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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TriNet
Score 7.1 out of 10
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TriNet provides small and medium size businesses (SMBs) with full-service HR and payroll solutions tailored by industry. TriNet also offers specialized services through client access to HR representatives for advice and notifications on impactful regulatory changes.
We've been with TriNet before I even started at the company. Before this, we didn't have a great experience with other providers based on what my team has told me. TriNet offers the most services for the least cost and the benefit of having one specific representative taking …
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.
TriNet is perfect for a smaller business or nonprofits that can't get competitive rates for health care. I can't really speak to larger businesses as I don't have comparison data, but even when we used a PEO in the past, we still were paying high rates. The savings were almost enough to offset the cost of having a PEO vs just a Payroll service, but our employees appreciate the personal savings as well, as we were able to cover a larger portion of the cost due to the price difference. Specifically, our rates for most of our employees were cut in about half
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.
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.
a better ATS - the current functionality is very limited. For an organization our size we more "power". I like to be able to run custom reports from the ATS as an example
Reporting - there's a stack of standard reports but we need and want custom
stop changing the layout. We don't care about the layout its the content that matters. get rid of the turtles or hippos or whatever they are
Manager access. Let us give managers access to their employees info without having access to EVERYONE
Be honest. If you cant do something, you cant do it. Let us know so we can make other plans and move on
"I'll put a ticket in" = this is where your dreams go to fade away. See above
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.
This is one stop shopping perse. They provide tools for Benefits and 401k. There reports are easy to read and the support given from Trinet support is awesome. Having everything in one place is best then having multiple places for things. Why change if things are working well? All the information is all there when needed.
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.
There is just so much information in the system and sometimes it is attached to other systems in a way that it's hard to know where to find things and a TriNet rep needs to walk you through finding it. Using chat they tend to copy and paste huge strings of instructions into the chat which is challenging to test while scrolling through all that text
They used to be really good at this when I had a dedicated person. Now that it's a general customer service account, it's really gone downhill and I don't get responses at all sometimes
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.
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.
I like TriNet's multi-layered support. We have dedicated support for payroll and platform, HR, and benefits. We also have an account manager we can contact when we need to escalate an issue or get additional help. The 24/7 chat support is also outstanding for smaller routine issues. All support at TriNet has been extremely responsive. We sometimes have complicated issues like restricted stock vesting, 83(b) elections and other matters and our dedicated support team always helps us do things correctly and on time.
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.
it's been awhile, but I recall them being helpful. I got through a lot of it and when I needed help, they can walk me through it over the phone. It's also pretty user friendly in general at a platform. I don't really know what else to type, but they came and helped me in person and also when there was something new, they came and talked to me. They have not done that since with the new model that I hate
Since this was already implemented. I have another employee briefly train me. Then Trinet rep gave me some training as needed for things that came up. For one payroll preview report I figured it could be done, but I had asked the rep to be sure. One important training was when there was an employee leaving the company.
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.
not applicable as I implementation was done 5 years ago and have no recollection of the details of the process. Above it says to skip question if not involved in the process but it will not allow me to skip it as it states explanation requitred thus making this process extremely frustrating.
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.
TriNet worked with our smaller employee headcount and offered coverage for both the US and Canada. And we switched from Insperity because of the cost savings which were significant. I liked Insperity but TriNet has been an excellent firm to work with as well.
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.
Cause it can be used as mentioned for sites and departments. Or even if employees work out of state and not at the HQ the the employer. Trinet makes is easy to do for payroll in other states as well.
I mainly used the ATS and I had to do a lot of extra work than other ATS's I have used in the past.
When hiring a candidate, transferring the information from the ATS to the HRIS is nil, there is a lot you have to manually put in, which can be very frustrating.
I like the way how I can upload a candidates resume seamlessly.
