The image of number-crunchers toiling over paper spread-sheets while figuring budgets, salary increases and bonuses is long gone, replaced by the image of those number-crunchers toiling at computers. Now, with intranets and the Internet, the compensation landscape is changing again as technology enables HR and compensation offices to push some responsibility for compensation management down to line managers.

TotalComp Manager, the product of Burlingame, Calif.-based Kadiri Inc., helps HR oversee compensation while giving managers more responsibility for compensation planning. The product covers salary, variable pay and stock options. Users can see not only current pay information but also historical pay data, pay policies and even online advice about how to handle tasks.

Until recently, Kadiri was known as Decisis Corp. and the product was Decisis.comp. The firm's new name is Swahili and it means to assess or to evaluate. The name is appropriate for a company making a product that's strong at analysis.

Customize to Your Needs

TotalComp Manager is delivered to managers' desktops through the user company's intranet. The information in the user company's databases is readily captured using a separate, detailed export/import module.

The program is eminently customizable. Senior compensation managers feed it parameters such as merit ratings and percentage ranges for increases, variable pay, stock allocations and budget targets into the system.

TotalComp Manager offers users advice through its proprietary knowledge management system. You can set up the knowledge management system and associated analytical tools with your company's guidelines and policies, then use the system while making compensation decisions.

Once the system is set up, planning and reviewing managers have a tool at their fingertips that permits them to deal with compensation for an individual employee or for all employees in a work group.

The software's graphic presentations are particularly strong and let the user display information clearly, completely and usefully. The graphics options allow seemingly endless possibilities for dicing and slicing data and presenting the results.

A user plugs in merit ratings with appropriate percentage increases, salary increases, variable pay adjustments and stock allocations. Supporting data and analytical bar charts or pie charts illustrate the results. In dealing with annual salaries, the maximum, minimum and midpoint are highlighted in color. A budget line displays a running tally of the allocated amount, assigned amount and what remains. If you have employees abroad, TotalComp includes a handy, instant currency converter to translate dollar amounts into local currency.

Navigation is seamless. Help and support are available online, through a copiously illustrated printed manual, by phone and by e-mail. Commendably, Kadiri staff even take calls on their cell phones to help with emergencies. You won't be left hanging when you need help.

A final spreadsheet supplies the complete picture. The user has yet another opportunity to review and adjust the final version before sending the spreadsheet to the next level for approval. Reviewing managers access the spreadsheets with encrypted passwords and can view compensation plans for their direct reports.

Faster Work, Fewer Errors

This software leads managers and compensation planners through the operation step-by-step. In the process, they absorb a greater understanding and knowledge of the organization's policies and practices.

TotalComp alerts the user to problems, flagging materials with red exclamation points if information is incomplete, over budget, outside guidelines etc. The software offers the user alternative ways of dealing with the matter. If others in the compensation chain need to weigh in, the user simply clicks on an icon designed to look like the familiar yellow sticky note and adds a signed and dated explanation for others to consider.

Some users note that errors all but disappeared once managers started using the product. The software also greatly reduced the time HR spends helping managers with compensation planning. Because line managers found so many avenues for compensation help on their desktops, they cut back on calls and e-mails to HR, freeing HR to turn to other tasks.

By putting more compensation responsibility into managers' hands, the product also helps streamline the compensation process. Trisha Parker, compensation director for Kaiser Permanente's California division, estimates that TotalComp reduced by 60 percent the time needed to conduct a compensation review.

Another user indicated that the product does not seem to offer the same flexibility to parse stock range information as do the salary screens. Also, the software's variable compensation features don't completely reflect today's complexities in compensation. It would be valuable to enlarge that picture to encompass insurance, training opportunities, hiring bonuses and the like.

Pushing Pay to Managers

TotalComp Manager gives users a comprehensive, configurable system for planning and managing vital elements of a compensation program. It can address the needs of medium-to-giant organizations, accommodating many different plans and processes.

The product increases efficiency and accuracy while saving time. It gives line managers access to information not otherwise readily available to them and takes some pressure off HR and compensation officials while still letting them oversee the process.

David Shair is a retired vice president of HR. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Human Resources Association of New York, a Society for Human Resource Management affiliate.

Product Specs

TotalComp Manager 2.0

KADIRI INC.

1350 Old Bayshore, Suite 650

Burlingame, CA 94010

Phone: (650) 340-4000

E-mail: info@kadiri.com

www.kadiri.com

PRODUCT USE

Online planning system for major components of compensation packages.

EQUIPMENT REQUIREMENTS

As a licensed software product, operates in NT/MS SQL, Sun/Solaris/Oracle or other combination of server environment with standard TCP/IP network. Client requirements: CPU-200Mhz, 64MB memory (128 MB recommended) and 256 MB disk space.

RELEASE DATE

February 2000.

INSTALLED BASE

36,500 manager desktops covering more than 400,000 employees.

PRICE

Scaled price based on number of covered employees, decreasing with volume.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Society for Human Resource Management
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group