Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM vs. SmartSearch ATS

Oracle HCM is very much helpful and well suited in the recruitment and placement process and HR data. It makes it easier for HR in [organizations] to keep track of who is in and out of the [organization]. Improvement can be made by allowing employees to record their own data and update it as and when necessary without having to go through HR first.

Incentivized

If you have a recruiting organization that needs flexibility and a wide range of options to address an ever changing landscape than this is your system. It does not try to pigeon-hole recruiters into a single recruiting model. It allows you to customize how your organization does things but also allows you to control where you need to control. We have been using SmartSearch for more than 24 years. We started out on one of the first versions because we liked the company and the direction they were taking. SmartSearch has not always been the tool with the flashiest features.... but it has always had some of the best features. They have always been of the cutting edge of the next technology and have the tools and features that make SmartSearch a complete solution. We have not seen anything else out in the marketplace that has encouraged us to change.

• It is advantageous in keeping a record of the performance of the employees and can look for potential employees.
• It is solving the problem of payroll.
• We are utilizing it to create ease in the recruitment process and it is holding all the recruitment processes efficiently.
• The price range is highly justifiable.
• We are utilizing it to create ease in the recruitment process and it is holding all the recruitment processes efficiently.
• The price range is highly justifiable.

Incentivized

• Customization - the team at SmartSearch always tries to find a solution that works for our company specifically.
• Customer Care - the team actually cares and is concerned about the well-being of our business. They help us solve issues as if they worked for us and this feeling is felt at every level of the organization beginning with their President.
• Technology - I have used multiple ATSs and demoed many, many more. SmartSearch has superior technology for staffing firm; the technology that helps us recruit and fill jobs faster.
• Listening - the team at SmartSearch actually listens to us and our concerns whether it's regarding a feature for an upgrade or simply solving an issue we are facing.
• Common Sense - there have been many times in our relationship when we have asked about a feature and we hear "that makes sense, we will make that change for all of our customers"...listening is rare and they do it well.

• Government entities share data readily on applicants and HCM doesn't make it easy to have applications transferred between organizations. If applicants could apply once and send that application to multiple entities that would really make it more appealing to clients. This is a niche that is currently filled with NEOGOV, however Oracle's analytics are far superior to those in NEOGOV
• There are no customizations allowed so clients need to work within the configuration standards or create a bolt on. Many times your greatest asset is also one of your biggest weaknesses.
• Oracle is a large company and sometimes it can be hard to navigate the support matrix that they have set up. They also have tiers of support so you can pay more to get more, which isn't optimal from a customer point of view.

Incentivized

• There's some room for improvement with candidate status. If you change a status, you have to refresh your screen for that to appear. It's a minor thing.
• It would be nice to hide certain bits of information on the web posting, but keep that information in the requisition for our records, ie, salary range, etc.

Taleo does what we need it to do and based on the costs from both a time and money perspective, I don't see us changing anytime soon. If anything I think we will look to leverage the capabilities available that we may not already be using.

While I do not have experience with SmartSearch's competitors, I would renew my use of SmartSearch simply based on the up-front costs of implementing the program. It would be better to continue with a program that is sufficiently meeting my needs than it would be to incur the same up-front costs to implement something else.

Incentivized

After the initial training's, it was quite intuitive to use the application. The application is based upon best practices and the overall flows are quite logical. The train stop approach also ensures that users understand where they are in the process cycle. Also, the number of clicks have been greatly rationalized to ensure that there is more streamlined experience.

Incentivized

There are so many facets of SmartSearch, that to know everything about it is nearly impossible. While it is mainly straight forward, there is a lot. After using the program for a while, you become pretty comfortable with the basics and can start adding some of the other features.

Incentivized

It works well. However we recently discovered that it no longer is supported on Internet Explorer so we had to change the default browser for everyone in our organization to MS Edge.

Incentivized

My license for SmartSearch goes back to 2004. It has always been available for me - don't remember a single time it was not available in all of those years.

Works well.

Incentivized

The rating is based upon our current level of support. The overall experience has vastly changed since we moved into product paid support. 'Also, with Oracle going with the model of quarterly patches, it makes sense to have the product company provide support to the overall application thereby eliminating the problems of bugs.

Incentivized

Once you get the 1 person on the phone they are very knowledgeable and tend to solve the problem. The issue is there are not enough resources to handle all the clients. Their primary clients are "recruiting firms" and I think that is where most of the their support resources go

Great online tools and help, and printed out guidelines.

There is a lot of potential on Fusion. We have reaped about 10% of potential benefits. Especially on Workforce Intelligence, the opportunities are huge. The reason why we do not use the solution at its full potential is not in the product (which is simple and transparent). A roadmap is under construction to bring more of its potential to the end user.

Incentivized

Using the basic functions of SmartSearch is an easy implementation. But consider carefully what your organization needs to really drive placements. Because we only did a basic implementation first, we were caught off guard when later trying to implement more functions and realizing that the capabilities were limited or were difficult to learn and implement and realizing that tech support was not going to be consistent.

Our prior experience was Evolution Payroll but it didn't meet up our expectations and the kind of excellence we wanted from it. But I would say that Evolution Payroll is another option for those who don’t want to avail multiple tasking and automated employment facilities like the way Oracle HCM Cloud offers.

Incentivized

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.

Taleo (owned now by Oracle) continues to be an incredibly powerful product and it's scalability is among the most robust of any ATS in use today.

• We were not good at tracking any numbers around recruiting so now this last year we have been able to set the benchmark that we now can work toward improving.
• At any given time, we could not say how many open positions we had. Now we are able to keep track of that.
• We do a much better job with communicating with candidates now, especially the ones not selected. This will help us maintain a better reputation and attract the candidates back for other jobs they may be a better fit for in the future.

• I am not involved in the budgeting or finance for recruiting software, so cannot speak directly to any numbers for ROI. However, SmartSearch personally saves me several hours a day in organizing candidates, thus saving my company substantial amounts in productivity.
• The lacking ability to tag additional recruiters throughout the hire track process means whoever onboards the hire has to ensure that a "split" is marked when completing the NHS. Failure to do so can result in quite a lot of lost time from HR to get the mistake fixed.

Incentivized