UKG Workforce Central (formerly Kronos Workforce Central) was a suite of HR Management offerings targeted mainly at enterprise customers with larger-scale and more complex HR and workforce management issues. The product is discontinued.
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Workday Adaptive Planning
Score 7.9 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Workday Adaptive Planning(formerly Adaptive Insights) is a financial planning and reporting tool. It includes automated budgeting and forecasting, financial reporting, and other active planning capabilities, including integrations with third-party products like Salesforce.
This product was marketed to us as a school and several schools in our area use the program. However, the implementation team we were set-up with had limited school experience and we are still working on the best way to do some of the timekeeping issues where I know that could have been handled better. That being said from a payroll and reporting side it has been great to capture so much data (at times almost too much) and have the system do automatic allocations of salaries and general ledger reports. The reporting takes some getting used to, but overall I've been able to run reports to see and track just about anything I want. Our employees also love the self service compared to our previous products where they can make W4, direct deposit and other updates on their own without having to get HR involved.
In a previous company, I was hired based on my experience with Workday Adaptive Planning. After being hired and reviewing the company, I quickly determined they were not large of enough of a company to need the program. Instead, we made better Excel budget templates, utilized OneDrive and created a better experience without the cost. Left the job after 9 months because I worked my way out of the position. My next role I looked for bigger companies and had better success with implementation.
I personally feel like timekeeping is very well thought out and has some powerful tools built in. There is a bit of a learning curve but with strategically placed SMEs we were able to get the use and functionality we needed out of the system.
Workforce planning has been crucial in planning operational support in our retail and customer service centers. It is also editable and modifiable as needed.
It helps create dynamic plans for finances, operations and various functional units in an organization all under one platform
It helps in scenario modeling to help analyze various business events and report by any number of business dimensions including channel, customer or product
It can be integrated with any system including ERP, BI or CRM
Web reports and sheets are not great for in-depth reporting, and require the use of the OfficeConnect for Excel plugin and, therefore, the use of Excel for extensive reporting capabilities.
It has limited formula functionality in some instances, requiring again the use of OfficeConnect for Excel for extensive calculations.
I would like to see new planning sheet types or upgrades to existing sheet types; functionality has been the same for over 10 years.
Now that the system is installed and operational, the "pain is gone"...therefore we see no reason to change to a different application. There is no functionality that is missing from the system that would drive us to consider another solution at this time. Maintenance support from Kronos is sufficient and updates occur regularly.
For one we're in way too deep to not move forward with Adaptive. We're integrated with Workday, we do a ton of reporting with Adaptive, and it's working very well for planning and forecasting. No reason to look back or change course.
Workday Adaptive Planning has detailed online help with both articles and videos that are comprehensive. It has a lot of similarities to Excel, which most finance people are already familiar with, plus the user interface is intuitive and easy to pick up. The online support team is quick to respond and very knowledgeable.
There haven't been any lately. The only one issue I can think of is when there was an update in Adaptive that altered our reports. Before I realized there was an issue, Adaptive reached out to let me know, so that it could be fixed.
All aspects of Adaptive Insights perform well. One area that I wish was quicker was integration. When importing data from Intacct our accounting ERP platform, it can sometimes take 4 hours for the import to process. The earlier imports are done, the quicker they complete. My estimate for a quick upload is about two hours.
Having no experience with Kronos prior to using it in March 2016, their customer service team taught me how to use it the right way after my initial training at work. I am well-versed in data analysis using Excel and Access primarily, so once I discovered that Kronos had a reporting feature built in, I've used the feature quite a few times to help our properties evaluate their production costs and make good labor decisions. I give Kronos a 10 because once a person takes the time to learn how to use the software, they'll realize that Kronos is far more effective than most, and gives users more ways to access their information where and when they want to.
Whenever we have had any questions, issues, or concerns, the support has been quick and thorough. [This] allow[s] us to be able to fully resolve any issues, or be connected with the right group quickly to attain the result we were after; be it from simple formatting to adding new detailed reporting.
This was extremely helpful so that they could walk you through the model and teach you more about the complexity of various areas. It is most helpful when it is specific to your organization's model. The larger in-person trainings were helpful but they tended to be more generic and entry level. The trainings that are more tailored to your specific needs are the most helpful.
They often times tended to be way too generic or entry level. They would also become sales pitches to upgrade or get new Adaptive Planning products. The questions in the training would be very niche and specific to other organizations. They were rarely helpful to the group at large.
Trust the expertise of very strong 3rd party implementers. Having deployed Adaptive at a separate company before, I thought I knew it all (hubris, I know). Fortunately, I began to (very quickly) trust the judgment of our Carlson implementation team, and they provided invaluable insights and best-in-class processes that have benefitted me and my team greatly.
Kronos and Dayforce are the two timekeeping systems I’ve worked with in recent years. Kronos feels a little more comprehensive and is my primary timekeeping tool both for myself as well as my staff. Kronos is a great tool for a wide range of shifts, working locations, and pay codes. In this context, I would pick Kronos over Dayforce. On the opposite side, Dayforce is extremely user-friendly and has a “cleaner” user interface if that is a contributing factor for anyone. Also, for managers who oversee large teams (30-50 team members) then Dayforce is a bit more simple to approve time cards, hours, and leave. Kronos is a bit clunky with all the clicks, and managing large teams of hourly employees would be a huge time suck to go in to review/approve all.
Workday became our choice because it is fully web-based and easily integrates with other systems. The learning curve for Workday was shorter than that of Dynamics. The reporting tools in Workday are more user-friendly than that of Dynamics. However Workday did not have Check Printing tools which are available in Dynamics. The organization started a project to digitize all financial transactions so it was not a priority feature. When it comes to scaling up the functionalities of Workday it was much easier than Dynamics.
We went from 2 users to 70+ users over a 2 year period of time. The application scaled wonderfully. 65 of those users were non-finance users so they were able to quickly learn the software and prepare budgets quickly and efficiently. That is the power of Adaptive and its ability to scale
Kronos is much more expensive than the previous systems we were using, so at this point the ROI is negative. The idea is that it will allow us to scale and grow the company more easily so time will tell if that is the case.
It's facilitated a better financial literacy and management by the non-financial managers in the company, giving them a much better ability to see what they're spending, control it, and plan better in the future.
It's hard to quantify the ease of model and version management, but we could never do what we're doing now with our current staff. It would take a small army to replicate anything close to what Adaptive pulls off using Excel, if it's even possible.
