Vizual Personnel Manager & Personnel Director

P&A Software and Vizual

We supplied Vizual Personnel Manager and Vizual Personnel Director to around 4000 clients between 1999 and 2007. During this time, we considered these products to be our principal software offering, and we became Vizual's principal business partner in Europe. Where these products were concerned, our expertise, knowledge and experience was second only to Vizual's.

During this time we also developed software that was branded as Vizual products. These were sold as part of the Vizual stable of software titles. This included the Vizual Recruitment Assistant system, Vizual Recruitment Director system, and the Vizual Training Administrator system.

Towards the end of this time, Vizual introduced a product called HR.net. We felt that this new product did not work for our clients or our business (either functionally or from the point of view of cost). We decided that we would not promote this product.

In 2009 Vizual withdrew Personnel Manage and Personnel Director from sale. We introduced the People Inc. HR system to replace these products within our line of software offerings and our clients started using People Inc. soon afterwards. Having said this, and while fewer and fewer organisations continue to use Vizual products, we are still able to provide advice and support for Personnel Manager and Personnel Director users (including user training and other consultancy).

About the Vizual products

Launched in 1999 as un upgrade for the hugely successful Vizual Personnel HR system, Personnel Manager provided comprehensive functionality designed to help manage HR records within any small to medium-sized organisations. Vizual differentiated themselves by selling HR software for perhaps one-tenth the price of other HR management systems that were available in the UK at the time. Their no-nonsense approach to personnel software was extended to a range of around 20 software titles and this enabled them to build a large population of loyal users.

Designed for use within larger organisations, the Vizual Personnel Director system followed on from Personnel Manager. This product included an Employee Self-Service module and provided users with the option to host the product's databases using Microsoft SQL Server. The Personnel Director system was priced in a similar way to many of the other systems available at the time, but clients could now choose a scalable Vizual product with a robust database engine.

Following on from the Personnel Director system, Vizual developed the HR.net system. Made up of three versions (Express, Professional and Enterprise), HR.net replaced Personnel Manager and Personnel Director, and enabled Vizual to sell to even larger organisations with the flagship Enterprise version.

During 2009 Vizual decided to sell the business to the American payroll supplier ADP. Vizual no longer existed as an independent UK business.

Moving to People Inc.

Following the launch of HR.net, we moved away from the Vizual family of products. At that point most of our clients started to use our People Inc. system (and we offered a simple upgrade to transfer all of the data across to the new product).