The performance management is an integral part of a business’s growth strategy. The performance management help improving the operational capabilities, improve resource management, align employees and resources with high-level goals and objectives, maximize the productivity and profitability of the business and make them ready to be reactive and responsive to the abrupt changes in the market and customer trends. The modern businesses face modern problems, the markets are evolving on a rapid pace, the customer demands are skyrocketing, the workplaces become more dynamic, the employee’s demands and needs are also continuously changing. Above all the Dubai and in fact the entire UAE is a very competitive market. The human resource management have evolved a lot over the past decade, with the introduction of Gen Z in worldwide marketplaces the values, norms and standards have transformed a lot. Several surveys are market research proved that the managers and even the employees felt difficult to share an honest opinion in a fear or harming the relationship with their employees, managers or peers. It is not that this bias is new, however, it got amplified in the recent years.
Similarly there are several other variables, such as intense integration of the technology, which have completely transformed the work environment and digital ecosystem. The communication channels have been changed, the digital customer experience is paving its way, the customers are more focused on having a good experience, the competition is becoming tougher day by day, and the customer retention needs more focused efforts than ever before and so on. We can discuss hundreds of different factors that have completely changed the work environment, culture, customer behavior and marketplaces over the years. However, the important thing is to understand that a performance management system is an absolute necessity for a high-performing business. When a business or organization will have to choose a right performance management system they can easily get overwhelmed with the variety of available solution in Dubai and all around the UAE. However, a good one-fit-for-all type of performance management system or solution doesn’t exists, otherwise it wouldn’t be so difficult for many enterprises to implement a best performance management system. That is why the customization is the only way to implement a good performance management system/software which can full-fill all your business needs.
What is a Performance Management Software?
The modern performance management system is software application which is exclusively designed to support a business’s performance management processes. It is like any other software tool that a business might use to improve any other work flow or process. For example, a document processing tools or a complaint center tool is a digital solution to improve the efficiency and performance of the document processing and complaint management processes. Traditionally the performance management was done manually, where the evaluation is majorly based on the reviews by the managers. However the digital performance management system or performance management software is a modern digital solution that help businesses to increase the efficiency and efficacy of their performance management process. By leveraging the performance management software businesses can easily adopt to:
- Agile Performance Management
- Continuous Performance Management
- Contextual-based Performance Management
- Project-based Performance Management
- KPIs, OKRs, Balanced Score Cards
- Performance Management by Objectives
- Modern Performance Metrics
And much more. The performance management software help businesses adopt to modern practices and methodologies to maximize the outcome of their performance management campaign. Furthermore the performance management software is a great tool to digitalize the performance management processes which brings automation, accuracy and transparency to the system.
How to Customize a Performance Management System that fits all your Performance Needs
Every business and organization have its own very unique culture, work environment, practices, business processes, management structure, strategies, plan, goals, work flows, etc. which make it significantly different from others. The organic evolution, natural growth and the leaders are responsible for this uniqueness and it is considered to be one of the best competitive advantage one can have in highly dynamic markets. This uniqueness also means that every business and organization have different needs hence they need a different performance management solution. There are two major categories of software solutions, whether you are acquiring a software solution for any internal or external business processes, these two categories remain same. The first one if the commercial off-the-shelf solutions (COTS) and the second category is customized, tailor-made or bespoke software. The customized software are exclusively designed to meet the very unique demands of a business hence are more reliable, perform well, integrate within organization easily, and produce much higher and better quality outcome. In this blog we will discuss how a business can customize their performance management system software to unlock the true potential of their workforce and achieve higher goals and objectives.
Customize Performance Management System: Engage Employees in Discovery Phase
Like any other software the performance management system also require a comprehensive discovery phase. Since you are aiming to develop a customized performance management software you need to do proper research before making a plan for the software. Usually business pay adequate amount of efforts in the research and discovery phase however, the most important thing that most of the businesses undermine the importance of engaging employee in the discovery phase. Most of the times businesses doesn’t include employees in the discovery phase or any other phase of the performance management system development. However, engaging employees in the early stages of the performance management system development will help you build a better and more compatible system which will align with the needs and expectations of the employees as well as the business goals. This will help you define the metrics, incentives, goals, objectives, critical success factors, and much more in a way which make sense for the employees. This also help businesses in implementing the new customized performance management system and enable them to adopt it with a more positive attitude and help you achieve better efficiency and efficacy of the system.
