ALZA's studies show that with TotalPerformance it takes approximately one hour to rate 10 employees on eight rating factors. With the previous method, employees spent, on average, five hours completing reviews for 10 employees. Managers spend 15 minutes to half an hour preparing summary evaluations, using feedback from direct reports, compared with about four hours per direct report previously.

With the automation provided by TotalPerformance, one person in HR can manage the company-wide process. This administrator can set up the system (specifying participants, grouping ratees and assigning competencies) in two to three hours. Once the process goes online for employees, it takes approximately 20 hours per week to manage the process for 1,000 people. This task entails handling policy questions and issues as well as special concerns of individual employees. By comparison, the previous paper-based system required a full-time administrator, starting weeks in advance, to handle paperwork and brokering of
decisions that are now automated and made directly online by supervisors. ALZA estimates that HR employees now spend 80 percent less time administering and managing a similar cycle than they did under the earlier system.

ALZA estimates that the four hours per rater it now saves translates into savings of about $80,000 per appraisal cycle. An unexpected value is that managers and administrators can optimize the data collected through TotalPerformance by producing organizational reports that were previously impossible to generate. This contributes to the overall effectiveness of the ALZA organization by giving an extremely clear and precise picture of talent
and goal attainment at any given point in time.

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