Ultimate Software Transforms HCM User Experience with UltiPro® Summer 2011 Release

Latest Version of UltiPro Emphasizes User Interface, Enhanced Connectivity, and Continuous Performance Management

WESTON, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Ultimate Software (Nasdaq:ULTI - News), a leading provider of unified human capital management (HCM) SaaS solutions for global businesses, today announced that all of its SaaS customers are live on UltiPro’s Summer 2011 release, which is focused on delivering enhanced usability, connectivity, and increased capabilities for ongoing employee development through:

• A completely redesigned, highly configurable, streamlined user experience
• Expanded connectivity through a growing portfolio of Web services and single sign-on
• New features to support continuous performance management

User Experience

To design a more intuitive user experience — for first-time use through power use of UltiPro— Ultimate Software leveraged behavioral science, customer feedback, and formal user testing as part of the comprehensive redesign, with a particular focus on supporting the needs of the person versus the system.

Taking design cues from most popular consumer Web sites, UltiPro’s new user interface tailors the experience of completing everyday business processes to the individual user-based on role, preferences, and frequently accessed information. The Summer 2011 release includes:

• A revised look-and-feel across all areas of UltiPro with a cleaner design and more intuitive information organization

• New breadcrumbs and home page gadgets that streamline the user’s interaction with UltiPro, such as a “common destinations” gadget and a “recently visited” gadget, for rapid return to most common data or actions

• Flexible content zones for greater utility and configurability

• Visual indicator for “to-do” items—alerting users immediately to requests that require action

• Enhanced navigation via search

Ultimate Software worked closely with customers on the redesigned look-and-feel to ensure it meets the needs of both expert and occasional users. “UltiPro’s new user experience is great, and I appreciate that Ultimate Software gives us the flexibility to activate the new features on our timeline rather than rolling them out all at once,” said Gregory Giancola, manager of HR administration for FBR & Co., a leading investment bank that provides banking, merger and acquisition advisory, institutional brokerage, and research services. “From reporting to functionality, Ultimate Software clearly has puts time into making sure that all users — not just the HR and the payroll team — can navigate through the solution intuitively and quickly. UltiPro is so easy to use that within days of deployment and with little experience, I was able to pull a critical report for our CEO that would not have been possible with the ERP system we used previously. To us, UltiPro’s ease of use may be its most powerful feature.”

“I love the new home page, the look and feel, and the ease of configuration,” said Vicki Murra, HRIS analyst for Midland National Life Insurance Company and North American Company for Life and Health Insurance, members of Sammons Financial Group, an insurance holding company with approximately 1,200 employees. “I've already gotten positive feedback from many of our users — employees at all levels of the organization. It's exciting to see how UltiPro's Summer 2011 release is already further engaging our people."

Connectivity Enhancements

UltiPro’s Summer 2011 release further delivers on Ultimate Software’s commitment to extend access to data and business processes via the Cloud with standard APIs accessible via Web services. The release delivers new Web Services APIs for key data and processes, such as new hires, as well as enhanced validation rules on existing Web services, including employee job and compensation. UltiPro Summer 2011 also expands support for the latest standards for single sign-on (SSO) authorization and authentication between UltiPro and other applications (including SAML 2.0 as well as federated SSO via PING Connect).

Continuous Performance Management

Ultimate Software believes that truly effective employee development requires continuous performance management — involving and engaging the employee, manager, and peers in ongoing collaboration rather than relying on the completion of a standardized annual performance review. The UltiPro Summer 2011 release offers new features to move beyond form-based, once-a-year performance processes to ongoing performance management that truly helps cultivate and develop people. Emphasizing features for instant and continuous feedback and observations throughout the year, the Summer release includes:

• Flexible goal assignment to fit the needs of individuals, teams and organizations — with the ability to add recommended goals that are highly personalized to the employee’s competencies and career path
• Goal updates to track ongoing achievement and progress toward individual goal attainment
• Goal journaling with the capability to add ongoing, periodic observations on progress and individual performance
• Additional options for flexible rating scales to adapt to different organizational and team requirements

Additional Enhancements

In the 12-week development cycle since the previous UltiPro release, Ultimate Software introduced more than 130 feature updates in UltiPro Spring 2011, including extensive feature tuning and compliance-related updates to assist customers in adhering to payroll-related federal, state, and local legislative changes. The release also includes updates based on requests submitted through Ultimate Software’s customer “Ideas” community, such as usability updates for checks and pay statements, as well as more than a dozen new time management reports.

“Ultimate’s mission is to develop powerful and usable solutions for managing people, so we’ve designed the UltiPro Summer 2011 release with the goal of making the technology ‘invisible’ and simply allowing users to get work done,” said Adam Rogers, chief technology officer and senior vice president of product development at Ultimate Software. “With user experience improvements, strategic tools for continuous performance management, extended Cloud connectivity — along with many enhancements requested by our customers — our newest release is allowing our customers to focus less on day-to-day HR and payroll fundamentals and more on creating an environment that attracts, engages, and cultivates the talent that will drive their business forward.”

About Ultimate Software

Ultimate is a leading provider of unified human capital management (HCM) Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for global businesses. Ultimate’s award-winning UltiPro®solutions deliver the functionality businesses need to manage the complete employment life cycle from recruitment to retirement. Based in Weston, FL, Ultimate employs more than 1,200 professionals who are focused on developing the highest quality solutions and services. In 2010, Ultimate was named an Optimas Award winner by Workforce Management magazine. In 2009, Ultimate was ranked the #1 best medium-sized company to work for in America by the Great Place to Work® Institute for the second consecutive year. In 2010, Ultimate’s security practices were recertified for ISO/IEC 27001, and Ultimate was the first HR SaaS vendor to be ISO/IEC 27001 certified in 2008. Ultimate has approximately 2,200 customers representing diverse industries, including such organizations as Adobe Systems Incorporated, The Container Store, Culligan International, Elizabeth Arden, Major League Baseball, The New York Yankees Baseball Team, and Ruth’s Chris Steak House. More information on Ultimate’s products and services can be found at www.ultimatesoftware.com.

UltiPro is a registered trademark of The Ultimate Software Group, Inc. All other trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owners.

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