Succession planning has the following key actions:
- Identify pivotal roles
- Identify potential successors
- Create succession plan
These key actions essentially defined the goals of the system.
The system does not provide neat answers to situation. Instead it draws out information for managers to make decisions. The system uses a series of “individual evaluation-roundtable discussion” to help management to arrive at pivotal roles and their potential successors. The individual evaluation allows personal evaluation, while the roundtable discussion pools the group together to brainstorm and challenge one another so that the best fits can be reached. Throughout these processes, the system acts as a source of information, a tool to facilitate evaluation, a recorder of decisions and when, decisions are made, generate the succession plan.
The system uses Web technology which makes it easy to deploy and also easy for use. A workflow engine helps automate many of the processes, while a common database allows data to be shared. Some benefits are as follows:
- The interactive approach where decisions are made collectively by groups of managers ensure better chance of success
- Quick to deploy and easy to use