ADP WorkForce Suite vs. Firstup vs. Podbean

EmpCenter is really well suited for companies with minimal variety in time keeping needs. Certainly somewhere that has fairly regular work schedules and operational needs the system would be programmed for and meet those needs quite well. I think they assert themselves as a product specifically for those more complex companies, and I believe it is one of a few products available for companies with many employee types and complex work schedule and pay needs, but because of those complexities each have their own specific customizations I feel it is difficult for the company to then manage the different products that end up existing. Each ends up being unique so applying large scale changes doesn't work well as something we may request and need if applied over EmpCenter in general may cause problems for another company. Therefore everything has to be done on an individual basis and is more time consuming and costly.

Firstup is a well-suited solution for companies that would like to spread brand awareness and get employees to be their number one ambassadors. Employees like to share/brag about the company they work for so why not use them as a driving force in spreading brand awareness!

Incentivized

Podbean is the best podcast hosting service I have seen so far outside of hosting your own podcast server. It has many tools built in that make hosting and sharing your podcast simple. If you are technically minded, there is good software based on WordPress to create a cheap solution for hosting multiple podcasts, but you don't get as many features and you have to do all the work yourself. If you want a solution to quickly and easily get a podcast off the ground and out into the world without having to worry about lots of technical issues, then Podbean is a good way to go.

Incentivized

• A lot flexibility in configuration of the system
• works well with other systems. We were able to collect data from another time system, Avaya phone systems and even a point of sale system with not a lot of difficulty.
• They know their product and integration points. They were able to troubleshoot problems with hardware time collection devices quite quickly. We found the devices they sold to be quite durable.
• Out of the box they have more reports than I would have anticipated. Creating new reports was sometimes a task if it was complex but there were usually similar reports you could use as a starter template

• Intuitive, easy-to-use templates for posts, newsletters and email notifications.
• Consistent upgrades and innovation that keeps the tool current with other apps.
• Flexibility on how users can use the tool (i.e. comments, sharing photos, etc.) This decision is left to each organization, individually.

• Good user interface
• Good sound quality
• Nice design
• Desktop version easy to navigate

Incentivized

• Difficult to use
• Retroactive adjustments must be made by an administrator
• Delegation of duties must be done by an adminstrator
• Data must be exported and then imported into pay system, does not support interface
• Product has not changed or been updated in 4+ years

Incentivized

• We'd love to see a calendar added that would show key upcoming dates.
• It would be awesome if the Message feature had a drop-down directory you could scroll through vs. requiring you to type a few letters before the potential names came up.

Incentivized

• The UI looks a bit dated
• The plugin we use for WordPress was broken for years and we had to manually post, but they've fixed it recently.

Incentivized

After spending close to 5 years to decide on which payroll product to acquire for our University, I cannot image we would switch now that we have it in use.

Extremely knowledgeable staff that truly care about our business processes

EmpCenter is a new software to the company however, I only trained on the old software for a few months before EmpCenter was introduced. I think EmpCenter has a smoother data entry process and can run more in depth reports, but since this is the system I know best I cannot accurately compare it to previous software.

I can't really answer this as the platform was already in place when I took my current role.

Incentivized

For a personal podcast, I host on WordPress with a plugin called Seriously Simple Podcasting. This solution is a bare bones solution, good if you know how to manage a WordPress website and are able to submit your podcasts manually to different apps and services. If you can afford Podbean I would suggest using it because the WordPress route takes a lot more time and technical knowledge. Podbean takes so much of the hassle and work away from the process.

Incentivized

• EmpCenter has reduced the amount of time administrators are spending on payroll. Certainly it has made our entry to our pay system more efficient since we can simply load the data from the time keeping system and we are not collecting actual physical signatures and paper timesheets that must be reviewed for accuracy and completeness. The system does this for us and some automatic calculating of certain pay due that we were hand adding. However the feedback I am getting is that the supervisors feel their work has been increased greatly. They are spending more time correcting and approving time. Essentially the work we were doing in our central offices to review and correct time the supervisor must now do as they approve the time. We have now asked them to be more responsible for proper reporting and use which requires they know more about the rules and many different aspects of pay than they had before. We have employees who are union represented and get some benefits from the contract others do not receive, contract employees who have certain pay aspects in their contracts that must be known, as well as temporary employees and students who get very different pay from the other employees. While some things have been programmed for the system to know and handle, some things must be added to the time sheet to pay properly or the way time is reported is different (some clock out for lunch some don't) supervisors must now know these differences while that used to be a role that was more mine as an administrator. Now I just help them and audit and review.

• We look at the earned media revenue tool that Firstup has, and we have earned media of over $4000 most months. Amazing!
• We have been recognized by peers, clients, and partner agents who say they always see our Hilldrup news pop up on social media!
• Marketing has been able to control the voice of the brand while amplifying the message to new audiences - amazing!

Incentivized

• I can say that since we have used this tool we have not found any negative aspects or that it has generated us.