Customize Performance Management System: Make a List of all Required Features and Performance Metrics
One of the biggest advantage of a customized software is that you can add all the features you want. Every business have different performance objectives and even goals also. The performance management process and practices also differs from case to case, that is why each business requirement is different from the other. It is important that you include all the features that you need. Such as goal setting features, communication framework, performance metrics and data analytical tools. Whatever you want you can include in the system at this stage. The best is always to consult with the external consultant or the performance management software development company. As they would have more experience with the performance management system and their feedback can be very vital. It is important that all the performance measurement metrics are also discussed internally with all stakeholders and relevant personals. You can also engage employees at this stage and consolidate all the feedbacks in one document then refine that document and for a charter document or scope of the work. This charter document or scope of the work will include all the features that you will be getting in your customized performance management system. It is important to invest as much time and effort as you could in this stage as it is the most crucial aspect of the customized performance management software development.
Customize Performance Management System: Intuitive UI (User Interface)
For any software the UI or user interface is a key to success. Studies have revealed that people tend to avoid complex software and their efficiency declined with complex UIs and difficult user experience. Same is applicable for your customized performance management software. If the UIs are simple and easy-to-navigate the user response will be good. Furthermore it is important to customize your UIs look and feel to match with your company branding. The navigation of your customized performance management software should be simple enough to let user access the tools/features or information within a few clicks. Performing different tasks should be simple, such as defining KPIs, setting up goals and objectives, viewing performance data or any such feature should be easily accessible for all the users. Furthermore several features can be added in UIs to make them more intuitive and user-friendly such as adding tool tips, mouse hover functions, dialog boxes to share instant help materials, a dedicated help and FAQs section and guidance for the users to understand each feature of the customized performance management system. Offer simple options to save the work and continue it on the next day/session. That is a very useful feature. The textual content should be simple, avoid using complex and technical terminologies and use plain and simple language to make the system more understandable.
Customize Performance Management System: Digitalization and Automation
One of the biggest advantage of implementing software based solution for manual processes is the digitalization and the automation. The digitalization means that the performance management software will convert manual processes in digital which are more convenient. It also allow several dashboards for different users with different level of access and according to their job roles. The administration or higher management and power users will get maximum system access. This enable businesses to make a process simpler and convenient. For example, if a manager want to schedule a one-to-one discussion or meeting with an employee, they can schedule it in the system. If reviews are to be conducted this can be scheduled, and the management will get full overview of what is happening. If a review is pending they will immediately know, if they want to get the information that who conducted the review and what were the findings, etc. and all that can be done with a few clicks. Furthermore the automation help managers collect the performance data automatically which can save a lot of time and efforts and make the processes even more convenient. These are the advantages which enable businesses to easily adopt to continuous and agile performance management practices and other more frequent performance reviews.
Customize Performance Management System: Third-Party Integration
In today’s modern work environment the organizational software, tools, and databases work in harmony with each other where a well-connected network and data sharing mechanism is development to increase collaboration and communication between different software and tools a business is using. The performance management software is not different, it also support different levels of integration. However, most of the time the HR managers or the decision makers doesn’t realize that certain technological platform are better in integration than the others, furthermore it also depends on the existing network and digital ecosystem. So, the technology that you are selecting to develop your customize performance management system should be able to integrate with your existing business tools, enterprise solutions, databases and central information center. The central information center is a digital hub which hosts the data of all connected software and tools. Your new customized performance management software should be able to integrate. It doesn’t matter if you need integration or not, but the compatibility should be there. As organizations and businesses keep growing and high-performing enterprises need support from their IT infrastructure. That is why it is important to ensure your new customized performance management software will support the required third-party system integration.
