SumTotal Talent Development vs. symplr Talent Management Solutions

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

It really is the best solution to any organization that needs to provide and track employees continued learning or learning of policies and procedures. The tracking is great on all ends. The interface is simple and easy to navigate. It may not be suitable for an organization with under 10 people as it is quite extensive and may be a bit over the top.

Incentivized

• 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

• Customer service is available via email and phone when needed.
• Individualized training sessions available for project challenges.
• Provide personable service from all aspects of the organization.
• When we had issues with compatibility of third party courses, the staff focused on our need and made it work.

• 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

• To allow our team members choice, we offer training as either/or. The current system does not record either/or completions
• To end enrollment of new hires for training at a set date, requires also ending the training of all those not yet completed.

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

Looking back we can say that every year we used Performance Manager and other products too like HeathcareSource's Compensation and Position Manager we saw the ease of use for employees and HR staff members increase, we saw employees getting more comfortable with the product and HR Staff getting better at expressing their needs to the HealthcareSource team and this made us want to stay with the same company, when things are getting better each year we know we are in the right place.

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

The product is very intuitive to the end users and our online documentation seems sufficient to train our new employees.

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

On the previous rating scale, I kept thinking "it depends". If I know it's an easy question or easy fix, the response is super fast. If I know I am asking something complex, custom or I just know it's not going to be able to be answered by 1st tier, it can take some time. I have worked on these issues with them (they are all very nice) I do now have avenues for finding things out from one person. We had one issue where we had a major problem and it required a software patch and their support team worked throughout the weekend to create, QA, and deliver the patch as promised. I was very impressed

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

I have seem other products such as Success Factors and Softscape, we went with HealthcareSource because we really like PerformanceManager but also because we planned to expand our use of their products for other areas of the talent management spectrum and eventually started using their Compensation and Position Manager products too.

• 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

• NetLearning has increased our nursing CEU credits with the most efficiency. Now nurses can take courses on NetLearning and have it track their hours.
• On a compliance standpoint, NetLearning has benefited us when we are being audited and we have to show what trainings or classes an employee has made. Also, to make sure that their certifications are up to date.

Incentivized