PeopleAdmin Higher Ed Platform, from Powerschool vs. SumTotal Talent Development

PeopleAdmin handles the process of recruiting very well. It integrated into the jobbing.com web pages as well as other job websites. The learning curve for users is not too steep. The web page format is intuitive to users. The user interface looks good. The initial issue would be the number of candidates the organization handles per year. Due to our business, we handle a large number of candidates, but US and international. PeopleAdmin facilitates this process.

I personally, am not a fan of SumTotal. I have worked on several different HRIS and Payroll systems which outweigh all aspects of SumTotal (Lawson Interface Desktop, Ceridian Dayforce, ADP Enterprise, and Ultimate Software's UltiPro). As antiquated as Lawson felt, it had more functionality than SumTotal. Of course, all others I worked on were for the most part cloud based and had modern functionality to go with it.

Incentivized

• Applicant tracking was a good use of this tool for our department. I think it could use a few more customization features but overall it was a good tool to weed out applicants who were not qualified for the position.
• The system has some canned reporting tools that also worked well for our department and management needs.
• It was a great place to house our position descriptions and provided a readily accessible source for hiring managers to make requested updates and changes and for employees to see and have access to their position descriptions.

• SumTotal has a very user friendly design, making it easy for non-programmers to configure their LMS interface, customize various environments for different groups, and to integrate numerous external web applications through iFraming, such as social media or news feeds. I was able to configure a custom environment for several different clients, making it feel like their own LMS, such as a custom color scheme and logos, custom widgets (which are section of any page), news feeds, training messages, and custom learning plans.

Incentivized

• Moving applicants through workflow is not a very fluid process. When the number of applicants spans multiple pages one is forced to work with each page individually; moving applicants to a status that requires approval precludes moving any others in workflow without filtering them out but it is not obvious that one needs to be aware of this.
• One can't search for a job description by simply typing in the employee's name - it requires using the position number and often the name is what is at hand.
• When one changes positions within the organization and requires different access there does not seem to be a way to be added globally to job descriptions in the new unit - the process is far too manual. Although I believe adding new units to ones profile is fairly simple, apparently one can't remove the old units so I continue to see things that I no longer need to.

Incentivized

• JasperSoft Reporting - it is difficult to use and manage.
• Exams could be more robust. Offering alternate types of questions.
• Too many clicks on the administrator side. Adding new activities is not intuitive, you need to click through each section to determine what needs to be entered where. Would be better if it was guided for new activities, just prompting for 'required' fields.

Incentivized

We are evaluating our options as it relates to PeopleAdmin. We are likely to renew as we can not find another product that gives us the functionality we have with PeopleAdmin 5.8 in the area of Position Description. Outside of that, we would likely be close to finding another product solution.

I have transitioned from a position who supported the product to a position where I use the product. I continue to be impressed with the robustness of the product and how efficient it is. It is a user friendly software that can be used to navigate and accomplish tasks to meet organizational requirements.

Incentivized

I do not find SumTotal to be intuitive. I feel we need to adjust our needs to meet the functionality available in the tool.

Incentivized

We have our own IT support to assist in SumTotal issues, however, we have had to log in cases directly. Support is mediocre at best.

Incentivized

I've used both Target Recruit and HR Smart. When working with Target Recruit it quickly became apparent it was not the right solution for us. Another solution we examined prior to selection PeopleAdmin was iCIMS. iCIMS is a very social system but was not as familiar with the Higher Education recruitment processes as was PeopleAdmin.

Incentivized

SumTotal Talent Development is a very competitive product. In my opinion SumTotal Talent Development is better than Freshteams, Darwinbox, but not as good as Skillate, SAP SuccessFactors. SAP SuccessFactors is enterprise grade and used only by large organizations and has too many modules and hence a tough learning curve. While SumTotal Talent Development has a small learning curve.

Incentivized

• We are now able to track our recruitment sources to determine our ROI on university paid subscriptions.
• We have reduced our recruiting approval review times by 50%
• We have identified areas for improvement substancially by having robust reporting available at our fingertips.

• Clean front-end user interface for easier course catalog management.
• Reporting has been more difficult than previous LMS.
• Audience building has more variables making it more difficult to manage.
• Slower overall client turnaround due to admin side interface.

Incentivized