So what’s the best way to evaluate all those employee performance and talent management vendors?

Based on your own research and on the advice of analysts, you should fist prepare a shortlist of vendors. Between three and five is plenty.

The best way to assess a vendor is to request a product demo; you should ask vendors to demonstrate their system using at least one of your organization’s forms. This is time-intensive but the best [...]

Think of implementing systematic succession planning as making a long-term organizational change. Succession planning requires more of a commitment to a longer-term, strategic view of how to meet talent needs than short-term, and sometimes panic-driven, efforts to fill vacancies as they occur. It can be established and operated using ten key steps that have been field-tested in many organizations, industries, and economic sectors.

• Step One: A first step for any systematic succession effort is to [...]

Ask a CEO to define succession planning. There is a good chance that, if you do that, you will find that the average CEO confuses replacement planning and succession planning. But they are truly not the same.

Replacement planning assumes that the organization chart will remain unchanged over time. It usually identifies “backups” for top-level positions, as they are identified on the organization chart, and stops there. A typical “replacement chart” will list about 3 people [...]

There are two forces at work today that are driving organizations to consider some form of succession planning as a component of an overall talent management strategy: the aging of the workforce; and a shortfall in the skills possessed by those available for recruitment. Both are projected to become more pressing. But what exactly is succession planning and how will it address these growing human resource issues?

Succession planning, sometimes called succession management to [...]

Now that we’ve explored the different licensing models, let’s take a look at how they line up against each other when compared on key factors such as cost, deployment options and security.

Here’s a handy comparison chart to help figure out what’s best for you: