Epicor HCM (discontinued) vs. UKG Pro

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.

Incentivized

It's a strong yes for companies that need all-in-one HRIS that scales well especially mid-to-large orgs. It's incredible for complex payroll scenarios, multistate taxes, garnishments, the works. It also handles compliance reporting like a boss, so if audits haunt your dreams, this ones your girl. Less ideal for smaller teams; you'll end up paying for horsepower you wont use.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• UKG has an amazing support team to reach out to if assistance is needed
• All add-ons of UKG Pro integrate seamlessly making it a powerful software program
• UKG Pro is very configurable to meet the specific needs of companies
• It is easy to use and navigate
• The mobile app is loved by all employees and provides on-demand access
• The Ultimate Community is amazing!! On-demand information on all products and how they are used. Connect with other companies that use UKG Pro and learn from each other.
• The Learning Centre is also amazing!! Learning right at your fingertips anytime, anywhere.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Onboarding and recruiting need an environment that is more stable and dependable.
• Core Benefits could be enhanced to allow OE and LE events via the mobile app.
• Service and support need to be increased; days and weeks now, when we first went live, it was minutes and hours.
• Adapting all version of time management into one or two versions, at no cost to the customer would allow the resources from UTA, UTM and WFM Classic to be directed to future enhancements and would allow support services to be increased for the 2 remaining platforms.

Incentivized

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.

We have been a customer since 2015, we have gone to market and find that UKG Pro product is both user friendly for administrators as well as the employee. The qualify of support and service of UKG team is valued and we trust the product.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Mobile App: Really easy to use and its nice to have an HR software that actually has an mobile application to be able to enter time and to take care of everything with. Web App: The system is relatively easy to use with maybe a little training at the beginning if you have used another system. But the site is really easy to use and a lot better having everything under one roof

Incentivized

The product was always available.

For the most part UltiPro has been reliable, but it could definitely be better. There have been several notable server issues where we were unable to access the product or unable to utilize some of the features. Customer support is usually quick to respond to questions about these issues, but they do not proactively reach out to customers whose environments have been effected by outages

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.

Normally UKG Pro loads quickly. We had been having major issues with reports running in a timely manner but recently they broke out our virtual server to another instance where is wasn't sharing resources and that seems to have helped reporting run more efficiently.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The quality of UKG Support is related directly to the UKG rep. who handles the issue. In some cases you get someone who really is good at supporting the product and others may not have as much experience and it shows

Incentivized

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've been to a few in-person (hands on) training sessions and it is very similar to the online classes. You have the same reference material to look back on after the training. So regardless of in person training or online you really get the same thing.

Incentivized

Most of the online training was very generic (to be expected) but we had specific requirements for configuration that could have been better addressed with more individual sessions earlier on from our project team. However, we did finally begin booking training sessions with our implementation team which were recorded, and so provided additional information for how to correctly configure and test the system.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Make sure you have all of your tax account information with all the states you are registered in available and that you are knowledgeable about the filing status, frequency, etc. We had some unique challenges with our state unemployment tax set up that I was not aware of and needed to be addressed prior to going live. Working with the state unemployment office can be a challenge.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We used ADP WFN prior to switching to UKG. We interviewed three different payroll companies to see what our options were. UKG stood out and aligned with our company values. The sales team was very helpful and asked questions about what we were currently doing and how they could assist with simplifying things. I personally had a side meeting with them to see if there were options for a process that we manually process and if UKG could actually eliminate the process. We came to the conclusion that we weren't able to get it 100%, but we could pull 80% of what we needed from UKG, and then we would only need to manipulate 20% of the information. It was also determined from that meeting that we wouldn't need to pay extra to have a special report built. The customer service is what we were sold on. The other companies that we looked at didn't give us the confidence that their customer service would be any better than what we previously had.

Incentivized

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.

The UltiPro HRMS platform offers Flexibility & Accessibility. We are able to add a component company to our existing profile with ease. UltiPro provides a step-by-step guide to component company implementation. The process was flawless! the HRMS homepage is customizable. We place a large amount of data on our HRMS homepage for employees to view and print, regardless of their location, as long as they have internet access. The Human Resources Department no longer prints and distribute Employee Handbooks, Policies & Procedures, and Group Health SPDs, as this information is available on HRMS.

Incentivized

• Epicor HCM had a positive impact on our ROI by matching the right employees to specific roles based on their set of skills and competencies.
• The tool positively impacted the performance and efficiencies throughout the different corporate departments.
• It could have a negative impact on user satisfaction when it comes to support and response time.

Incentivized

• Personally as a veteran user of UKG Pro, in past employers I have seen many amazing increases in employee engagement and ROI.
• With QuVa, we are still very new to the UKG Pro platform and are just now beginning to get out of the implementation phase where we can start measuring the change. I will be looking for changes in Overtime spending to reduce as a result of more informative and actionable dashboards for managers to monitor overtime and timeclock abuses in real time. I am also expecting employees to engage more with new features being pushed out to the mobile app.

Incentivized