Oracle PeopleSoft HCM vs. PDS Vista

Oracle PeopleSoft HCM is great for onboarding new hires. The process, including some newer direct entry features, has been streamlined and made more intuitive. However, there is a steep learning curve for those who are completely unfamiliar with enterprise systems as a whole. In my experience, Oracle PeopleSoft HCM's updates have historically failed to improve the intuitiveness of navigation and features even through a move to a SaaS configuration in the cloud. This makes it hard to train new HR staff because there may be five different ways to accomplish the same thing and none of them are intuitive enough to just "figure out". This has been a bone of contention for me for all Oracle products for my entire 20+ year career, and it has never been fully addressed.

Incentivized

As Vista HRMS is fully customizable to suit your needs, a company should determine if they have a current employee who can do the work themselves otherwise they will need to consider the additional cost of asking PDS to do the customizations for them. There are additional modules that we aren't currently making use of, but each company should learn about the functionality of each of them as some may be more beneficial than others. When gathering your questions, ask all potential users of the system what they would want to see in an HRMS. We did so before selecting Vista HRMS and we got pages and pages of questions and comments and made sure that each item was addressed beforehand and was something that we would be able to incorporate into the system. You have the option of taking the system in house or being a hosted client. Make sure you figure out what resources your IT department has available. If you have a dedicated administrator who will do all the upgrades and enhancements great, otherwise you may need PDS to help out and having PDS host may be a better option

• Oracle PeopleSoft HCM is one of the best product and has helped implement the complex Business functionalities in the Higher Education business in a very streamlined process.
• Oracle PeopleSoft HCM helped in moving from 34 different legacy system to one centralized system which helps immensely in maintaining the data and reporting purpose.
• Oracle PeopleSoft HCM also helps immensely in data analytics and trend analysis which helps immensely in preparing for the resourcing and planning for the peak season in advance and be better prepared to handle the quarterly on annual activities.

Incentivized

• Vista HRMS is very flexible, it does everything we need for HR, benefits and payroll. It’s user-friendly and intuitive to use, when we roll out new self-service items our employees have no problems and require minimal training or documentation.
• PDS has excellent customer service and support. We get answers to the majority of our questions and problems quickly, within the day that we call. More complex issues that may require PDS’ technical support are usually addressed within a few days. We were upgrading our production servers to Windows 2012 over a weekend and a key person in our organization was on leave. When we checked with PDS to see what cost would be involved if we needed their help, they said it was included in our regular maintenance, no extra cost.
• The PDS User’s Conference is an excellent learning opportunity for training on everything Vista does, including using Crystal Reports for custom reporting. You also get to meet and talk to the executive and development staff and have direct input into the future product development.

• We have issues with students using Time & Labor for multiple jobs, where time is incorrectly calculated, including negative balances where none exist.
• The application is complex and some areas, especially Time & Labor, are very difficult to troubleshoot. The overall level of complexity has increased over the years.
• We also use Campus Solutions and had to split apart HCM and CS, significantly increasing our maintenance overhead and creating inter-system issues that aren't always resolvable.
• Campus Solutions has developed a solution for managing preferred names and gender identity that is missing/ incompatible with the HCM product.

Incentivized

• Typical of any system built for the unknown requirements of hundreds or thousands of customers with varying needs, PDS sometimes doesn't fit our processes precisely out of the box. However, this con is far outweighed by the ability to configure and customize the system.
• The most significant pet peeve of our users is the necessity for so many clicks to navigate between different areas or the system or to review applicants. These items are being addressed based on feedback from the user community in an upcoming release.

PeopleSoft HCM has provided a very flexible platform for our HR needs. The ability to add customizations to handle some of our unique business processes have been critical in the longevity of our PS HCM use. We've been able to handle a wide variety of business processes for multiple subsidiaries due to the ability to customize when needed.

Incentivized

I feel so invested in Vista HRMS that I don't really want to try other options. I know we as an organization are not using this product to it's full potential and that is just due to us lacking the resources to be able to invest the time into breaking it apart and making it work to the best ability for us. The system works great as is, but there are a lot of implementations we can put into place to help us out even more. For example, we would love to start using Workflow to create more efficiencies. I personally have a very good relationship with our hosted vendor who supports Vista HRMS and can help me with any issues and concerns, this is a big part of the reason that I would renew with this product and continue to be an advocate for Vista HRMS.

