Item: Namely
Rating: 7
Author: Kristen Albertsen

Overall Satisfaction with Namely

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Namely is the HRIS for our company, from when we were under 50 employees to now over 150 employees. We use it for all Onboarding and document e-signature, all Managed Payroll Services, Benefits Administration & Brokerage, Training & Compliance, PTO tracking, other employee records, and Performance Management. We only are light users of it social components.

Pros and Cons

Pros

comprehensive
user-friendly (for both administrators and users), with an intuitive UI
ease of setup and detailed customization options
ease and detail of reporting and analytics
constantly evolving and adding new functionalities

Cons

Managed Payroll UI could be improved
Employee record keeping functionalities could be more robust
Performance Management customization could be more robust

Return on Investment

Significant ROI for leanly resourced HR team (robust employee self-service, automation of a lot of onboarding, compliance, etc
Significant ROI for HR team - HR support resources and training for more junior members of HR to utilize and self-teach
Less robust ROI from a goal setting & performance management perspective

Usability

UI for both admins and employees is straightforward. For Admins, a lot of customizability.

Alternatives Considered

Oracle Taleo Cloud, Bamboo, Zenefits, Rippling and Justworks

Namely has a robust suite of offerings, and fallows for a la carte selection of add-ons (rather than a single bundled option). This has allowed our company to save money by not purchasing options / functionalities that we dont need, but may drive up the cost for other companies who need more a la carte selections. In all, the size of the company, the size & capabilities of the internal HR team, and considerations like managed payroll and benefits should be key drivers in selection.

Key Insights

Do you think Namely delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Namely's feature set?

Yes

Did Namely live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Namely go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Namely again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Workable, Culture Amp, DocuSign

Likelihood to Recommend

Namely is well-suited to a company with 1-2 HR Admins and 1-2 Finance personnel (for Payroll purposes), and with an attendant workforce of 50-250. Namely is a one-stop-shop for all HR needs, so is particularly helpful for leanly resourced HR functions. While it has some HR training modules, it's not at PEO level so requires an experienced HR leader at the helm ; but beyond that, many aspects of compliance, onboarding, payroll, training etc are largely automated and sycned across the platform, so works well for a lean HR team with a large employee base (both hourly, and salaried).

Namely Feature Ratings

Using Namely

Users and Roles

160 - All employees are users of Namely. Our Accounting, FP&A and Finance functions have administrative roles, in addition to all of HR; our service team has time entry options, and Supervisors have approval functions; all People Managers have review & evaluation functions

Support Headcount Required

4 - HR, Payroll, Onboarding, Benefits Management, FP&A

Business Processes Supported

Onboarding
Payroll
Benefits Administration
Performance Evaluation
Organizational design

Innovative Uses

Company Announcements
Logging performance reviews AND self-assessments

Future Planned Uses

org chart development
expanded reviews & evaluations, tied to corp goals
expanded time tracking

Likelihood to Renew

Good product that is right-sized to our organization

Evaluating Namely and Competitors

Products Replaced

Not Sure

Key Differentiators

Cloud Solutions
Scalability
Ease of Use

Cost, scaleability, ease of use for both internal admins and employee users.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

Run more of a formal RFP: Identify selection criteria and cost boundaries, solicit a few quotes from viable vendors

Namely Implementation

Implementation Rating

Was not involved in implementation.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Change Management Lessons

Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled - Repeated messaging, in different ways (live trainings, regular Slack updates, etc) is key. Highlighting value add to organization AND employees. Being available for ad hoc questions .

Implementation Issues

time commitment / workload
benefits change
payroll porting

Namely Support

Support Rating

Namely platform has pretty good support: knowledgeable and relatively fast response times. Namely Payroll and Namely Benefits are very much depending on the quality of the support agent or CSM: we have had knowledgeable and attentive ones, but also ones that have provided erroneous information or failed to respond to urgent asks in a timely manner

Namely Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Support understands my problem Quick Initial Response	None

Premium Support

Not an option for company of our size

Exceptional Examples of Namely Support

Our first Benefits Administrator was exceptional: very knowledgeable and attentive, and came on worksite to present on changes to our upcoming plan year. The team really valued him as a third-party SME