KNOWLEDGEPOINT Enhances "Virtual Hr Department" Software To Give Small Businesses An Edge On Retention

People Manager 3.0 Tracks The Things That Are Important To Employees

PETALUMA, CALIF., October 4, 2001 — Vacation time, benefits eligibility, payroll changes … keeping track of personnel information and tasks is an essential part of maintaining a satisfied workforce. In recent years, large companies have benefited from the availability of powerful human resource information systems (HRIS) to manage their employee data, but smaller organizations haven’t had an affordable alternative — until now. KnowledgePoint’s new People Manager 3.0, releasing today, operates as a small business HRIS, giving small business managers all the functionality and advice they need to manage their crucial personnel tasks.

The need is great for a comprehensive and affordable system that enables small businesses and associations to track personnel and benefits data, and manage day-to-day human resources (HR) tasks. In a recent survey of more than 1,000 HR professionals from organizations of 100 people or less, 77 percent told KnowledgePoint that they are still operating without any kind of centralized HR system at all — and feeling the effects.

"Human resource functions take a disproportionate toll on small organizations because they usually lack the HR expertise and resources to deal with them adequately," says Ian Alexander, president of KnowledgePoint. "People Manager supports them by serving as a ‘smart’ HRIS — along with tracking essential personnel data, it also provides expert context-sensitive advice and automated checklists to help ensure that managers handle situations right and treat employees appropriately."

Key Features of People Manager 3.0

Already a popular personnel system with a loyal following, People Manager is a desktop software program that makes it easy to keep accurate employee records and document actions like hiring, promotions, reviews and terminations. Operating as a workflow manager, the program compiles daily "To-Do" lists of employee-related tasks, reminds users of critical events, like benefits eligibility dates, and provides flexible options for tracking attendance and interfacing with payroll services. People Manager also functions as an HR expert, centralizing employee information, alerting users to the legal significance of employee management issues and providing expert human resource advice.

The new People Manager contains significant enhancements over the previous version that make it more vital to organizations than ever, such as:

Flexible and accurate attendance tracking that handles varying accrual schedules: People Manager 3.0 automatically selects, accrues and calculates vacation, sick and personal time based on the accrual and leave schedules of different employee groups. It also tracks leaves of absence, jury duty and military leaves, and charts each employee’s leave status with visual bar graphs.

Support for top payroll services: People Manager 3.0 calculates normal payroll work hours, exports timekeeping data, calculates summaries of attendance data adjustments and works with top payroll services, including Paychex Paylink and ADP.

Data import and export capability: The new People Manager allows for the importing of employee information and exporting of data for analysis.

Direct links to online tools, information and resources through embedded Web links:

People Manager 3.0 provides a window to hundreds of additional management tools and services available on the Web.

"People Manager provides small businesses with needed HR expertise and helps them stay on top of important, regular tasks to keep the confidence of their employees," says Alexander. "Handling personnel matters properly is vital to developing and retaining an effective workforce."

Availability, Pricing and Operating Requirements

People Manager 3.0 is available now at the suggested retail price of $179. There is no other comparable program on the market at this price point. The program runs on a Pentium-based computer with 32MB RAM and 40MB hard disk capacity, and requires Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4.0 or 2000. To utilize the embedded Web links, it requires Netscape 4.0 or Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher.

About KnowledgePoint

Since 1987, KnowledgePoint (a division of CCH INCORPORATED) has been a leading developer of knowledge-based human resource management software and Internet services for

enterprise, small business and individual managers. KnowledgePoint’s small business product line includes People Manager, Performance Now, Policies Now, Descriptions Now and HRTools.com. For more information, contact KnowledgePoint at 707-762-0333 or visit www.knowledgepoint.com.

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