Ascentis HR uses web-based management programs to help automate complex HR processes. Ascentis’ other services included customizable payroll, time and attendance and recruiting modules. Ascentis was acquired by UKG in March of 2022, and will be discontinued.
N/A
SAP SuccessFactors HCM
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
SAP SuccessFactors is a suite of HR/HCM products covering these capability areas: core HR and payroll, recruiting and onboarding, learning and development, performance and compensation management, workforce analytics and planning, and employee experience management.
In working with Ascentis in payroll, the program makes my job so much easier. I am new to this position and the learning process has been so much easier with this product than those in the past. I appreciate the patience I am given when I call in for assistance as well.
SAP SuccessFactors is well suited for small to medium business organisations, in my opinion. It solves the purpose of being a strong yet reliable HRMS tool as it comes from the house of SAP. It gives your organisation the edge to manage employee related activities in a more synchronised manner. Large scale organisations do have an option to look at other available options as well because SAP SuccessFactors is not the best product in the market.
Easy to use software. I have had several new HR employees comment on how easy the system is to learn!
Problem Solving- Ascentis is always problem solving! When we were in the process of selecting a new payroll company, we needed unemployment claims management assistance for our locations, something Ascentis did not currently offer. The sales rep went out of his way to find a unemployment claims management company that would work with Ascentis and us. That company has helped us keep an 80% win rate for our claims!
User conference- Engage is an awesome way to learn more about the products Ascentis has available as well and meet up with the staff you work with every day!
I think this product, once you have multiple modules, what we're learning is (and one of the reasons why we're expanding our use of SAP SuccessFactors) its connectivity in the way it speaks and shares information in itself in the system. That allows us to share information easily across our organization with our business partners, with our other HR professionals, and with our employees.
I think it's a very user-friendly product as well.
Updating the system so it is one platform and not two.
Create changes to the benefit enrollment process and upgrade the system so hire dates do not need to be changed to trigger benefits for status changes.
Focus updates on HR Admin, mobile application, ATS and transitioning to one platform. Larger areas of focus have been on the payroll portion of the system with a few updates to other areas.
When something is broken, quicker turn time on fixing the issue.
I think just overall the configuration can be a little bit hard on the backend user, like myself, knowing which screens to go to. Better documentation on how we configure things would be a great resource for employees in the HR field that are making those backend changes.
This rating would be a 10 if it were not for some issues we have been having recently with the benefit carrier connections. The carrier connections are critical for us so how these issues are resolved will be key in our renewal decision.
We have put a vast amount of time and effort into our installation- and there is more work to be done, but the system has a lot of benefits that we plan to maximize and optimize in order to generate the greatest value for everyone involved
I'd give it a 7.5. If the modules were easier to access and not so buried (or placed in left field to find), I would give it a higher rating. As I said, as the potential to be great if ACCESS to other modules was easier.
SAP SuccessFactors is very user friendly, starting with Single Sign-on integration, then right away showing various tiles, such as organizational chart, time-off management, notifications of any review tasks, such as time-approval for team members. It has good navigation functions and language is very intuitive, so easy to understand for business users, no need to be too tech savvy.
They normally give you notice when an update will affect the use of the system. Otherwise, when we have an error , we send a message to the support team. Sometimes someone will get right back with you and sometimes it takes a while.
Until now we have not had serious availability problems with SuccessFactors, we had Microsoft Active Directory and SSO with ADFS and we had availability problems but because of problems with ADFS, we migrated to Azure AD and with that the availability problems of SuccessFactors because of ADFS went away. The only windows of unavailability that we have had are those that we are communicated to do maintenance and upgrades.
The performance is very good, the truth is that we have not had serious performance problems, some complex reports may take a little longer, but considering the complexity and the amount of records it is an acceptable time. We have never received a complaint from users regarding page loading speed.
Support is attentive and quick to answer the call and get the answer for you. If they for any reason cannot answer right then, they are back to you within a day and always seem to have a sense of urgency. You truly get the impression that they are aiming to make you happy.
SuccessFactors Employee Central gets a middle of the road rating from me because of the things it does really well - Training. It falls short with the objectives cascade and visibility amongst my reports. That's what brings it down to a 5. Objectives need to be clear and concise in order to gain buy-in from your reports, and SuccessFactors muddies that by poor delineation between cascaded attributes and my report's objectives. The whole objectives cascade can be reworked.
First, to clarify our "in-person" training was done mainly through Web-X meetings and conference calls. It was the closest thing we got to as far as an "in-person" training for this software. However, for the large majority of it, this type of training worked out well. We were able to share our screens and the trainer was able to share his/her screen. We could follow along with what we were doing in our database in real time and see how different functions worked and how manipulating our information could produce different results. It was also nice in that it provided for real-time results if something hadn't been coded correctly or we were having issues as to why something wasn't working the way we thought it should be. However, it did have some downsides in that we often had to rely on a conference phone and that made it difficult to hear people on both sides. Also, sometimes the trainers had internet difficulties when working from home and that caused issues with the WebX meetings.
The in-person training was with a consultancy, we have taken several courses, all very specific. They have been reports in ecp, general configuration of ec, reports and IAS
Ascentis HR has a number of online training videos to watch on a number of different topics. I gave it a lower rating because there is not much interactivity with the videos and it seems to cater to really only one or two learning styles. Plus, one has to be pretty motivated to go to a separate area to access the videos and then pull up a specific one to watch it and then learn. From my experience, people know that they are there, many just don't take the time and effort to go find them and actually watch them - especially since the username and password are different from their normal username and password.
We use SAP Learning, and we like it very much, the topics are updated along with the products, we have access to the SFX customer certifications and we have done them all, in general the SAP learning platform is very good and complete.
It was very easy to implement, but the customization pieces should really be fleshed out in order to determine the full need of an organization at the time of implementation. I believe if a little more time was spent on the requirements, the recruiting module would not have to be customized again at a cost at a later date.
As we were new with all this, we would greatly appreciate if we had assitance directly from SAP so we can implement the modules with all of its features and best practices. Unfortunately, we notice that the partner left some thing incomplete.
Ascentis has far better customer service and the implementation experience was also better. The ability to do a lot of customization is also easier with Ascentis as it's smaller organization. The payroll has positive and negatives compared to ADP but the accuracy is the same in both. Ascentis just started their community site which doesn't have a lot of traffic but hopefully can become more like ADP's community site, which was extremely helpful to me as an administrator.
At City, we currently use SAP on-premise applications for all HCM functionalities, and we have already implemented SF Onboarding, Recruitment, and Employee Central. Since we are long-time customers using all on-premise HCM applications, it's easy for business users to choose SuccessFactors products. We are delighted with the SAP HCM products we are currently using.
The scalability and flexibility of SuccessFactors is unbeatable. It is very easy to scale the product to new countries and areas, and with the help of CPI it can be easily integrated.
We did use this service to do analysis of the solution being implemented. It was a good check point during the project to see if everything is going as planned.
HR DPT. is much more effective, as we can assess any employee information no matter where we are, etc. This helps to provide information immediately when requested!
Employees have access to Ascentis, and therefore to their timecard, open enrollment, etc., from anywhere at any time!
Time, PTO requests, employee goals, and evaluations can be approved from anywhere at any time!
Recruiting can be accessed any where at any time, and this helps with hiring, internal communication, etc.
As far as ROI, I don't know what the investment is in the product, so I can't give you an exact number of profitability, but I can tell you for ease of use, it has been a lot easier to use the product. I think the only thing that I would prefer is instead of having the print screens, I'd prefer having video modules to explain how to use the different aspects of it.
