AkkenCloud vs. PeopleFluent

Akkencloud has worked extremely well as an ATS software for our recruiting firm. We deal with a huge volume of clients and candidates and it is difficult to track and manage the different orders and people we have in play. The statuses and on stop shop for requisition details have made things tremendously easy to give real time updates to our managers and client partners.

Incentivized

PeopleFluent has eliminated the use of paper reviews. It is also eliminated the use of scanning, emailing or interoffice mail. It is a great tool for communication and I highly recommend it. However, in some ways, the product can be improved. Some processes are tied to each other and could function in tandem. For example, while completing the self-review, the employee has to capture multi-raters. If self-review is submitted without listing multi-rater names then multi-rater review has to be captured separately on paper. In my opinion, these two processes can be different. Multi-raters should be added/removed/modified after submitting self-review.

Incentivized

• Notes about candidates are the most helpful because as a recruiter, we talk to so many people a day that it is common to forget the details of some conversations.
• Being able to notify other people in the organization about notes that are put in is very beneficial if the note needs to be in the system and someone should know about it!
• Being able to open "candidates" or "job orders" or something else in a new tab is great because then we can have the inbox open while also the candidate notes open, for example.

Incentivized

• Self-service tool to add/change configurations without the need for additional professional services
• Amazing implementation team that makes sure your tool is up and running
• Reporting such as compensation statements, budget and total rewards statements available for all cycles
• Configurable feed to our HRIS to make sure data is up to date
• Opportunity to leverage the current tool capabilities within the comp module for other comp processes (e.g. Total Rewards Statements)
• Customer support team is great!

Incentivized

• When a candidate applies via applicant tracking, there is a glitch that you have to submit that candidate a different way than other candidates by using the applied function, then submitting from there. That is a glitch that should be fixed. You should be able to submit the same way and allow the system to track that he was a candidate from applicant tracking.
• The new alerts from notes works well. The only change I would make is it is rather slow to attach a note now since the new messages have been added to notes.
• Email should be a bit quicker. Rather than going to the server every 5 minutes, it should pull much quicker. That ability is rather easy to fix. Especially since we receive emails on our phone much quicker than we receive from Akken.

Incentivized

• I would advise better filtering options when pulling up candidate profiles, we should have multiple functions when requesting candidates profile.
• Sometimes I get huge projects and need to move more than 20 people, it's a headache moving groups in parts.
• A faster way to verify if a candidate has been double submitted, maybe with a unique ID or email that identifies said candidate prior to going through the whole submission process.
• Stronger cache cookies when session is timed out get kicked out and the process reboots. Sometimes recruiters are pulled in different directions while multitasking.

Incentivized

There is no reason for us to make a switch. Everybody in the office is familiar with it and it allows us to get our work done faster. There are no pressing issues that would warrant a change at this point

Incentivized

PeopleFluent continues to develop an already high quality product and works to continually improve the user experience. The different modules integrate well, and the administrative functions are easy to understand and perform resulting in less time spent with KTLO functions. They provide world class customer service and work hard to keep you engaged as a customer.

Akken is quite easy to use however there are a few more complex functions or multi steps to go through to run reports and find historic information.

Incentivized

PeopleFluent seems to have all the functionality one would need, but it can be a bit overwhelming. Depending on the client implementation, it can be downright confusing and not intuitive. My 6 rating comes from the fact that it seems like the system can be configured to actually be confusing and not make sense. I think a VMS should be set up not to allow a customer to configure it in such a way as to not really work, or to allow users to circumvent steps. I also really don't like the "organization key" that needs to be entered every time you log in. Why is a login and password good enough for 99% of the systems out there, but PeopleFluent requires an extra field?

Incentivized

It's an average tool. The calendar function isn't great, email is slow, and there always seem to be day-to-day issues. The functionality is mostly there for a staffing firm, but there are plenty of areas of improvement still needed

Incentivized

The best support we have received has been from sales. Customer success is pretty much a joke. We have been yelled at by customer success reps; been told to take a screenshot of something we are not seeing; been told there are no issues on there in when Akken hadn't been working for hours, only to have it magically fixed shortly after we reported the problem; and been told engineering was working on a problem for weeks without resolution. If you are going to be working with IT Staffing companies, you have to understand that we have a modicum of knowledge in IT, and you can't BS us. Honesty will get you a lot farther than stringing us along with BS.

Incentivized

In my experience, the support team was very prompt and helpful. They had good subject matter expertise and were able to troubleshoot immediately. At times we wanted some enhancements but it was not possible due to product limitations. But, the support team was helpful in suggesting alternatives for our requirements. The customer support staff was also very polite and friendly.

Incentivized

Encourage your team to watch the training videos available.

Incentivized

At the time we purchased Akken, it was the least expensive on the market that met our needs. It was fairly intuitive, which is important, and we liked the idea that it was hosted remotely because we had had several instances with our inhouse system going down and nearly lost all of our CRM/ATS databases at one time.

Incentivized

Out of the VMS's listed, I'd say PeopleFluent is solidly in the middle. Fieldglass and IQN are probably easier to navigate and more modern looking, and I definitely don't run into the login problems with them. Beeline and PRO Wand are probably on par with PeopleFluent. They have their plusses and minuses in terms of navigation and ease of use. Covendis is definitely worse than PeopleFluent. Covendis is a mess - very difficult to navigate, not intuitive at all with terrible workflow. Again, I didn't select PeopleFluent; my client did, and I have chosen to work with them, therefore I work with PeopleFluent.

Incentivized

• The company has pumped enough money into trying to make Akken good that they aren't interested in changing again.
• Seriously a terrible ATS which slows people down due to the useless functions.
• More time lost from people needing to fix issues that arise due to the system requirements.

Incentivized

• I do believe that goal setting and the workflow of following up, going through the process yearly is as good as you make it. If you set good goals, or help your team make good goals then the experience can go well. Otherwise it's just another thing that an employee is doing to make their manager happy.
• I am not sure the cost of the product, but if it is really expensive I am not sure that we are getting fully what we should be for what the product offers. Make sure you are using what is offered.

Incentivized