PeopleFluent vs. Saba Cloud (legacy) vs. Small Improvements

PeopleFluent has eliminated the use of paper reviews. It is also eliminated the use of scanning, emailing or interoffice mail. It is a great tool for communication and I highly recommend it. However, in some ways, the product can be improved. Some processes are tied to each other and could function in tandem. For example, while completing the self-review, the employee has to capture multi-raters. If self-review is submitted without listing multi-rater names then multi-rater review has to be captured separately on paper. In my opinion, these two processes can be different. Multi-raters should be added/removed/modified after submitting self-review.

Incentivized

Our organization uses Saba Cloud primarily to manage all types of learning systems or staff training empirically. In addition, it provides us with a quick test-based follow-up to the trainees. We use Saba Cloud to train our clientele in a professional manner with respect to our worldwide online service. With this tool we are able to enhance the customer experience with the organization. Similarly, our organization uses Saba Cloud to monitor the performance and effectiveness of our employees and customers after having access to all the information provided by the application to subsequently make learning and development reports.

Incentivized

Small Improvements is well suited in any sector or organization given that it tracks employee performance, 1:1 meetings, employee recognition and so on. I've used other tools previously like ones built in-house, Excel spreadsheets and even competitors like Workday but Small Improvements is leaps ahead of those other tools in its ability to execute well on employee performance tracking, recognition and meetings.

Incentivized

• Self-service tool to add/change configurations without the need for additional professional services
• Amazing implementation team that makes sure your tool is up and running
• Reporting such as compensation statements, budget and total rewards statements available for all cycles
• Configurable feed to our HRIS to make sure data is up to date
• Opportunity to leverage the current tool capabilities within the comp module for other comp processes (e.g. Total Rewards Statements)
• Customer support team is great!

Incentivized

• Saba Analytics for learning are comprehensive and customizable allowing us to view any variety of data we need internally or need to provide to our customers.
• Support has been amazing throughout our time with Saba. We have always been able to work quickly with someone to develop a new process or obtain guidance on a new feature.
• Saba Cloud delivers training in a clear and modern format, allowing customers to easily access and consume training.
• Saba Cloud also provides regular system updated which reflect the needs of their customer base.

• Goal Tracking: Enables users to chart goals, track progress, and provide details about what they want/expect to achieve.
• Praise Wall: A public place to post positive and encouraging comments about other employees.
• 360 Reviews: Users can request and gain 1:1 feedback; this can be anonymous if desired.

Incentivized

• I would advise better filtering options when pulling up candidate profiles, we should have multiple functions when requesting candidates profile.
• Sometimes I get huge projects and need to move more than 20 people, it's a headache moving groups in parts.
• A faster way to verify if a candidate has been double submitted, maybe with a unique ID or email that identifies said candidate prior to going through the whole submission process.
• Stronger cache cookies when session is timed out get kicked out and the process reboots. Sometimes recruiters are pulled in different directions while multitasking.

Incentivized

• In the certification process, it only lets us do look back days it would be very beneficial to have a look backdate. Our services have a training year from July 1, thru June 30 and we assign training to services that are required by federal and state laws to be completed annually. During the pandemic we found a lot of staff taking jobs in other areas and still in their original position and then back again. If we assigned someone HIPAA training and they took this on July 4 and then in October went to a different service line the training plan would ask them to retake HIPAA. It would not pick up the one on July 3. That is the only real issue but it is a large one.

Incentivized

• Being able to edit projects more easily (and have a documented edit history) would be beneficial.
• Possibly integrations with popular platforms (such as JIRA) to give expanded detail of project tracking.
• Gantt charts would be a nice to have for a top level management view.

Incentivized

PeopleFluent continues to develop an already high quality product and works to continually improve the user experience. The different modules integrate well, and the administrative functions are easy to understand and perform resulting in less time spent with KTLO functions. They provide world class customer service and work hard to keep you engaged as a customer.

The only reason I wouldn't rate this a 10 is because we always want to evaluate the technology we use to drive our business. While Saba would be the "leader in the clubhouse", we would still perform our due diligence when it's time to renew.

