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There are many Organizational Charting Software (often called organization chart,
org chart, organigram(me), or organogram(me) software) choices available today. The wide range of
offerings ensure there is a solution to meet the diverse needs of today's
organizations. With the abundant and increasing number of Organizational Charting Software choices
including both paid and free org chart software, it is important to correctly evaluate your
companies needs and match them to the current org. chart products on the market today.
Audience
Org chart software solutions basically focus on 2 distinct audiences:
Human Resources (HR) - some organization's main need for an organizational chart solution is purely HR driven.
This includes:
- Capacity planning
- Budgeting/planning
- Reorganizations/what if analysis
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Communicating within HR the current organizational structures at the department and division levels.
The user group for this type of org chart software is relatively small namely HR professionals and some senior management.
Many desktop organizational charting products today focus on this particular niche.
Architecture
These products are generally sold on a per seat basis and are client based with the software being installed
on a individual PC's and having a named license owner. There is no server involved in this type of architecture
which decreases the cost of ownership
Lines of Business - while HR often leverages the org chart product, most organizations
need a product that allows them to communicate/publish their current organizational structure and
employee information directly to their Intranet. The main driver for this type of application is
facilitating organizational communications. An intranet based solution allows the company to share
basic information such as telephone number, office location, email address, mail stop, photo etc. as
well as deeper organizational information.
This deeper organizational information includes job skills, areas of expertise, department centric information
and the place someone holds in the overall organizational hierarchy. With organizational charting software
that publishes to the Intranet, any user in the organization can quickly find someone in the organization,
understand the area of the company where they work in (e.g., IT, finance, HR, marketing, etc.) and understand
the reporting relationship within the organization. With this more robust information, employees can better
determine the correct people to approach to solve problems and better understand the overall organizational
alignment.
Not surpisingly one functional group that tends to embrace these solutions is the IT organization. An
IT org chart allows people outside of IT to quickly locate the correct resource within a department
that is often multi-layered, compartmentalized and confusing to someone outside the department.
The ease with which an org chart solution can be implemented allows a company to quickly tap into and
make available the rich organizational information that exists within their HR systems. In addition, most of
these org chart software packages have built in organizational chart templates that make designing and
populating your chart a matter of point and click.
Sample Architecture
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