Apollo-Optik Selects Saba People Cloud Applications to Improve Employee Motivation and Increase Company Success

Saba (NASDAQ:SABA), the premier People Cloud provider, today announced that Germany’s biggest optician, Apollo-Optik, is leveraging Saba People Cloud Applications to accelerate employee performance. Through goal-orientated training Apollo-Optik aims to create a more efficient learning system that improves succession planning and employee retention.

By using Saba’s effective succession planning and training tools Apollo-Optik hopes to extend its lead as the biggest optician in Germany. Saba’s Learning and Talent Applications will be rapidly deployed across Apollo-Optik’s franchise via the cloud, requiring no additional IT investments. Additionally, with Saba’s strong language support Apollo-Optik’s parent company, Holding Grandvision, can implement the applications to an additional forty countries around the world.

Saba’s solutions will also help Apollo-Optik to identify high-performing employees as well as develop and retain the skills of pivotal talent, thereby fostering the company’s talent pool. This will help Apollo-Optik to more easily identify in-house candidates for promotion, reducing the cost of external recruitment.

Supporting Quotes:

"We chose Saba People Cloud Applications because it is a unified platform for learning and development, performance appraisal and talent management. In the future, we will be able to train our workforce more comprehensively and offer them more opportunities for personal development. We also wish to continually optimize our customer service, which will give us a strategic edge,” stated Erich Ehbauer, CIO for Apollo-Optik. "Saba People Cloud Applications are highly scalable and internationally available. We can use the applications easily and flexibly in our franchises.”

"Our ambition is to find the right people with the right skills in our existing talent pool. With our future performance appraisal process, we can identify both the skills and the knowledge gaps in our workforce. Once we have identified our highest performing employees, we can then offer them actionable training and other personal development opportunities to prepare them for future management roles. Our principal aim is to provide efficient and up-to-date learning and development programs via methods like E-learning and virtual classrooms, so that our employees are constantly refreshed with company knowledge. This will sustainably improve the motivation of employees,” said Norbert Dronsz, HR Manager at Apollo-Optik.

"We are proud to have gained Apollo-Optik, Germany’s leading optics retailer, as a new customer, thereby expanding our global Cloud client base to more than six million users,” stated Laurent Pacalin, SVP and GM of People Cloud Applications. "Apollo-Optik’s implementation of Saba’s Learning, Talent, and Online Collaboration Applications reinforces the importance of Saba’s global strategy.”

The deployment and company-wide use of Saba People Cloud Applications is being led by Saba’s consulting team and Saba partner, eLearning specialist, Chemmedia PLC.

Saba People Cloud Applications Highlights:

Saba People Cloud Applications are a unified set of solutions that include the power of formal and social learning and rich talent management applications with leading-edge collaboration capabilities such as Web conferencing and enterprise business networking. The applications are built organically on a unified platform with a common people profile. Whether a user is looking to create a succession pool, start a performance review or manage a team of employees, the system provides a comprehensive and consistent view of the employee information. This visibility enables managers to align the right employees to specific initiatives more quickly, thereby increasing productivity, time to market, and success rates. Saba People Cloud Applications not only enable users at all levels to make better decisions with more complete and consistent people intelligence but also provides a very actionable and seamless way to close skills gaps and develop people.

Supporting Resources:

• Saba People Cloud Applications: www.saba.com
• Follow the Saba blog: http://www.saba.com/blogs/
• Follow Saba on Twitter: @SabaSoftware

About Apollo-Optik

Apollo-Optik runs over 750 branches in Germany and 100 in Austria under the name Pearle Optik and offers a wide product range of fashionable frames by international designers, quality lenses, contact lenses and off-the-shelf reading glasses and sunglasses.

Apollo Optik employs around 5000 employees in Germany and around 500 in Austria. Apollo-Optik’s aim is to provide the best service of all opticians and a strong customer service, thereby continually developing its market position. As their guiding mantra and promise maintains "weit mehr als eine Brille” (so much more than a pair of glasses), the needs of each customer – to provide them with an individually tailored optical solution – is their uncompromising principle.

Apollo-Optik belongs to the largest optician’s enterprise worldwide, the Grand Vision Group in Amsterdam. Grand Vision is represented by subsidiaries in 41 countries, which puts it unchallenged at the forefront of opticians in Europe. Steady growth has been a success, especially in South America. Beneath Apollo-Optik’s solid growth lie two cornerstones: healthy, sustained expansion and the successful integration of independent optician chains. In May 2000, Apollo-Optik took over a number of Karstadt’s optician initiatives. In December 2003, the successful takeover of Synoptik’s branches began to take place. The successful integration of Krane Optic’s branches began in July 2007, making Apollo-Optik Germany’s most widespread chain of opticians. The Schwabach enterprise belongs to the exclusive circle of PAYBACK partners as a founding member since March 2000. Apollo-Optik also fulfils its social responsibility as a consistent and focused champion of SOS Children’s Villages. Already, over the last three years, they have been donating €1 of every frame sold to the Children’s Villages.

About Saba

Saba (NASDAQ:SABA) provides a unified set of People Cloud Applications including enterprise learning, talent management and collaboration solutions delivered through the Saba People Cloud. Today’s people-driven enterprises are using Saba's solutions to mobilize and engage people around new strategies and initiatives, align and connect people to accelerate the flow of business, and cultivate, capture, and share individual and collective knowhow to effectively compete and succeed.

Saba's premier customer base includes major global organizations and industry leaders in financial services, life sciences and healthcare, high tech, automotive and manufacturing, retail, energy and utilities, packaged goods, and public sector organizations. Saba’s solutions are underpinned by global services capabilities and partnerships encompassing strategic consulting, comprehensive implementation services, and ongoing worldwide support.

Headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, Saba has offices on five continents. For more information, please visit www.saba.com or call +1-877-SABA-101 or +1-650-779-2791.

SABA, the Saba logo, Saba Centra, and the marks relating to Saba products and services referenced herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Saba Software, Inc. or its affiliates. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.