PeopleFluent seems to have all the functionality one would need, but it can be a bit overwhelming. Depending on the client implementation, it can be downright confusing and not intuitive. My 6 rating comes from the fact that it seems like the system can be configured to actually be confusing and not make sense. I think a VMS should be set up not to allow a customer to configure it in such a way as to not really work, or to allow users to circumvent steps. I also really don't like the "organization key" that needs to be entered every time you log in. Why is a login and password good enough for 99% of the systems out there, but PeopleFluent requires an extra field?

Incentivized

As someone who creates classes and is also a learning administrator in the system, I have run into some issues with the system's capabilities for my needs. I am not a fan of having to use Adobe Captivate to download a PowerPoint presentation into the system, as my training sessions are much more than a glorified PowerPoint. Our organization has yet to turn on Saba Meetings, which may help with these limitations.

In my experience, the support team was very prompt and helpful. They had good subject matter expertise and were able to troubleshoot immediately. At times we wanted some enhancements but it was not possible due to product limitations. But, the support team was helpful in suggesting alternatives for our requirements. The customer support staff was also very polite and friendly.

Incentivized

For the times that we have used the support provided by Saba, it has been a very pleasurable experience for our department. Part of our package with Saba includes a specified number of hours of "training" time with Saba. During these meetings, we have shared our desires of the product and the support personnel have either shown us how to accomplish our task or they have taken our requests to their developers to look at future enhancements. Overall, very pleased with the support.

The customer support is quick and thorough, they have access to our account to answers are tailored to our needs. They also have a good knowledge base and self-help site with some video tutorials and FAQs which saved us time as opposed to just calling or emailing support. For the times that we did reach out, it only took one response to get our issue resolved.

Incentivized

Was not involved with integration.

Incentivized

Out of the VMS's listed, I'd say PeopleFluent is solidly in the middle. Fieldglass and IQN are probably easier to navigate and more modern looking, and I definitely don't run into the login problems with them. Beeline and PRO Wand are probably on par with PeopleFluent. They have their plusses and minuses in terms of navigation and ease of use. Covendis is definitely worse than PeopleFluent. Covendis is a mess - very difficult to navigate, not intuitive at all with terrible workflow. Again, I didn't select PeopleFluent; my client did, and I have chosen to work with them, therefore I work with PeopleFluent.

Incentivized

We had extensive reviews with a plan of what we needed and must have out of the system, including custom learning paths and tracking inside our HRIS system to grant permissions and positions based on completed learning certifications and courses. We weighed each option and chose based on the one that met the most of the must-haves.

While still far from perfect, Lattice has much stronger goal-setting and 1:1 features (see my list of areas for improvement above). At another company, we put all OKR in Confluence and used Google Drive (specifically Google Docs) for 1:1 notes and performance evaluations. While it may seem cumbersome to conduct something like a performance review process via Google Docs, I appreciated the flexibility that it offered. I also still think that shared Google Doc is a perfectly fine tool for 1:1 notes (it even has assignable tasks now), and Confluence is a perfectly fine tool for defining OKR and tracking progress. Keep it simple (c).

Incentivized

• I do believe that goal setting and the workflow of following up, going through the process yearly is as good as you make it. If you set good goals, or help your team make good goals then the experience can go well. Otherwise it's just another thing that an employee is doing to make their manager happy.
• I am not sure the cost of the product, but if it is really expensive I am not sure that we are getting fully what we should be for what the product offers. Make sure you are using what is offered.

Incentivized

• We have heard from many people that the visibility of goals and skills expectations has impacted their engagement levels, which aids us in our retention goals.
• With the easier reporting provided by Saba, we are able to generate compliance training reports in real time, which keeps our regulators very happy.

Incentivized

• Before we had Small Improvements, personal goal setting was completely disorganized. Some managers made sure it was done, likewise many did not.
• Having past goals collected in one repository has been a blessing. I couldn't imagine not having Small Improvements or something comparable.

Incentivized