Ultimate Software Wins Award from Leading Independent Research Firm for Innovative Use of Social Technologies

WESTON, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Ultimate Software (Nasdaq:ULTI - News), a leading provider of unified human capital management SaaS solutions for global businesses, announced today it has received a 2011 Forrester Groundswell Award in recognition of its online customer community. The Forrester Groundswell Awards were established by Forrester Research, a leading technology research, analysis, and advisory firm, to identify excellence in achieving business and organizational goals through innovation in social technology applications.

The Forrester Groundswell Awards program was developed to support and recognize the principles outlined in the Forrester Research books Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (Harvard Business Press, 2008) and Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business (Harvard Business Press, 2010). This year, entries to the Forrester Groundswell Awards were submitted in four divisions, including Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C), Management, and International.

Ultimate Software was named the winner of the business-to-business “Embracing” category. Previous winners of the Forrester Groundswell Awards include Microsoft, IBM, Starbucks, Salesforce.com, Mattel, NASCAR, and Godiva Chocolatier.

“Once again, we received excellent entries for the Forrester Groundswell Awards from around the world,” said Josh Bernoff, senior vice president, idea development at Forrester and co-author of Groundswell and Empowered. “We selected the winners based on the most impressive results from more than 200 entrants this year.”

With the Forrester Groundswell Award, Ultimate Software was recognized for its collaborative customer community, called “Ideas.” Ultimate launched the Ideas community to help its customers share information, interact, and provide direct feedback on UltiPro, the company’s end-to-end human capital management (HCM) solution. The Ideas customer community also supports Ultimate Software’s goal to design better solutions by engaging its own customers in the innovation process. By leveraging the advantages of social technology—such as the ability for customers to “vote” on ideas submitted by other customers—Ultimate is able to capture and measure candid customer feedback and better understand what features will provide the greatest value to customers.

Since its inception in January 2010, the Ideas community has grown to approximately 5,500 users—creating nearly 2,000 ideas, with 12,300 votes on these ideas. As of October 2011, more than 200 customer ideas have been incorporated into UltiPro or are in development for inclusion in an upcoming release in the next 12 months.

“The Ideas community is an outstanding example of Ultimate Software’s partnership philosophy—encouraging participation, communication, mutual ownership, and trust among our users. Ultimate has historically engaged our customers in the development of its solutions and services—and the Ideas initiative provided a new and exciting opportunity for us to harness social technologies to further evolve our dialogue and interaction with customers,” said Adam Rogers, chief technology officer and senior vice president of product development at Ultimate Software. “We’re thrilled to see our customers embrace social technology to enhance their relationship with us, and we’re extremely honored to receive this Forrester Groundswell Award.”

“The Ideas community has been a win-win for both customers and Ultimate Software,” said Pat Pickren, vice president of product management at Ultimate Software. “As a result of ‘Ideas,’ our strong network of business partnerships has evolved, and collaboration among Ultimate Software and its customers is better than ever. The Ideas forum is helping Ultimate gather information to support strategic decisions that will allow us to sustain our leadership position in the HR technology industry.”

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 awarded first place in the People’s Choice Stevie®competition for Favorite New SaaS Product and 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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