The HRCharter Desktop Edition is a low cost version of the leading organisation charting and HR planning system, HRCharter. The desktop version of the software brings much of the richness of HRCharter's high-end functionality to companies or departments with less than 500 employees - and costs less than $A1000.

HRCharter Desktop Edition takes a data-driven approach, making it easier than ever before to create and maintain information-rich organisation charts, by automatically generating fully formatted charts from its own database of employee information. The database, which contains 23 predefined and 6 custom fields, can be created from scratch or populated by importing txt or csv files from, for example, an HR system. When employee information changes, the database simply needs to be updated and HRCharter reformats the charts to best advantage for viewing or printing as a wall map or indexed book chart. Charts can also be incorporated into other documents or saved as images for publishing on an intranet.

Another advantage of the data-driven approach is the ease with which users can look at different information in the chart. Chart boxes can incorporate any of the information held in the database (salary, age, length of service etc.) and conditional mapping and colour coding features add meaning to data, graphically showing key issues such as age or gender distribution. HRCharter Desktop Edition is shipped with a library of chart box styles and a powerful box editor, which allows users to create their own box styles by choosing the information they want to see and how it should be displayed (box shapes, effects, colours, fonts etc).

More than just an organisation charting system, HRCharter Desktop Edition is also a powerful aid to HR planning, enabling HR staff to create "what-if" scenarios by dragging and dropping employees to different locations, in order to better understand and communicate the implications of organisation change.

For companies with more than 500 employees, The Optimise Group offers HRCharter Professional Edition for client/server deployment and HRCharter Enterprise Edition for intranet deployment. Both systems can be integrated with an existing HR information system or deployed with their own employee databases.