BambooHR is an cloud-based human resources solution that provides onboarding, payroll, and benefits management. It also offers automated time-off management and employee self-service.
$10
per month per user
Epicor HCM (discontinued)
Score 9.6 out of 10
N/A
Epicor HCM supplied human resource management system (HRMS) capabilities, but Epicor has stopped offering this functionality and company's HR applications are no longer available.
Performance management - the prompt questions are really helpful in distilling thoughts! Though it would still be great to have an optional box for additional feedback that might not be directly related to the prompt questions. The clean interface and user friendliness is a definite plus! But some specific features, eg. on TOIL application - it would be helpful to ensure it is intuitive to use, rather than confusing with the input process.
While Epicor HCM is functional for enterprises with many branch locations, I feel that is best suited out of the box for locations with corporately centralized HR. This overcomes some of the shortcomings of security capability and the need to spend a lot of time in configuring routing. The CSS portion of Epicor HCM is not as robust as competing systems and should not be used if corporations are actively looking to onboard at a high rate.
Recruiting- communications are easy for both the internal team and candidates
Onboarding- the onboarding tasks are great. I love being able to attach documents as well as delay sending out tasks
Communication- the employee community is a great tool to keep our communications clean and organized. I love that we now have insight as to who has viewed the comms
Security is always an issue with payroll/HR software. Security in Epicor HCM is very robust. In our manufacturing facility it is important that supervisors have access to their employee's information and the software allows me to limit access to only the correct department. There is also menu security that will allow me to remove access to features by user and grant access only to what they require to do the job.
This software is the repository for many different types of employee information. For example in the past we have tracked skills training by employee in either an Access database or an Excel spreadsheet. We are currently in the process of loading individual employee skill information which will allow us to query the database to pull any information that is not already a canned report in the system.
Payroll tax reports are handled by the system seamlessly. In our old system I had to keep confidential employees in a different "company" which meant I had to combine the two companies and do quarterly and year end tax reporting manually. The confidential flag in Epicor HCM allows me to utilize reports directly from the system and also creates the files needed to file online for both my quarterly SUI and W-2 reporting to SSA at year end.
The biggest issue is on performance assessments. We are not able to customize the reminder dates so the automated reminder dates shown to people and on the email reminders is often misaligned with our actual internal deadlines. This causes a lot of confusion each review cycle.
Also on performance management, there is no way to push feedback to a supervisor for their direct report. The only way is if the manager requests the feedback from you. This limits the opportunity for people to give real time feedback throughout the half.
I wish we had a way to track notes from employee 1:1s in BambooHR® so when we do our performance reviews we can track. That may be a module we didn't purchase but it would facilitate more continuous and comprehensive evaluation of people at review time.
Administrative set-up is a nightmare --> Set-up such as e-mail templates (routing, candidate communication, alerts) and configuring security rights for users, includes looking at list of approximately 100 fields some of which seem like duplicates. Interestingly, you may find that the field you need is missing. You'll need to create a work-around or pay Professional Services to get it set-up correctly, even though they should logically be available. Another alternative is that you need to go to an obscure task under Utilities that you've never used before so you can uncheck a box.
Auto alerts seem like a great idea, but the set-up is limited in such a way that you will probably need a Filter SQL statement to get it the way you want. (Ex: No way on the birthday alert to simply filter to active employees. Get ready to send out over 500 alerts for ALL employees and dependents.) You can either ask someone in your IT department or again, go to Professional Services ($$$).
Routing also seems like a great idea but if you make too many changes in the routing set-up, it errors out and doesn't allow you to submit changes. Instead you must make only a few changes, submit, then go to the task again. Efficiency is not a concern for HCM. If you have more than 5-10 routes in the system for certain tasks, this can slow down the entire routing page, making you wait between 20-40 seconds to approve and go to the next route. This will make for a fun time during your annual review process when you've got 100+ reviews routed to you.
Epicor staff (except for customer support) are salespeople--first and foremost --> Glassdoor reviews show that Epicor "emphasizes billable hours above all else" -- we've experienced this firsthand. Most account managers, implementation and interface consultants will try get you on the phone (at a whopping $100-$300/hr) to talk about nothing and avoid delivering what you've paid them for. If they're not doing that, they may just ignore your e-mails and never get back to you.
Unreliable customer support --> Customer support staff seems understaffed and sometimes lack technical knowledge. Not surprising considering that HCM is so convoluted and frustrating. Even the most expert support reps are stumped by questions--the system is just that confusing. Sometimes there is no resolution at all so your call is turned into a service change request. Then you cross your fingers and hope it gets addressed in the next upgrade. I submitted one support call over two months ago. It is still open. Sadly that is not out of the norm.
Unexplainable errors in interfaces --> Payroll and benefits interfaces have been unreliable. Employee data changes are dropped with no explanation; ergo, there is no possible solution. Unless of course you want your benefits consultant to spend several hours ($$$) researching it or very, very slowly talking you through it over the phone.
Customizations that keep on breaking and breaking and breaking --> HCM releases updates almost twice a year, with "new and improved" features. Sometimes the features don't work, as if the software was updated without any testing or foresight. You'll find that customizations you've paid for have broken inexplicably and need to be re-done. Of course you will be charged for the extra hours needed to fix the customizations.
There's nothing wrong with this platform. I would recommend it to any business starting with more than 10 employees. I will continue to use the program for as long as I need to, hoping they continue being tremendous and finding other ways to incorporate more technology.
