Oracle PeopleSoft HCM vs. SumTotal Talent Development

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

Very good for learning and development and training of employees. For Applicant tracking, recuirement, onboarding, and enablement, I prefer SAP SuccessFactors or Skillate. I also found that the SumTotal app is not very friendly on android and crashes sometimes and it is not optimized for mobile. Hence I end up never using it.

Incentivized

• 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

• Assign complete learning plans to users so they don't have to spend time searching for courses.
• Export learner's transcripts so managers can easily see their employee's progress.
• Embed Social Media feeds that are relevant to their business.

Incentivized

• 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

• Reporting
• Mass importing of manual checks to be issued in California
• Ability to fund pay cards immediately
• Perform gross-up calculations within the payroll system automatically

Incentivized

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 have transitioned from a position who supported the product to a position where I use the product. I continue to be impressed with the robustness of the product and how efficient it is. It is a user friendly software that can be used to navigate and accomplish tasks to meet organizational requirements.

Incentivized

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

I do not find SumTotal to be intuitive. I feel we need to adjust our needs to meet the functionality available in the tool.

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

We have our own IT support to assist in SumTotal issues, however, we have had to log in cases directly. Support is mediocre at best.

Incentivized

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

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

Oracle PeopleSoft HCM is a well known product, with a history of being a successful tool for large organizations. It has a wide variety of features and tools available to assist human resources needs. As mentioned before though, for smaller organizations, it probably offers much more than is necessary compared to something like BambooHR or WebHR which offer most features one would want without the need to integrate with other softwares.

Incentivized

When I came to my company, they had been using a "light" LMS called Articulate. It was cheap and bare bones; i.e. not a lot of features, really just a platform to launch eLearning from and not real interface for student to utilize. When I began to overhaul the training department, this was one of the first things I changed. Articulate would only run courses built in their software, and the software was not 508 compliant. In addition, we had no ability to create learning plans, house transcripts, customize the interface, or manage the students. I made the choice to select and LMS that was a true LMS with all of the features that were critical to our clients' needs. Thus far, SumTotal has been able to support all of our needs, except one; mobile learning that is media rich

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

• Clean front-end user interface for easier course catalog management.
• Reporting has been more difficult than previous LMS.
• Audience building has more variables making it more difficult to manage.
• Slower overall client turnaround due to admin side interface.

Incentivized