Brassring vs. Xactly SimplyComp (discontinued)

Kenexa is is well suited for any organization that has more than 3000 employees globally. I would not recommend this to startups or a growing organization with less than 3000 employees. But once you cross this number, Kenexa becomes useful and is a brilliant tool for global operations - recruiting. I would recommend this tool to any organization that has offices in many countries/geographies as well.

Incentivized

It's fine if your comp plans are really simple. It should have no problem multiplying ACV by a rep's BCR and maybe having a SPIFF or two. If you have accelerators, decelerators, complicated hierarchies, constant "exceptions to the rule", and need a platform to be flexible...SimplyComp simply won't be able to help here. Any "solutions" they implement will be short-term bandaids that will have to be addressed again sometime in the future

Incentivized

• Kenexa allows Boolean key word search within a particular requisition so it makes sifting through a high number of applicants manageable and effective
• Kenexa can be tailored to meet individual business needs. During the time we’ve had Kenexa here I’ve used it in support of a few different business segments and for each the way the system was used to “position” candidate statuses have varied based on the individual need of the business. One example is when interviewing a high volume of applicants internationally, we were able to send qualified applicants through to the “event manager” and it would enable the candidate to select his/her interview date/time based on previously submitted options inputted by our Kenexa users.
• Kenexa allows one to customize and score questions for each open requisition that applicants complete as they apply. The system then sorts applicants according to the score of candidate answers allowing for easy sorting of top qualified candidates.

• Reporting of financial statements is simple and easy to navigate.
• Plans can be customized to meet multiple different types of bonus/commission schedules.
• Salesforce integration further improves the automation of commission reporting.
• Administrators have the ability to add/remove plans as needed limiting the need to work with a support person everytime a change is made to the commission plan. This has been particularly useful in our company as we are still trying to develop the appropriate commission plan structure so we are frequently making changes to the existing platform. Our administrator has had no issues making changes as needed and can typically get them done quickly.

Incentivized

• BrassRing's application system for candidates is prone to freezing and crashing in the middle of the application causing potential candidates to lose all progress. I filled out the application myself and witnessed these issues first hand, on top of several complaints I received via phone and email from candidates attempting to apply via the BrassRing service. Also, the Parsing system within the application is not capable of pulling any meaningful information out of text documents.
• Each user must be added to each job in order for that job, and the candidates in it, to show up in relevant searches. This becomes a problem when a new team member joins the account and needs access to all of the previous openings just so that they can find candidates already in the system. The account I was working on involved literally hundreds of new openings a month, meaning that any movement of personnel on or off the account would mean having to update potentially thousands of old positions just to allow them to be able to mine the ATS for candidates. I don't see any particular reason why someone with access to the system should have to be given access to each individual job. If a particular position needs to be kept confidential for whatever reason then that individual position should be able to be set to only show to authorized recruiters. The rest of the positions should automatically be searchable by anyone with appropriate access to the ATS to allow for basic level candidate mining and movement.

• The platform is incredibly complex for non-basic commissions plans and setting things up is painful and time consuming.
• Importing functionality is improving, but still subpar, requiring a lot of manual entry for customer plans.
• The time lag to actually calculate commission (after a user clicks the "calculate" button) is long, leaving one sitting and waiting for the software to do its thing.
• For our non-US team members, we wanted insight into USD and local currency commission. SimplyComp doesn't support this.

Incentivized

I am confident that the Kenexa product will continue to evolve to meet the needs of our business in an ever changing work environment. The affiliation with IBM also plays a factor as we have a long standing successful relationship with IBM products. We will be looking to integrate other Kenexa products in the near future to streamline our HR processes.

I feel like I am pretty decent with computers and systems. It was fairly easy to use it after about a week or two . But I have seen people struggle with it as well as some people not use it at all. It can be slow at times and not work at times. But Its a fine system.

Just slow for what we are doing here

It is a very basic system. It may be OK for entry level positions only. The practice of removing CVs while the recruitment process is ON is disturbing and there is no one to explain or to inform why it is being done. Even a routine mail is not sent to the client/consultant. I am surprised how this system is continuing without too many complaints.

Our Implementation Consultant was fantastic. She made herself available, scheduled for in advance to accommodate our schedule, and was very helpful on our calls. She happily executed work on our behalf behind the scenes to help move our implementation along. The Customer Support team was mixed, as is expected with Support teams. Nothing horribly bad, but nothing to write home about. SimplyComp is a newest product for Xactly so everyone is still learning it

Incentivized

We purchased an out of the box solution and that worked well for us.

Incentivized

SF ATS was not available at the time and Taleo was thought to be too expensive. In retrospect, given the amount of customization and leveraging of other vendor technology for things like analytics I suspect any cost advantage we realized evaporated

Incentivized

This is the first time I've used a software for commision only. I've usually just used Salesforce to calculate my sales numbers and then do the math myself. This is nice to know the exact number but I don't think a lot better

Incentivized

• Kenexa has assisted us in identifying top talent within our target market of applicants.
• Kenexa may exclude potentially good associates that don't test well.
• Kenexa clearly defines specific categories and general notes for training, development, & coaching of associates on areas of opportunity.

Incentivized

• Positive impact is our reps are able to view their commissions much more clearly in SFDC. We are also able to calculate 95% of our commissions more rapidly (and have to spot-check the rest).
• Negative impact was the onboarding process and "learning as we go" rather than having a set process document for getting us live.

Incentivized