100% higher this year compared with last. The program uses a powerful, yet user-friendly, interface making it simple to use and its intuitive approach allows businesses to easily spot potentially critical gaps in their management and thus plan future staffing needs before problems arise.
Succession Wizard is competing against some of the big boys of the software industry in Oracle and PeopleSoft but is achieving notable success in selling to major corporate clients worldwide. One of the reasons for this is because Succession Wizard is genuinely ìoff-the-shelfî software whilst McKinseyís* note that ìÖ many such applications are not yet available in off-the-shelf configurationsî. Businesses can expect to be fully operational and producing effective succession plans within hours of implementing the solution, without any need for expensive consultants to configure the software or to purchase additional hardware, as the application is designed for standard Windows desktop PC’s.
Organizations generally have a wealth of talent already working in different positions and levels throughout their business. Director, Jon Lear, believes ìthis hidden resource should be tapped and identified as it is a key factor in effective succession planningî. Succession Wizard allows you to do this and understand what skills and resources you already have at your disposal. It can identify those people who, with support and training, can climb your management structure and potentially become its future leaders.
Anyone wishing to evaluate their software can do so by visiting
’Finding the right person for the job’
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