Small Improvements vs. SumTotal Talent Development

I'm honestly not sure why my company chose to use Small Improvements. We used Lattice before for the all the same use cases I mentioned here. The employee performance review feature might be a bit better in Small Improvements, but the goal-setting tool and the 1:1 tool are very weak. I may not have benefitted yet from all the features that Small Improvements have to offer, but so far it looks like a pretty basic HR tool with much better alternatives out there. If it's cheaper than the competition, that might be the only argument to go with it.

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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

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

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

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

Lattice was able to link in with core OKRs whereas from my memory, Small Improvements didn't support this goal setting and tracking framework. While it was good for sentiment and management frameworks, it was unable to connect with the greater company vision as well as Lattice - that was the reason that we moved.

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

• 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

• 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