Ascentis - The most cost effective, robust, and fully customization software on the market.
Updated April 08, 2015

Ascentis - The most cost effective, robust, and fully customization software on the market.

Mary Meadows | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • HRIS, Recruiting, On-boarding, Payroll

Overall Satisfaction with Ascentis

MultiLingual Solutions utilized Ascentis to streamline the process from recruiting, hiring, and paying an employee. It was also used for benefit administration. The system was being used by the organization as a whole. The business problem the software addressed was the time consuming manual process for all the various functions that the system was being used. It took away the need for spreadsheets and not only reduced man hours to manage these processes manual but also saved time by not having to complete double entries and reduced errors.
  • Benefit Administration - The system fully automated the benefit elections at on-boarding and open enrollment. The carrier connections made life so much easier as it eliminated the need to access multiple benefit carriers to do simple tasks.
  • On-boarding - The system allowed the organization to utilize and change processes to meet the need of the organization by providing additional documents during the on-boarding process to only the employees who were required to complete them.
  • HRIS - The HRIS system was so easy to use and allowed the organization to almost eliminate the need for hard copy employee files
  • Reporting - the report writer system was fantastic. It allowed me to develop custom reports that were necessary in my day to day functions. It also allowed me the flexibility to run the reports quickly when requested by management.
  • Recruitment - when setting up the recruiting module some information was not clearly defined which required the organization to pay Ascentis to fix the issues within the module. If it was clearly articulated by Ascentis that they could complete the customization at the time of implementation it would not have cost the organization a fairly significant amount of money to fix the issue 2 years later.
  • Overall, the system allowed for me to provide quick on the spot answers to employee questions as well as ad hoc reporting to the management team.
  • The system is so robust it addressed the need to for additional processing time when it came to benefits administration and payroll.
  • Xtensia
Xtensia would not allow for customization to meet the needs of the organization. It also did not allow for the administrator to create workflows or update data as needed. We terminated the contract within the first 60 days of deployment due to the negative experience in using the system.
I believe that the system is well suited for an organization that is mid-sized and requires customization for internal processes. The key question that should be asked is:

What are the special customization needs of the client at the time of implementation?

Ascentis (discontinued) Feature Ratings

Employee demographic data
9
Employment history
9
Job profiles and administration
9
Workflow for transfers, promotions, pay raises, etc.
Not Rated
Organizational charting
9
Organization and location management
9
Compliance data (COBRA, OSHA, etc.)
9
Pay calculation
9
Support for external payroll vendors
10
Benefit plan administration
10
Direct deposit files
10
Salary revision and increment management
8
Reimbursement management
Not Rated
Approval workflow
Not Rated
Annual carry-forward and encashment
Not Rated
View and generate pay and benefit information
10
Update personal information
10
View job history
10
View company policy documentation
10
Employee recognition
Not Rated
Tracking of all physical assets
10
Report builder
10
Pre-built reports
9
Ability to combine HR data with external data
Not Rated

Using Ascentis

5 - Accounting, Recruiting, Human Resources
2 - A good overall understanding of the processes for the functional area so that Ascentis personnel can easily support the needs of the organization.
  • To reduce man hours and overall errors when completing full life-cycle employee processing from recruiting, on-boarding, conversion to an employee, benefits, and payroll.
  • Performance Management

Evaluating Ascentis and Competitors

  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
The single most important factor was the ease in customizing the entire system to the needs of the organization. The company recruiting and hired in a niche market, language instructors for government contracts, and the system allowed for the build out to capture the additional information that was needed during the recruiting process as well as customize the HRIS system for capturing the additional information.
I would not change the evaluation and selection process. We utilized a third party vendor who researched the systems on the market that would be best suited for the needs of the organization. Through their analysis of our needs, the top three systems were selected and from there the organization viewed demos which provided valuable insight into the functionality of the product.

Ascentis Implementation

It was very easy to implement, but the customization pieces should really be fleshed out in order to determine the full need of an organization at the time of implementation. I believe if a little more time was spent on the requirements, the recruiting module would not have to be customized again at a cost at a later date.
Yes - The HRIS system was implemented first in under a week in order for the Recruitment module to be stood up at the beginning of the Affirmative Action Plan year. This way the details and data captured would coincide with the AAP and not be broken. The Recruitment module's implementation took a little longer as there was significant customization and build out that was needed in order to fully capture the data necessary for the organization's hiring process.
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled - The organization needed to make a change from the paper processes that were currently occurring to include the massive spreadsheets the recruiters were using for their hiring and tracking of candidates. This information made it very difficult to complete an accurate Affirmative Action Plan until the change. Each party involved in the process was very accepting and wanted the change to occur since the process improvement would also reduce their time in the recruiting and HR arena.
  • The recruiting module was not clearly defined on what could be implemented and customized. There was a feature that could have been added at the time of implementation to capture additional necessary data; however, it was not provided to the organization until well after implementation at a cost. There would not have been a cost to the company if the customization took place during the implementation.
  • HRIS - the only issue was the short time table to collect and analyze data.

Ascentis Training

The individuals who provided the training were very knowledgeable and made learning the system very easy.

Ascentis Support

For the recruitment and HRIS module the support was exceptional; however, the individual assigned to our account in Payroll support was not timely in responding or acknowledging the receipt of the request for help. Several times there was a need to escalate an issue to a more senior person on the team.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
None
Yes - Yes. Only a few times did the recruiting portal go down. As soon as it was identified to Customer Support they would immediately work on the issue and find a resolution. The resolutions were completed fairly quickly and to our satisfaction.
Jen Norton for Carrier Connect was able to assist me in the process of our Open Enrollment that did not go as smooth as wished. The issue was the carrier did not provide the rates or specs for the feed until the week before Open Enrollment was to begin. I contacted Jen and she was amazing. Jen immediately started working on our issue and said the process would normally take two weeks to fix, but would do their best to complete it sooner. Jen and her team were able to turn a two week process into a four day fix. I cannot speak more highly of a person at Ascentis than Jen Norton.

Using Ascentis

The overall ease of access and flow of information made my life so much better that when I lost most of my support staff due to retraction in the industry and hiring, I was able to continue to support the 300 employees on my own. Also, when I provided training to the benefit broker, he was very impressed and able to understand the functions quickly.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Benefit Administration - the flow of information to the carriers
  • HRIS - I was easily able to pull data when needed
  • Recruiting/On-boarding - the flow of information was easy and the system provided prompt notifications when a person moved from one status to another in the system.
  • Some report functions could be cumbersome when trying to determine what the actual data is needed. The fields were not always as user friendly as I would like.

Ascentis Reliability