Ideally your performance management system should support an already robust relationship between your managers and their subordinates, not create or replace it. It should help to focus your efforts on actually improving performance and managing the development of your employees. Well chosen, a system will support what you are trying to build in your organization and will be viewed as a part of a seamless approach to creating a valued workforce, as well as allowing your organization to streamline the performance review process online.
Organizations today are very interested in measuring and improving their workforce and their performance and productivity, or their ability to create value at speed.
Customer Service
Do your research. Call the customer service center at all times of the day. Night weekend. Many companies today are using Call Centers in India and, need I have to say this, that can lead to a very frustrating experience for the user. Do they understand HR or only their system? What kind of training is done for the employees in the service center?
Administrator level of Difficulty
Unless you are fortunate enough to have a systems admin who is solely dedicated to bringing up your Performance Management System, you will want to fully understand what is involved in setting up the back end. Some performance management systems do much of the work for you, others, Like Cornerstone, expect that you will architect and set up the entire back end.
UX
To borrow a term from the development world, UX, cannot and should not be underrated. The user experience should be pleasant, not frustrating and the flow of the process should be intuitive. If your managers have to hunt for buttons or try and figure it out, it’s not designed well.
On- the-Go
Is it accessible on the go. Does it utilize responsive design, that allows the systems to perform the same on a mobile device as it would on a laptop? Much of our world is mobile now and your workforce will expect that they should not have to be tied to a desk in order to work with your Performance Management system
Demo it
Allow your managers to demo the top 2-3 selections and choose the one that they feel best meets their needs. You will have immediate buy in and advocates throughout the organization.
In summary, spend the time up front to truly evaluate the systems that will best meet your organization’s needs. You will likely live with the approach for quite some time, so make sure it is one that will actually create efficiencies and not additional work for you and your team.