I just recently lost my job after 16 years, and purposely sought out a position where I could continue to work with HCM. I am now in a similar role to what I was in before, and can continue the same type of work and enhancements that I did at my other company.
Just because there's a little complex with everything that's rolling out and so I have had to walk some people through functionality because there's just so much to click at this point. Another thing is the review process doesn't allow for ratings with a number scale, and I know we're kind of getting away from that as an industry, but with our previous system we have been rating people for their merit percent increase on their wages at the end of the year and it doesn't have the functionality to do that.
Where it's good: Epicor HCM at a high level has a straight-forward interface for navigating to the main content sections at either the employee or HR administrator level. The interfaces are consistent throughout the application, and after a brief learning curve, one can navigate through the remainder of the interface pages in any content area without too much difficulty. HCM also has great tools for making sure the analysis of data is available and accessible to non-programmer personnel. Where it struggles: One thing working against the usability of the HCM product is the overuse of the row-selection scheme for all many to many relationships. HCM uses a "select the row from the left frame" and then "enter data corresponding to this row in the right frame" scheme for most of its data entry components. One example of overuse is the employee address entry. During the first setup of an employee or during a candidate's application, HCM allows the user to specify multiple addresses. While this functionality is desired for long-term storage, an option doesn't exist to forgo this interface type for quick initial entry for the primary use case (one address per employee). This is one example, but is particularly visible when a candidate must also bridge the learning curve.
Yes, there is a huge team in the back of the online platform or it looks like it because I have never been left without an answer when I have a question or waiting from a response on my chat .... There must be a huge team, this is so great and I always seem to have someone that is very knowledgeable too. So many times in the past I had to leave with customer service that would connect you with someone else because of the expertise, here everyone seems to be some kind of an expert in the HR function.
I love BambooHR. Reports are easy to run and download and it usually covers any types of requests I get from the management team. You get excel or .csv downloads/reports and it is fast and simple, not too crowded so it is easy to read through. We don't integrate the tool yet but again, soon we will. we just did not had the time to utilize it yet but that's the plan.
The product performs well. As with any software there are bugs and system enhancements needed, but there are channels in place to let Epicor know what they are so they can add to future versions. Open Enrollment and Salary Planning can be a bit slow at times.
I use the chat feature most often and the wait times can be long, but often I do get right in. When they promise to follow up, they always do. It seems the "support hero's" are very well training and knowledgeable. There are lots of resources in the form of print or video, too.
There have been a lot of issues with it at first, but we've been figuring a lot of them out on our own. Needing patches to the program though is something that I didn't expect to happen as often as it does.
We had someone from Epicor come on site to do training, and we "shared" our trainer with another company who was also doing the same major upgrade. It was nice to have another company there so we could ask each other (and the trainer) questions. This allowed for more meaningful discussions during training.
Overall this training was great and our implementation specialist was wonderful and very helpful. We felt really prepared once our training was completed, But we could get additional help immediately even when we were live. The continuation Support heros after implementation are wonderful and you can always get a LIVE person each time you call into their office.
We implemented bambooHR in Fall, 2023 then implemented Payroll 1/1/24. A vital piece of information was not known or missed in that we are exempt from State Unemployment Tax and have a Reimbursement Set-up, so bambooHR did not send Payroll Reports to the State. Those reports need to be sent regardless if we are exempt or not.
As stated earlier, you won't find all of the problems and things that you would like to improve on until you implement. After go-live, you then will have a long period of adjustment as you get the data and processes to work the way that you really want them to.
Lattice is much more oriented towards performance management. It includes many more advanced performance management features from building actual assessments to also performance development planning. BambooHR® for us was a place to centralize our data and build from within as well as connect to external integrations. PerformYard is what we used prior to BambooHR® for onboarding workflows and performance reviews, but BambooHR® is far superior.
Epicor pales in comparison to the HRIS and report building systems listed above. Unfortunately, Epicor was implemented prior to my joining the organization. From what I was told, Epicor was chosen because of its ability to be customizable to any industry. However, what we have learned is that this isn't the whole truth. While Epicor might be able to customize to your specific industry with creating certain data fields, it still cannot function properly to meet the needs of your respective industry. For example, my industry is education. There are numerous grant propasals that we send that require specific demographic information. Consequently, when we try to run a report in Epicor, that information is never captured with accuracy which makes sending these reports for grants a herculean task, especially when these donors question our data.
Since my organization has dropped with employees, I always find ways to reduce costs. I thought there would be a cheaper option, but I was glad that my package included a lot for the price, and downgrading would cost more. The rep could have let me downgraded and taken me to a higher package. I am thankful that didn't happen.
There is so much you can do with this platform, it is incredible and so welcoming. We don't utilize it 100% yet just because we are growing and the HR team has not been able to concentrate on other areas offered to us but but we will soon. Which is also why we got the product, specifically because what BambooHR can do to help us meet our growing business needs.
Performance is not noticeably impacted by adding more users. Microsoft IIS and SQL are Epicor HCM's underlying technology and have proven reliability. In addition, IS staff are easy to find that know these technologies.
Time Savings: Automating onboarding, payroll, and employee record management has cut HR admin time by up to 30%, allowing teams to focus on strategic initiatives instead of paperwork.
Improved Onboarding: Streamlined workflows have cut onboarding time by nearly 50%, ensuring new hires are productive faster, reducing turnover risk in the critical first months.
- Enhanced Informational Clarity: Centralized employee data means fewer errors and faster access to essential information, reducing compliance risks and increasing accuracy in reporting.
