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Non-technical value of PeopleSoft HCM
Updated May 16, 2018

Non-technical value of PeopleSoft HCM

Patricia Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle PeopleSoft HCM

PeopleSoft HCM is being used across all Cru ministries in the US. We are using it to track employee data, provide benefits administration, payroll processing, compensation, and recruiting functions.
  • The effective dating feature of PeopleSoft is especially useful in tracking the life cycle of an employee's relationship with the organization, from the time they apply for an opening until the time they decide to retire from the company. Every transaction can be tracked within the system so you have the historical data needed to support any type of reporting that may be required.
  • Security is another thing that PeopleSoft does well. The ability to have row level security in addition to page security is very useful when you need to provide access to the data for various categories of employees. For example, we can set security permissions so that it allows a payroll clerk to see only hourly employees since that is the pay group for whom they're responsible for processing.
  • The Employee Snapshot in Manager Self-Service is an awesome new feature! It allows managers at any level to see specific data not only about their direct reports, but also 2nd and 3rd+ level direct reports as well. using a graphical drill down capability to get the details.
  • I also like that you can use many types of devices to work with PeopleSoft HCM. I can see the same information from my laptop, tablet or phone as needed.
  • The Dotted Line Reports feature of Company Directory will be an added bonus for our organization since many of our teams function as networked teams rather than hierarchical ones.
  • We really need to have more flexibility with the number of leaders for teams. We have many cross-functional teams that have more than one team leader. The ability to identify multiple leaders who can access their team members' data would be extremely helpful with how our staff work in a team environment.
  • Better documentation on the set up steps is needed. The wizards have helped a lot but they are still sometimes hard to use. Vidoes are helpful too, but often don't go to the level of detail necessary to completely set up a new feature or function.
  • Security is often confusing. Whenever new functionality is made available or a PUM update is done, the roles/permission lists to use it is sometimes difficult to find. Having a better way to search for that would be helpful.
  • The UX for Security needs needs to be redesigned. It is difficult to figure out all of the necessary steps to implement a change to a user's role or a permission is made. You often have to go to another place in the system to finalize the change such as running the SJT class update, which leads to that step being missed until you don't see your change in the system hours later!
  • We really don't quantify the ROI aspect...we've been using PeopleSoft HCM since 1995 so it's now just a part of our operational culture. We are planning to implement more analytics going forward, but we haven't focused on that aspect until lately.
  • One positive impact is that we're able to add new companies/subsidiaries into our HCM business processes within a short amount of time (usually 6 months or less) to enable them to benefit from the functionality of using PeopleSoft HCM for their employees.
PeopleSoft HCM had more integration with a wider variety of functionality that we wanted to use to support our business processes. The ability to add 'custom' processes or 'bolt-on' applications was a big plus for PeopleSoft HCM. Other products had the UI appeal during an initial evaluation but since the introduction of fluid pages in PeopleSoft HCM the UI aspect is no longer a disadvantage.
PeopleSoft HCM is well suited for companies that have a variety of employees and business rules that determine their business processes. Having the ability to add customizations when it's absolutely necessary is a big plus and we've used that from time to time since we are a non-profit organization and have some non-traditional types of employees.
PeopleSoft HCM takes a big burden off of our operational staff since it provides most of the regulatory reporting that we have to do. Knowing that Oracle will update the code with all of the Tax changes on a regular basis is such a huge relief for our Tax department and our programming team.
This also applies to companies who are working in a global environment. While not every country is supported, many of them are so that gives a lot of lift to operational staff in those countries.

Oracle PeopleSoft HCM Feature Ratings

9.3
Employee demographic data
10
Employment history
10
Job profiles and administration
10
Workflow for transfers, promotions, pay raises, etc.
9
Organizational charting
9
Organization and location management
9
Compliance data (COBRA, OSHA, etc.)
8
8.6
Pay calculation
9
Support for external payroll vendors
Not Rated
Benefit plan administration
8
Direct deposit files
9
Salary revision and increment management
9
Reimbursement management
8
8.0
Approval workflow
8
Balance details
8
Annual carry-forward and encashment
8
8.4
View and generate pay and benefit information
9
Update personal information
9
View job history
8
View company policy documentation
8
Employee recognition
8
Not Rated
Tracking of all physical assets
Not Rated
8.0
Report builder
8
Pre-built reports
8
Ability to combine HR data with external data
8
Integration with other HR capabilities ()
Not Rated
8.8
Performance plans
9
Performance improvement plans
9
Review status tracking
9
Review reminders
9
Multiple review frequency
8
Not Rated
Create succession plans/pools
Not Rated
Candidate ranking
Not Rated
Candidate search
Not Rated
Candidate development
Not Rated
7.0
New hire portal
7
Manager tracking tools
7
8.3
Corporate goal setting
6
Individual goal setting
9
Line-of sight-visibility
9
Performance tracking
9
8.1
Job Requisition Management
8
Company Website Posting
8
Publish to Social Media
7
Job Search Site Posting
8
Duplicate Candidate Prevention
8
Applicant Tracking
9
Notifications and Alerts
9

