Vizual Personnel and People Inc. – A brief history.

The background of Vizual Personnel HR Software.

In 1997 Vizual Business Tools launched their first foray into the HR software market. Dominated by expensive systems aimed at larger organisations they identified a gap in the market for a low cost yet fully featured HR software system that was easy to install and use.

Vizual Personnel was released specifically to target SME’s who needed a simple HR system that could be installed by the user onto their PC and used to record their employee information. The system cost just £99 and it soon became the bestselling HR system in the UK.

As the success for Vizual Personnel grew, Vizual Business Tools developed the next product in the range, Personnel Manager which would cater for slightly larger organisations who required more than one user to access the system and could be used over a Local Area Network.

A range of additional products were added to the range to managed different aspects of the HR function such as Recruitment Manager, Fleet Manager, Kwik ID, Training Manager and Working Time Tracker.

In 2000 Personnel Director was released, aimed at larger businesses. It was their first Client Server version of the software that could be used on either an Interbase Database engine or Microsoft SQL Server. Due to the step up in architecture, Personnel Director could be used over a Wide Area Network meaning it was ideal for Companies with multiple sites.

Where do agathonhr fit in?

Agathon HR founder and director, Andrew Pearce was introduced to Vizual Personnel Manager in 1998 whilst working for a software company tasked with managing IT Software sub-contractors.  As sub-contractors were not managed by the HR department, there was a need to record basic information about the sub-contractors used throughout the business. Vizual Personnel was introduced due the functionality it provided whilst being very cost effective.

Within 12 months Vizual Personnel was upgraded to Personnel Manager with the addition of the optional screen designer add on to allow for the development of custom screens to manage information specific to the business.

In 2000 Andrew left his role to work as a freelance Consultant for Vizual Business Tools providing Training and Consultancy on the entire Vizual produce range to their ever growing customer base before setting up agathonhr as a full accredited Alliance Partner for Vizual Business Tools to sell their software to new customers.

Vizual Personnel Manager and Personnel Director were last updated in 2005 and going forwards would not be supported on future versions of Microsoft platforms. In 2009 Vizual Business Tools discontinued the Vizual Personnel Range of products in order to focus on its HR.NET offering shortly before they became part of ADP.

People Inc. HR

In light of the sudden demise of the Vizual Personnel Product range, agathonhr shifted its focus to People Inc. from P&A Software Solutions. P&A were also partners with Vizual yet decided to develop their own HR software that was more up to date and compatible with more recent versions of Windows and Office.

People Inc. was the ideal upgrade for the Vizual Personnel range as even the it was essentially a completely redesigned HR Software system it had been designer to be similar in how it looked to Vizual Personnel yet provided a wealth of additional functionality and general enhancements over these legacy systems.

Since 2009 agathonhr have become one of the largest resellers of People Inc. in the UK, not only upgrading its existing Vizual Personnel users to People Inc. but also to new customers looking for a cost effective yet comprehensive HR software solution.

The upgrade

Upgrading from the obsolete Vizual Personnel Manager or Personnel Director to People Inc. was something the developers at P&A invested a lot of time and resource in. In order to make the transition as quick and smooth as possible, a data migration tool was developed to transfer all data from either Personnel Manager or Personnel Director into People Inc. efficiently without the need for users to manually populate different spreadsheets for importing.

Once the data was transferred a data check is carried out by one of agathonhr’s fully trained consultants to identify any issues with the data that may impact on future reports such as missing Dates of Join etc. Users are then given the opportunity to resolve these issues before rolling out People Inc. to all of the users.

For companies who wanted to upgrade their dated Personnel Manager or Personnel Director software to something that was still simple to use yet was quick to implement and would work on more recent versions of Microsoft Windows, the upgrade to People Inc. was an easy decision.

For those who wanted to enhance what their HR software could give them People Inc. provided tools and functionality to help users achieve this. From the powerful built in Screen Designer and Report Writer tools to the optional add on modules such as Employee Self Service, Web Recruitment or Time & Attendance, People Inc. became far more than just a database for recording employee information.

The Future

With the release of People Inc. v4 in 2019 and the ongoing development of new time saving workflow wizards such as the new Training Booking Wizards and plug ins such as the Report Browser plugin, by the UK Development team at P&A the growth of People Inc. will only continue to rise and offer even more functionality to help your business.

Further information

AgathonHR have been working on Vizual Personnel Manager and Personnel Director since 1997 and are one of the last companies in the UK to have any experience using or supporting these systems. Additionally we have been working with People Inc. since 2009 and are one the main People Inc. resellers in the UK. This means we can provide the best possible service to ensure the upgrade goes as effectively as possible.

Whilst we can no longer sell Personnel Manager, we do currently provide the following:

• Upgrades to People Inc. including data migration.
• Discounted annual support packages
• Basic training for new users
• Report Writing Training.
• Consultancy – Data tidying, customisation etc.

Further information can be found on our website http://agathonhr.co.uk. If you require any support with Vizual Personnel Manager please call 01242 663974 or email support@vizualpersonnel.co.uk.