Item: SmartSearch ATS
Rating: 9
Author: EJ Meier

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SmartSearch is used across our entire business as our applicant tracking system. We do requisition management including: related workflows for approval of all positions for hiring and requisition reporting. We also use it for our offer management and approval for all positions. We are in the process of finalizing data feeds from SMS for use in our Human Capital Analytics capabilities and also for global KPI recruitment performance activities. We are also finalizing the onboarding portal capabilities and front end data feeds to our Oracle HCMS.

Pros and Cons

Job posting integration.
Requisition workflow management.
Offer workflow management.
Candidate search usability.
Customer support/partnering.

Global development support.
Some latency issues in China and India.
User interfaces have improved but can always find ease of use improvements.

Return on Investment

We can manage and report on hiring activity and progress - positive.
We know the number and relative value of open positions around the globe - positive.
We know the expected relative costs of ANYS - Accepted Not Yet Started - positive.
We can quickly adapt hiring activity to business fluctuations - positive.

Alternatives Considered

We have looked at multiple alternatives over the years at both Gates and our collective experiences prior to joining Gates. In our opinion, SmartSearch is the right choice for our business today. We have been able to scale it globally and conduct all of our major requirements for our applicant tracking system and that works for Gates. We also feel like we are an important partner to SmartSearch and they work with us and we feel like our feedback is important to them. I have worked with a number of ATS vendors prior to SmartSearch and pre-Gates. That is not a universal approach in this space and is a unique value prop from SmartSearch.

Support Rating

I think this is an area where we have helped them grow and they have helped us along as well. Gates did not have any global ATS or requisitioning system or offer approval system...nor did we have a global HCMS 4 years ago. We deployed a number of global systems in a short period of time (with the luxury and curse) of pretty much starting from a clean slate. That created a number of opportunities to do some custom development in a short period of time and blaze some trails that had not existed before. We had to take a few steps forward and a few steps back but we have persevered and managed through it!

Usability

I can actually get in and use SmartSearch. Enough said. Once we were able to adopt it as our global standard, applied some custom development and standardized some training users found it easy to use. Our executive team including the C-Suite find the requisition workflow and offer management tools easy to use.

Key Insights

Do you think SmartSearch ATS delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SmartSearch ATS's feature set?

Yes

Did SmartSearch ATS live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of SmartSearch ATS go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy SmartSearch ATS again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Oracle eBusiness Suite, IBM Cognos Analytics, Tableau Server

Likelihood to Recommend

I think our environment has stretched SmS and their capabilities (positively) but we have grown together and developed an enormously capable system together that is now very well integrated into our business. For doing applicant tracking, requisition management and offer management that has really been strong. I think we can partner together and build some better analytics and reporting capabilities that would be better suited for our business.

Great Value, Integrated Tool, Key Decision Making Support Application

Overall Satisfaction with SmartSearch