Ceridian Dayforce HCM is a cloud-based platform encompassing HR, payroll, benefits, and talent and workforce management. It provides companies with a scalable framework and real-time data, such as continual pay calculations, to enable efficient decision-making.
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SmartSearch ATS
Score 6.6 out of 10
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SmartSearch is a web-based talent acquisition and staffing management software. Features include job posting to job boards and social media outlets, resume parsing, and automated workflow. SmartSearch advertises robust customer service and implementation assistance.
Ceridian Dayforce is well suited in payroll where the system has multiple functions to audit, review, and process payroll. According to the new Ceridian Dayforce functionality coming soon the use of AI technology to engage in payroll in a more efficient way is a great way to scale this area of the system.
I think our environment has stretched SmS and their capabilities (positively) but we have grown together and developed an enormously capable system together that is now very well integrated into our business. For doing applicant tracking, requisition management and offer management that has really been strong. I think we can partner together and build some better analytics and reporting capabilities that would be better suited for our business.
The search functions are outstanding. It is the reason we originally went with SmartSearch many years ago. The ability to do very simple or complex searches gives the recruiting staff great flexibility in how they look for and narrow down candidates.
The hire and onboarding traks allow us to create very specific processes we want our staff to follow to insure a consistent and repeatable result. I can create traks that can be very general or traks that literally provide emails and reminders to all of the players (recruiters, managers, candidates, etc...) every step of the way. This is particularly helpful where we have customers who have extremely stringent contractual guidelines that must be followed.
Support. Their customer support is second to none. We always joke that they are our favorite vendor to deal with.... Anytime we have an issue or question. They are there to walk us through it. The training is on target and the staff has always been friendly and more than eager to help make us successful with the tool.
SmartSearch has a steep learning curve if you want to extensively use the features like automated tasks and the report writer
Technical support is spotty and sometimes very frustrating, they don't respond for weeks at a time.
SmartSearch user interface is old and has far less ability to customize the interface than other tracking systems
SmartSearch has virtually no ability to connect directly with other software and allows now other software to connect in - so no Microsoft Flow, no Zapier, no mail parser, etc. and since Smart Search capabilities are limited, not being able to integrate it with other platforms easily is unfortunate.
We are highly invested in Ceridian's Dayforce product. It give us the flexibility and scaling that our growing company needs. Its potential reaches beyond the basic HR functions to the decision making that our Management Team needs. Ceridian is always innovating the employee and employee experiences to offer cutting edge options.
I believe over the past 30 or so pages (or so it seems), you have every reason for my business to continue as a SmartSearch ATS client and user. The support is off the charts great the few times I need them (generally not even once per year). My business has been a client since 2004. That should say it all.
I think it's very usable for the employee. I don't think it is as easy for the HR/PR admins - especially if there is an issue. There are so many setup screens that need to be looked at to try to figure out why payroll isn't calculating properly, hours aren't feeding over correctly, or benefits are not calculating properly. For the most part, they can't do their own troubleshooting. The same is true for the managers. Our managers find it cumbersome to go into make any schedule changes after the schedules have been generated.
There are so many facets of SmartSearch, that to know everything about it is nearly impossible. While it is mainly straight forward, there is a lot. After using the program for a while, you become pretty comfortable with the basics and can start adding some of the other features.
We have never experienced a total/unplanned outages that effected our ability to process payroll. However, there are times when the application's speed is significantly effected - and processing a payroll may take up to twice as long as normal.
My license for SmartSearch goes back to 2004. It has always been available for me - don't remember a single time it was not available in all of those years.
We haven't noticed any slow-down due to the integration of Dayforce WFM with our Ceridian HPL products (HRIS and Payroll). The new HTML view of the timesheets don't load as quickly as the old Silverlight view - however, we have gotten used to the change.
Most of the time the support is great; it's not always super efficient but I always get the help I need. Occasionally it takes a lot longer than we had hoped or get conflicting responses. We had one ticket recently where we were told we would have to pay the service team to support us on the project and then another person called the next day with the solution to our query and was able to find a solution easily. Generally, though, the response is great and they either walk me though how to do something via a Zoom Meeting or they email step-by-step instructions on how to do it and say if I have questions we can set up a meeting to discuss further.
Once you get the 1 person on the phone they are very knowledgeable and tend to solve the problem. The issue is there are not enough resources to handle all the clients. Their primary clients are "recruiting firms" and I think that is where most of the their support resources go
The online training is very good, there is a wide variety of topics offered and several dates and times. The instructors are very knowledgeable about the subjects they are teaching. There are so many ways to program Dayforce that just the basics seem to be covered in the class.
Have a strong internal team. Communicate with your implementation team - they are there to make it work for you. Take the time to really think about how you want the system to work for you - in some cases, you may need to rethink your own business practices to see if you are working harder when the system could do it for you
Using the basic functions of SmartSearch is an easy implementation. But consider carefully what your organization needs to really drive placements. Because we only did a basic implementation first, we were caught off guard when later trying to implement more functions and realizing that the capabilities were limited or were difficult to learn and implement and realizing that tech support was not going to be consistent.
All of the info for Payroll, HR updates, employee updates, Time worked and PTO are in a single application, with a single login, updated in every screen or module in real time. There is no lag in data from screen to screen or from user to user, its almost instant.
Functionally, SmartSearch is not on the same page as ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter as a platform is much more geared toward helping applicants and is essentially a glorified resume database. SmartSearch offers so much more in terms of features and abilities, that would not really be appropriate to try and compare the two. Similarly, the overall use of SmartSearch is an apples and oranges comparison to LinkedIn Talent. LinkedIn is great for sourcing and attracting talent, but in terms of tracking candidates all the way through a hiring process and tracking a heavy volume of job orders across a variety of states and locations, the two just don't really compare.
Overall, we are extremely happy with the Dayforce WFM module. Our biggest pain point is concerning the twice annual software upgrades - which is the only reason I haven't rated them as a '10'. Because every customer is configured differently, the upgrades can sometimes have adverse effects on our current configured policies/rules. And although they roll-out the upgraded version in a test environment several weeks before go-live, not all testing is accurate in that environment. Some issues do not present themselves until you are working with live punches.
Performance Reviews/Comp used to be handled via paper and tracking/reporting was a nightmare - having all of that in the system is so much more efficient and provides huge ROI
Our organization used to have big problems with hiring managers going rogue and hiring positions that aren't approved by Finance - we built an approval workflow in the system that triggers before any req is approved which has completely solved this problem
Dayforce Wallet has been a huge perk for our employees - it's heavily used and our crew love it
That's easy - they have helped us grown and make more money. The core element of their technology (e.g. the ability to search for, identify and contact candidates is excellent).
They are a business partner and do their very best to help us succeed.
