Knocks it out of the park.
November 01, 2012

Knocks it out of the park.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review

Software Version

v17

Modules Used

  • Human Capital Management (HCM)

Overall Satisfaction

  • For HRIS, it knocks it out of the park
  • The interface/ usability are really good which is typically the biggest barrier to adoption
  • It has a lot of configurability.
  • Configurability can be Achilles heel. It is almost too configurable/flexible. That’s helpful though if you are a large company and can dedicate the resources. However, some areas are too technical for an HR person to understand. If your goal is to not have to build up IT you will find that even a small company has to provide technical support from IT.
  • One of the challenges is finding stuff. There’s no manual. Even if you know what to do, you don’t know how to get there. We find ourselves having to call to get navigation assistance. There is no quick tip sheet and we have gone on all the training.
  • The online help/FAQ library is poor. The guide to completion is missing. This is the missing link between using product and configuring product. If you enter an employee, they have to have role, job description, salary grade all in existence beforehand. There’s nothing that tells you that. Knowing the sequence of things is not explained anywhere. Also, for our integrations, if you want to integrate Active Directory, it turns out you also have to also give permission in the security profile. There are many layers of undocumented stuff. We used OneSource (the reseller) to implement who has also learned by doing. If you ask them a question, oftentimes you find they’ve not experienced it before.
  • As a small business, you need recommendations for process. Endless configuration choices puts a lot of burden on the people who know the system. You need more of an out of the box configuration. A more turnkey approach would have been helpful for our size of company.
  • Workday outsources <1000 seats to resellers.
  • Workflow – we used to use email and workflow helps. Managers used to have to track who didn’t respond, HR had to track things, it’s all automated now.
  • Having one system of record. Data was decentralized before.
  • Global system
These systems are fairly sticky once you implement them. I would still pick Workday.
You need to have your eyes wide open around the expertise required in-house to support a continually evolving platform that does not have a lot of out of the box guidance.

Product Usage

150 - All employees
0.5 - We have a HR super user that knows more than basic administration and spends about 25% of their time on system administration, however, we are still in implementation, so the load is currently heavier than it will be on-going.

We have a tech SME who has to know security, reporting, business processes that are more complicated to configure than an HR person would be comfortable with. Post implementation, we expect this person’s involvement will be more project based. If the environment is not changing a lot then I expect it will account for ~10% of their time. Currently we are still in implementation, so it is much higher. There is still a fair amount of discovery happening.

For integration work, you need other people.
  • Core HR – benefits administration/enrollment, recruiting/staffing, automating employee on-boarding.
  • We use the performance management module for mid-year and annual reviews. We were just using word and Excel before. It automates all our traditional processes.
  • Time and attendance – holiday, vacation and personal time.
  • Employee self service and manager self-service.

Evaluation and Selection

A homegrown package. A combination of Excel and a program that we wrote tied to Active Directory.
We initially researched 30 and did 10 product demos. Our short list was HR Source, Ultipro, and Workday. Our need for multi-national really limited the short list. We picked Workday as their interface is head and shoulders above the other two. Ultipro was next closest. We also liked the integration with payroll and benefit carriers and some of the report writing and security models though it was advanced for a company our size, we liked having that in our back-pocket. Although we picked Workday, I feel other two would have met our needs.

Implementation

We are missing a more turnkey approach for our size.


  • Professional services company
OneSource.

OneSource has exclusive right to resell licensing, but your implementation choice is flexible. While I don’t like OneSource, I have not yet seen any other better partner.

Training

  • Online training
  • In-person training
We attended a one day class at OneSources’s facility, provided by a subcontractor to OneSource.
There are 11 different courses. They have on-demand training one hour sessions and host half day training sessions – e.g. report writing split across 2 half days, where you go into a classroom online instructor led. The online stuff is all provided by Workday.

Configuration

For the most part, were able to meet our business requirements without customization. We were just coming from Excel and home grown.

It's important to note that while you have sandbox and production instances, as a small company, I don’t have a QA department, so to regression test everything becomes problematic. It forces me to be very diligent on customizations and integrations. I really can’t customize too much. I cannot afford to go through all the regression testing. I went to SAAS to not have to build up IT group, but Workday’s model means I cannot customize anything. It’s one of the issues that’s “undersold”.

Support

Support is provided by OneSource, the reseller. They really have no expertise and their level of technical expertise is poor. When we went to our training, the room was filled with OneSource people going through the same training. We finished training in 1 day, they took 4 days. They are hardly experts. Workday has come out with two more releases since then and Onesource have doubled in size in the last year – so it’s hard to see how they can keep up.

There is an online community/portal that is pretty good. There is however no easy answer to “guided completion”.
Yes - We use premium support (support plus level) for $460/ month for 65 users – from Onesource.

Usability

For users it is fairly guided. Exploring the system is difficult – without menus, you can stumble. There is no menu called performance management. But for getting them to do the basics, the usability is very high.

Reliability

Integration

  • Active Directory for employee information
  • Ping Identity for single sign-on
  • Taleo for recruitment
Active Directory and Ping Identity -network sign-on brokered to Workday. If you terminate an active directory account, it kills access to Workday. It is slick with already built-in adapters, though it took some time to figure out the nomenclature.

Taleo - It is integrated to Workday via a middleware solution called Boomi. It triggers on-boarding workflow in Workday.

We use a couple of other 3rd party apps for integration. Boomi is almost like Workday in that it has a developer desktop that is very flexible. We are however missing a more turnkey approach. Once you learn the tool and Workday APIs you can get through that.

Vendor Relationship

We did redline terms a lot – mostly focusing on if wanted to leave, how we would pull out data. We also negotiated terms around joint marketing.

For implementation with OneSource, we did an open purchase order with a cap of $75k. By time went live, we had used 1/3, and we have now spent about $50k.