Using Oracle PeopleSoft HCM

8200 - 
  • Administration - Job actions (hires, rehires, leave of absence, terminations, transfers), training, compensation
  • Organizational structure
  • Self-Service - Paychecks, addresses, phone, emergency contacts, W4 changes
  • Life Events - Marriages, Dependent updates
  • Recruiting - application process and evaluation of candidates through decision process
  • Tax filing with Federal & State regulatory agencies
  • Benefits processing and integration with 3rd party vendors
  • Budgeting - Payroll integration with PS Financials
  • Compensation Planning and merit increases
9 - 
  • Technical - ability to understand and write peoplecode, SQRs, queries, BI Publisher reports, security; troubleshooting errors using error messages, error codes and log files; knowledge of process scheduler and Peopletools; understand and implement PUM updates
  • Functional - ability to understand and write queries, BI Publisher reports; knowledge of business processes; ability to understand and administer security roles; ability to assess the need for enhancements introduced in PUM updates
  • Database - performance tuning, backup/recovery processes for on-premise data bases
  • Job transactions - Hire/rehire, transfers, pay changes, terminations
  • Payroll - paychecks and tax processeing
  • Benefits - enrollment and integration to Benefits vendors
  • Recruiting - application processing through Hire process
  • Ability to pay special category of staff who are essentially 'self-employed' based upon an account balance used to reduce pay if there are insufficient funds in the account
  • Ability to add the special category of staff as a 'Non-employee' and track their job details through the process to be 'hired'
  • Adding a Volunteer application process
  • Provide distributed HR functionality with minimal (or no) training via Guided Self Service and Activity Guides
  • More mobile functionality for users
PeopleSoft HCM has provided a very flexible platform for our HR needs. The ability to add customizations to handle some of our unique business processes have been critical in the longevity of our PS HCM use. We've been able to handle a wide variety of business processes for multiple subsidiaries due to the ability to customize when needed.

Evaluating Oracle PeopleSoft HCM and Competitors

  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
Not sure, since we've used PeopleSoft HCM for 22 years and the decision was made well before I began working here.
I would likely look at a cloud-hosted implementation rather than on-premise if making the decision today.

Oracle PeopleSoft HCM Implementation

  • Gain consensus on the process as much as possible rather than changing the system to handle unique processes
  • Develop standard security procedures that can be easily automated where possible.
  • Don't know
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - Our original implementation was in 1995 so the product has evolved tremendously since then. The initial implementation seems to have focused more on handling exceptions than gaining consensus in the business processing. There are many design decisions that we would make differently if we were implementing the product today due to improved functionality and new technology available now.
  • Handling the non-traditional staff model (like self-employed people) that required payroll amounts to be adjusted during the payroll process
  • A custom payroll to GL interface was required due to the non-traditional staff model

Oracle PeopleSoft HCM Support

Sometimes it takes multiple discussions before the issues is understood; filling out the same questions about our environment for every issue is a pain as well.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Kept well informed
Quick Initial Response
Problems left unsolved
Escalation required
Difficult to get immediate help
Need to explain problems multiple times
Yes - To ensure that we can resolve issues as quickly as possible
Yes - They aren't always resolved to my satisfaction; sometimes, the answer is that can't be done. Occasionally it will take longer than hoped for a resolution to the problem.
None come to mind right now.

Using Oracle PeopleSoft HCM

The overall usability works well for our organization since we don't have rigid controls in place. We're able to handle the uniqueness of the multiple subsidiaries that we support while using a common platform for HCM services. It also provides a way for us to handle exception processing and processes that aren't within what is considered 'normal' by allowing us to customize the application as needed.
ProsCons
Like to use
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Lots to learn
  • Life Events are very easy to use for address, phone, dependent, contact updates
  • Recruiting - applications are very easy to follow for applicants looking for positions with our company
  • Employee Self Service has been very useful in relieving the administrative burden for employee data changes.
  • Recruiting - setting up job openings is a cumbersome process
  • Integration Broker - it's complicated to set up messaging (XML, REST, etc) services
  • The technology is a little difficult to work with in Application Designer -- the functionality needs to be be updated so the there's more sharing across projects and it needs to have more drag/drop capabilities.
Yes - We're just using it for self-service right now but it typically works well. We plan to implement the mobile recruiting by Spring 2018, which will help engage more of the younger workforce with our job postings.