Customize Performance Management System: System Administration and Configuration
Usually the HR managers or other decision makers doesn’t emphasize on the customization features and abilities of the system’s administrative panel. Most of the time when the word customization comes, people often think it is having a change in the source-code of the program or layout, which is only done by skilled professionals. However, every software also have an administrative control panel which allow certain level of customization which help system administrators and power users to manage and modify the system’s features and certain aspects. That control panel is very vital for a performance management software. Obviously it depends on the vendor, but on your part you can think of different scenarios that you could face in future which might require to make certain changes in the system. For example, currently you are conducting employee performance evaluation twice in a year, you might want to ramp up the frequency by conducting performance evaluation after each quarter. You might want to set up on-demand based reviews and assessments such as project-based performance evaluation, etc. Similarly there could be so many different scenarios and practices which you are not needing today but maybe in the distant future you might going to need them. Similarly you might want to control the alerts, notification, or even the data access for different users, etc. All these features will be available on the administrative control panel which will allow you to change or customize the system configuration to suit your needs and requirements.
Customize Performance Management System: Mobile Compatibility
The performance management system is a very important tool, the key to better performance management is always communication, in case of a performance management software you will always want your employees to interact with it more often. However, usually businesses keep the access to such systems restricted within their networks, or even the access is not the issue such software and tools come with desktop version only. The administrative and user access panels and dashboards are mostly web-based interfaces. Which means that an employee will have to login to a web-page in order to interact with such systems and software. The modern performance management system is also a similar software, it offer multiple web-based UIs (user interfaces) which can be accessed through a web browsers. However, these days the smartphone and mobile technology have completely transformed our work and personal behavior. People tend to spend more time on their smartphones and mobile devices. Above all there would be a lot of employees who will be always on the go or who will be working off-campus. For all such employees interacting with performance management software could be a big problem. That is why offering mobile compatibility can significantly increase their interactions and engagements which also have positive impact on the performance. The mobile compatibility can be achieved by two methods, one is making your UIs responsive and the other is offering a dedicated smartphone application. Both methods are good, but the dedicated smartphone applications tend to offer a better user experience.
Customize Performance Management System: Scalability, Upgrades and Maintenance
The scalability, upgrades and the maintenance are the most important components of any custom software development project. Similarly your customized performance management system should also have a crystal clear strategy, plans and mechanisms for the scalability, upgrades and maintenance. Another great advantage of the customized software application is that they are exclusively designed for a particular business and the ownership belongs to that business and not the vendor or outsourcing contractor who is developing the software. This completely solve all commonly associated problems with the scalability, as the customized performance management software is completely owned by the business itself, hence they can expand it as much as they want, they can have unlimited numbers of the users without paying anything extra. There would be no monthly or annually fees or subscription charges or associated licensing fees. The upgrade policy can be mutually worked out with the vendor or outsourcing contractor. Since you will own the customized performance management system software hence you are not bound to the same vendor, you can have in-house team to keep the system up to date or upgrade it whenever needed or you can sign an agreement with the vendor or any other third-party software development company who is familiar with the technology and can support your with further customizations in future. Same is the case with the maintenance too.
Conclusion
In the present day’s dynamic marketplace and skyrocketing customer demands, it is crucial for a business to efficiently and effectively utilize its resources. For that every business have some kind of performance management strategy. Usually businesses follow traditional by-book methods to execute a performance management strategy. However, the marketplace have changed very rapidly and the performance management is also not the same as it was a decade ago. This require businesses to be more proactive and reactive towards abrupt market changes which is why businesses adopt and implement technological solutions to increase their capabilities, productivity and readiness to respond to the market changes. A performance management system is one of the most important part of any business’s success strategy. However, recently businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE have started adopting customized software and application instead of going for COTS or commercial off-the-shelf solutions. The biggest advantage of the customized performance management system software is that business can design is exclusively to meet their specific and unique needs. Unlike COTS the customized software doesn’t require you to adopt the new system and make changes to your existing processes, practices and methods.
The customized performance management system can easily integrate in the existing digital ecosystem and it can be designed as per the user’s demands hence very less or no training is required. Furthermore the businesses own their customized performance management system which means that their data will be more secure and they can customize the system the way they want in future as well. There are several other advantages of the customized software which make this method far superior than acquiring a commercial off-the-shelf software solution. That is why reason we wrote this blog to help our audience understand how they can customize their performance management system software to maximize its efficiency, impact and efficacy. If you have any question or if you want to learn more about the subject or if you want us to help you design and develop your new customized and cost-efficient performance management system software, please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.
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