Oracle HCM has been around for more thab a decade and is a preferred package to use for Human capital management.Ease with which upgrades happen and how updates are pushed has come thru a long way of improvement and research over the years.Oracle has moved toward cloud based architecture which will help in its customers keep at par with current industry trends.

Incentivized

In my line of work, PDS Vista doesn't fit. I recruit and manager talent pipelines, as well as all onboarding aspects of 11 companies. I spend more hours getting data configured and searching for information within this software than I spend with my candidates. Theres an abundance duplication, and there isn't a single stream of information shared across screens. I have to input the SAME details into several screens for them to match up. Nothing is intuitive, and its certainly not end user friendly

Incentivized

I give this rating because we have had no issues in the area of the product's overall availability. In my opinion the resources are there when we need them and the features serve the purpose they are set to do. I feel things have gone really well as far as the availability of the product.

Incentivized

This is highly dependent on the server setup you implement. You need to make sure you've included enough hardware to support your users. Not enough power will quickly rear its ugly head. If you've got the correct setup, the product will operate quickly and provide a good user experience. Oracle is slowed down by certain realtime interfaces to other systems, but this can be addressed by your technical team relatively easily.

Incentivized

Overall support has been positive and Oracle has gladly sent out representatives to meet with our teams in person. Despite sometimes sow and inadequate fixes, their willingness to try and meet face to face helps give them a better name in our organization. Sometimes their people do not understand unique needs of the industry, and it can be a challenge to explain that one size does not fit all. Finding the appropriate IT support for our unique requests has been hit and miss.

Incentivized

PDS has excellent customer service and support. We get answers to the
majority of our questions and problems quickly, within the day that we
call. More complex issues that may require PDS’ technical support are
usually addressed within a few days

In my opinion, training in Oracle PeopleSoft HCM is arduous at best. In my experience, there are numerous issues with creating training environments and that makes practice in a sandbox costly. I prefer asynchronous simulated environment training for this reason, but that costs even more due to the development and testing time needed to create that training. eLearning is always there with only the need to keep it up-to-date.

Incentivized

It was a great training tool and provided all of the necessary information we needed to implement the sites for our clients. We were provided with a great deal of resources in regards to Oracle CRM. We didn't have any issues with the training at all. The only thing I would say would that there could be more FAQ's for users to read through

Incentivized

The resources and online tools that PDS provide are extremely thorough and helpful in our training and learning.

When we implement Oracle and Taleo to different clients it typically goes pretty smoothly. When we do system upgrades we usually test the main issues the clients are having just to make sure there are not outstanding issues or errors. I don't have any examples where implementation went poorly. It typically goes well and clients are pleased with the final result. The only complaint would be the time it takes to implement

Incentivized

Ask lots of questions, ensure you fully understand the functionality (particularly history records) and train, train, train the users for correct and complete utilization of the system.

Oracle PeopleSoft HCM is not as good as SuccessFactors HCM. The look and feel of Oracle PeopleSoft HCM is still 'old school'. Cloud solutions can do more. SuccessFactors offers a great talent management, performance measurement, and employee development, while Oracle PeopleSoft HCM's core is employee records, benefits, and payroll.

Incentivized

I've used Peoplesoft HCM in the past. The products have some similarities, but they are marketed to different sized companies, so it's a bit of apples to oranges. Peoplesoft was very complex and challenging to manage and support. Vista HRMS should require fewer technical resources and still provide robust features for HR and Payroll. We selected Vista HRMS because it met the majority of our requirements and was priced to enable us to purchase and implement it within our budget. Also, it's an integrated system (although not truly one system when you count Vista Time) which is an improvement over our current state.

Incentivized

In my opinion I rate this high because we have had no issues in this area and so that is why I give it such a high rating. There is no issue with the product's overall scalability. In my opinion this has been a positive from my team and client's view.

Incentivized

• As a long time PeopleSoft user, my institution has found great advantages of being involved in the HCM realm such as first-hand information, a complete suite of solutions as well as regular updates to stay up with federal and state regulations.
• Ease of use of development, customization, maintenance and usage perspectives can lead to a better management of financial resources, that minimizes expenditure while providing all necessary resources.
• Opportunities to provide better customer service and meet organizational policies have to lead to a positive outlook on the tool and its features.

Incentivized

• Positive impact would definitely be self-service for both employees and managers to view and update selected data.
• Through some analytics our managers are able to track turnover for their site/department by many criteria (length of service, reason, etc) and can view a number of other analytical reports such as headcount and demographics which help them to make informed decisions about their department.