Epicor HCM (discontinued) vs. Zoho Recruit

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

With the business I am in I have to be able to search and reach potential candidates from hours away due to the scope of the contract we have covering a solid couple hundred sq. miles of the state; so being able to have a software that can search, sort, rank, and suggest candidates without having to spend ours of time or driving hours for an interview I can connect with one person and make a decision and have the software there for them and send an email or two with the steps and instructions and 5 minutes later be doing the same for another candidate hours away without even needing to leave the office or even from home and knowing that I'm able to monitor and adjust the steps or make adjustments along the way and being able to trust that it is choosing quality candidates and able to help me hire the right people to do my job to keep my contractors and homeowners safe is amazing for our business.

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

• Like other HR-based services, Zoho Recruit allows you to track the behavior of candidates during the execution of your hiring process, so that you can create constant notes of any problems that may arise and that may prevent a proper job.
• The relationship between employers and candidates can be measured, which is excellent for creating reports on the development of each hiring process, and employees can then be evaluated on their ability to manage and communicate correctly with each candidate under their direct care.
• Hiring sessions can be recorded using a variety of methods. It does not necessarily have to be done using an audiovisual recording tool (which is possible through different integrations) but a convenient recording system that allows you to note down important data, and where even the candidate's photographs can be saved.
• We believe that some features of Zoho Recruit's support service could be improved, although this is probably a general service by the Zoho team for all their programs. The staff is not sufficiently explanatory, and therefore we have not been able to meet our expectations for troubleshooting.
• We like that using Zoho Recruit is so convenient, and that it interfaces well with the other services that the entire Zoho suite has to offer: Zoho Recruit is a good alternative for human resources, which shows a reliable and easy-to-manage operability, so that all registration and follow-up processes are simple.

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.

• Zoho Recruit should allow for customization of pipelines based on department/role to be hired.
• Zoho Recruit should allow for customization of the vendor portal allowing the vendor to type in key data points about candidate profiles that are typically not found on the resume, such as notice period, current salary and expected salary.
• Zoho Recruit could simplify the blueprinting process built into the tool which allows for smooth flow of candidates through the system.

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 evaluated every other ATS on the market, and do so every 1-2 years just to make sure we aren't missing out on anything better, and found that Zoho offers more functionality than any ATS with a per-recruiter-price under $100. Once it introduces automated job alerts and candidate login functionality there will be no reason for us to look elsewhere.

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

The user interface looks clunky and designed by engineers. I suspect it didn't undergo much user testing.

Incentivized

The product was always available.

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.

Incentivized

I give Zoho Recruit this rating because over all, it has helped me to organize my candidates and saved me time and energy in organizing them myself. Without Zoho Recruit, I simply would not be able to keep my talent pool straight, and it certainly gets the job done. I took off a couple points because if I download a resume after already inputting the candidate into Zoho, it won't automatically sync the two profiles up. It also does not remind me when a task is expired.

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.

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

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

Zohorecruit is the best platform for small and mid-sized companies. It will help us to save lots of time in the recruitment and hiring journey. We have used Oorwin also in the past, but this is much better than the Oorwin, and it's very robust and easy to use, and the site is very fast.

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.

• 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

• I can't say anything about ROI, but Zoho Recruit made our recruitment process highly effective.
• We did not need to hire more HR managers as the system helped to manage the processes automatically.
• We saved money with Zoho Recruit for sure. And this was very best.

Incentivized