SumTotal Talent Development vs. Welcome

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

If you don't have a workflow management tool in place and are relying on email or shared documents, then I would recommend using Welcome to keep tasks moving and employees accountable. It's very flexible, so you can really drill down on what you're asking from users and it consolidates the tasks that you need to work on in one place. We don't use it for legal documents due to more specific requirements that those require, but, for most other collaborative work, it is used.

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

• I can see an overview of all my assigned tasks and if I need to take action now or in the future.
• The history tab gives a detailed overview of all action taken by everyone so far.
• You can really break tasks down into clear, specific steps leaving no room for guesswork or confusion.

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

• For some tasks that don't require an article, we are forced to create one or the task doesn't function.
• When changes are tracked in Word docs they are not apparent until the file is downloaded meaning that if people are only previewing content, they will miss these changes/comments.
• Having 2 separate places to comment can be confusing and hiding resolved comments can mean less transparency in the process.

Incentivized

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

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

• 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

• Employees can be resistant to using Welcome at first as they think it will add to their workload, but they, eventually, see the benefits of saving time and gaining efficiency.
• If one person is responsible for entering all tasks, it can be a fair bit of admin time for that person.
• We have a better working relationship with external agencies that also use Welcome to collaborate with us.

Incentivized