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.
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Paylocity
Score 8.2 out of 10
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Paylocity provides 24/7 access to your online payroll and human resource data management. Paylocity offers highly customizable payroll functionality, as well as HR, benefits administration, and time and talent management programs.
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.
As an HR/Payroll Manager and Practice Administrator, Paylocity has allowed me to keep much better track of everything and perform my job functions at a much faster and more efficient pace. The stress of manually keeping records of everything is gone since switching to Paylocity.
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.
Payroll is made pretty easy. I love that we have the ability to log into payroll, we just upload the information from commissions, things like that where there are exceptions to a regular payroll run. It may make it very easy to do that, just a quick upload. Additionally, when we're in the payroll grid, it gives us the ability to just make quick changes to people's pay or their tax schedule, tax withholdings, things like that without having to go through a lot of different screens. It's just very easy to access just for the click of a button. Love that.
We talked about performance reviews, talked about payroll with benefits administration, it allows us to utilize EDI feeds with our benefit vendors so it creates a seamless, but we just enter the information into Paylocity and then it seamlessly provides that information to our vendors. That's been really helpful. And adjusting benefits is also very easy within Paylocity. I love the recent edition of compensation analysis information, so I'm able to go into the compensation module and look for jobs that are similar to a job title at our company. I can enter the job description, I give them what state that the person or the job is in, and it pops out compensation data. It gives me different options, so titles that might be similar. So if there's not something that's an exact fit, I'm able to find something really, really close. It's been a huge upgrade because before that I was having to use a different vendor and paying $400 per job and now it's significantly less expensive to Paylocity and I'm still getting great quality data. It's been very helpful.
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.
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.
There are several technical issues we have experienced this past year with the employee onboarding process that we are still waiting to have resolved. Overall our experience with Paylocity has been positive, and we love how user-friendly and easy to navigate the system is. It has made all of our HR processes much more streamlined and efficient.
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.
I would give it that overall rating because we implemented in 2023 and so although that may feel like a lot of time, it still is, we still have a lot to learn and so I'm optimistic that as we learn more that rating will increase.
Over the last 3 years, we've only had one major service issue that rendered Airbase unusable for us for about 24 hours. That said, they navigated the SVB bank crisis very well and made sure funds were available during that time.
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.
We had some minor hiccups throughout the year but they have all been fixable. Paylocity integrates well with our 401k provider, Principal, and our benefits, OneDigital. It makes it simple to house everything and have it all connected. It doesn't slow anything down to have Principal integrated. It makes it more efficient
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.
It is very hard to get answers to your questions, you cannot speak to someone without days of requesting assistance or answers and then eventually can get a call back and then it is usually resolved fairly quickly. But NOT easy to get that help.
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.
I didn't have in-person training, but I'm sure it was just as great as any other training/assistance Paylocity provides. Paylocity customer service is always available. You never have to be on hold and their answers are always accurate and timely. Documents in the help section are helpful as well. My in-person training was conducted y one of our employees who was involved in the initial set-up and training of all employees. She was excellent.
Our rep was very thorough and made sure we fully understood the software before turning us loose alone. Paylocity was very good to do periodic check ins to ensure we understood the features and answered any questions we had. The training reps are very well trained and are very patient with clients.
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.
Implementation was a bit bumpy and Paylocity team not always available for next steps and/or questions. I feel like Paylocity could have done a better job in their fact finding as far as what we were currently doing, our payroll policies and needs, etc. so that we would have run into less issues as we moved forward.
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.
We went through demos five years ago and we evaluated ADP and UKG in the past, and we used Paycor previously. In the past, I've used ADP and Kronos when it was still Kronos at other companies. So several different ones. One of the main reasons was that it was all one platform and you didn't have to log into other platforms for it to communicate with each other. Payroll talks to time that talks back to payroll and you don't have to log into anything separate. The reporting was also really easy and you didn't have to have a master's degree to do it.
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.
We have gone from a medium sized company to a larger company with no issues whatsoever with Paylocity being able to keep up or do what we need it to do for the size of our needs. In fact, it does more than we even use at this juncture
Some are knowledgable others not as much and sometimes instead of helping you fix the issue will just give you some directions and expect you to try to figure it out yourself. Also, when your Account Manager needs to escliate the issue to another group, it can take a long time for them to get to your issue and there's no commuication.
So when I first found Paylocity back in 2013 and was pitching it to the senior leadership company, my PowerPoint presentation, our return on investment was reducing errors in time and labor. We did paper time sheets back in the day back in 2007, 2008. So we were always running paper time sheets, Microsoft Excel or other standalone products, printing them out and hand keying them into a payroll system. So my ROI to our company was to save money and time on data entry and also to better manage the taxes. So we pay for the tax service, we're in 27 states having to manage that. Previously we were responsible for knowing what every state tax codes were, what every state tax compliance rules were. So with Paylocity we signed up for a tax service and that has been a huge return on investment.
