Ascentis (discontinued) vs. SmartRecruiters, now part of SAP SuccessFactors

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.

Incentivized

SmartRecruiters has allowed us to enable our hiring managers to self-service their requirements for recruitment, simplifying our internal processes. We have visibility of recruitment requirements and significantly improved our approvals process using the software. We have been able to configure our hiring processes relevant to different areas of the business. Collaboration for our hiring teams (managers and business partners) is simple and effective. Candidate experience is enhanced and engaging. The platform has brought many benefits to our Resourcing business partners and hiring managers. We have visibility and insightful data which has integrity, allowing us to make informed business decisions. Our offer process has seen significant improvements and provides an engaging candidate experience, previously this was a labour-intensive process that is now streamlined and automated. The recently launched Community for collaboration amongst customers is very helpful and insigtful for how other people are using the software and exploring ideas with each other

Incentivized

• 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!

Incentivized

• Job Referrals - can easily refer others to a job posting and view the status
• Job Postings - can easily search for job openings and read job description and criteria
• Application online - Can easily apply for the job directly and see who the hiring manager and hiring recruiter is

Incentivized

• 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.
• System needs updates to support AAP reporting.

Incentivized

• Settings page can be difficult to navigate & find what you're looking for
• Job approval chains would be better with additional qualifying fields so that we can segregate different areas of the business better
• The ability to edit an existing offer template in-system would improve the experience, rather than having to edit offline and upload a whole new version.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I thoroughly enjoy using SmartRecruiters and have shared this feedback with those responsible, however I am not a decision maker in the process. I understand that at the moment there are lots of factors affecting the economy and business outcomes, so I cannot comment with certainty on the renewal of SmartRecruiters at this time, not involved in the confirmation of renewal.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I would give this rating as overall it a great combo of all your problems. With just one click you can get away with all your problems such as recruitment, candidate update, Interview scheduling, updating candidates, reports of a job perspective, and recruiters perspective. Usability is worth of SmartRecruiters. The dashboard is also very attractive and once you open you will love working on this platform again and again. I would say it is the best platform to use once for smooth work in your organization.

Incentivized

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.

Rarely is there an issue and if the product is down, it typically is restored quickly.

Yes, this pages do load pretty good but there are times when things are slow and I believe that's because they are sometimes trying to do updates.

I have no complaints about performance. The system works virtually flawless.

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.

Incentivized

Response is normally very fast. There are times, however, when the response is not useful. It is difficult to work with the reporting and the offer letter templates, and the front line support agents usually are not very knowledgeable. Second, if there are any issues with integrations, the regular support agents will not be able to help you. You'll have to create that ticket and ask them to escalate it to an integration specialist.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Quick and easy to learn.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

It really was a painless and easy process to switch to SmartRecruiters.

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.

Incentivized

I've really enjoyed using SmartRecruiters, but these other ATSs that we've checked out offer better reporting features and price points. Over time, we may be transitioning off of SmartRecruiters to one of these ATSs because the price is a set price where SmartRecruiters has employee-based pricing model. Also, these other software products offer better reporting features that would eliminate some of our manual tracking process that we're currently doing.

Incentivized

Large acquisition would be very complicated, seems more appropriate for companies under 100

Incentivized

No explanation really, just a great product.

• 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.

Incentivized

• In terms of ROI, SR helped our business greatly in returning precious time to my productivity in business management, as well as my team's, so that we could get back to the main work we were hired for. The SR process did most of the heavy lifting.

Incentivized