B2B Connection

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Time Tracking Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores. They are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, site traffic, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Time tracking and scheduling apps are used to record and analyze time spent by contractors and remote workers on projects and tasks, as well as to create schedules for hourly employees and track hours worked. They allow users to monitor and optimize productivity and expenses, create reports, and generate invoices. On a basic level, they replace paper schedules and timesheets. Data collected includes employee names, dates, and times with pay rate, location, department, and project. The goal of time tracking systems is to allow companies to accurately distribute resources, calculate payroll estimates, and report how employee time is spent. Some of the products in this category are geared towards employers who need to manage employee time on projects/shifts, whereas others are geared towards freelancers and consultants who need to record time worked and expenses so that they can invoice their employers. Here are the […]

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Recruiting Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores. They are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, site traffic, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Recruiting Software assists hiring managers and recruiters by automating steps to identify and hire job candidates. It streamlines the processes of searching for, attracting, interviewing, and onboarding new personnel. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and Recruitment Management Systems (RMS) fall into this category. User feedback on recruiting software can help buyers evaluate flexibility, scalability, ease of integration with other talent management and HR systems, and what the candidate experience is like–important factors that determine whether a product will work well for their recruiting needs. Here are the winners: Overall Top Rated Oracle HCM Cloud   Oracle HCM Cloud is a talent management suite that provides human resource management features, payroll management, and HR reporting features, in addition to the typical recruiting and ATS features. Reviewers find the suite’s advanced analytics and reporting features useful, and appreciate the ability to customize the system to their processes. “…very […]

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Corporate Performance Management. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores. They are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, site traffic, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Corporate Performance Management Software is sometimes seen as an extension of Business Intelligence (BI). BI tools collect data from multiple internal systems and external sources for analysis, and usually answers questions about past performance such as what happened and why. Corporate Performance Management (CPM) is equally focused on data as an aide to decision-making, but is more forward-looking and is primarily about managing an organization’s performance. The focus of  CPM is on forecasting, budgeting, financial planning, what-if analysis, and dashboards to show progress towards individual and project performance KPIs. The CPM market is relatively mature, and most of the following tools have overlapping functionality. However, there are significant differences in emphasis. While many tools do both, some tools are more focused on the financial accounting cycle, while others are more focused on organizational performance and strategy. Here are the winners: Overall Top Rated Anaplan […]

The secret to talent management boils down to one simple concept: hire (and keep) the right people. Of course, if it was that easy, you wouldn’t be reading this guide! A practical and efficient talent management strategy aligns with company goals and positions your business to recruit talented people that blossom into engaged, active long-term employees, eventually forming the next generation of company leadership. However, superior talent management programs go well beyond business buzzwords. In fact, they can be the key ingredient that transforms an organization into an industry leader. Because successful talent management strategies integrate cohesively with company culture, mission and future goals, they are able to build the kind of workplace that everyone—including the best talent—wants to be a part of. Of course, a corporate culture like that doesn’t happen on its own. It’s the result of careful planning and collective action. Everyone—from human resources managers to the CEO right down to the newest hire—must be wholly invested in employee development as an integral factor in company advancement. Human resources not only needs backing from the executive team, but also a genuine connection with each employee. Naturally, this kind of authentic and cohesive work environment requires investment.  But […]

You know the old adage: time is money. And that’s why in a world that’s increasingly loaded with distractions everywhere (hello Facebook-Instagram-Twitter-Snapchat) it’s important to know where your time is going. This is doubly true of your employees, especially in a growing workforce of freelancers and remote workers (whom you may not even have met in person). Here are 5 popular free time tracking tools, listed from highest overall score to lowest, that you might want to look into if you’re looking to better track your or your team’s time. 1. TSheets TSheets offers time tracking and scheduling capabilities, replacing traditional time cards, and allowing companies to streamline payroll. TSheets tracks time and GPS points (even without cell or internet service) then automatically syncs when back in service. There’s also a feature called “Who’s Working” which lets a business see what employees are working on and where at any given time. The company offers a free plan for one user, as well as more robust paid options. TSheets also offers customizable reminders and alerts, integrations with accounting tools Quickbooks and Xero, and free unlimited phone, email, and chat support. One user says, “TSheets tracks and monitors our employees, and their respective […]

We talked to Replicon co-founder & co-CEO Raj Narayanaswamy about his perspective on time. Narayanaswamy explained how Replicon tracks time as an enterprise asset, which he sees as unique compared to other HCM vendors, who offer time as a module or add-on within a suite.  Replicon integrates with payroll, HRIS, ERP, and project management systems to unify company records and streamline the end-user (employee) experience of tracking time. Narayanaswamy also updated us on compliance-as-a-service, or how Replicon delivers location-specific legal expertise.  He sees this as increasingly important, since states like California are passing new compliance laws that change how time worked earns paid sick leave. Introduction to Replicon To start, give us some background about Replicon. What do you do, and what is your overall vision? At Replicon, we consider time to be an enterprise asset. “I don’t have enough time” is the most common complaint. A company with 1,000 employees has over two million hours a year at its disposal, and we provide companies with an understanding about where those hours are going. Replicon provides a time asset management platform on which companies can track time for their employees. We do that in three different ways: we help companies […]

Donna Ronayne, Vice President of Marketing at Halogen Software, explained Halogen’s focus on the talent management functionality most important to the mid-market, and why they’ve avoided enterprise bells and whistles and complex customizations.  Ronayne said Halogen strives to be the “un-ERP,” prioritizing easy configuration and usability. Ronayne also described the new style of conducting employee performance reviews, which will be increasingly important as the workforce becomes younger and the talent pool becomes more competitive. Rather than functioning as a system of assessment, the next generation of performance review is about employee engagement and development—a shift supported by the Halogen platform. According to user reviews on TrustRadius, Halogen is Top Rated talent management software for mid-sized companies in 2015. Introduction to Halogen Give us a brief introduction to Halogen. We are one of the leading talent management vendors. We focus on mid-market companies as opposed to the Fortune 100 companies, and our philosophy is to be the “un-ERP.” Because we work with the mid-market, which we define as 100 to 10,000 employees, we knew it was necessary for us to make a solution that was very easy to configure and easy to use. We have been around since 2001; we started with […]

TriNet is an HR software and service provider focused on the professional employment organization (PEO) model, meaning TriNet takes on the HR risk for employees at customer companies. We talked to Pravin Kumar, VP of Product Management, about the company’s tri-fold growth, in terms of revenue, geography, and verticals. Kumar also explained how policy changes like the Affordable Care Act make the HR landscape more complex, motivating TriNet’s technology + services approach. TriNet offers three packages—TriNet Ambrose, TriNet Passport, and TriNet SOI—to serve of private firms, office workers in white-collar industries, and “mainstream USA.” Introduction to TriNet Give us an introduction to TriNet. TriNet is an HR service provider, and we leverage state-of-the-art software along with deep domain expertise and services to our clients in easy-to-use formats. We are one of the largest providers in the space, and we’re growing at an incredible pace. We are more on the SMB side; we target companies from five to 500 employees, though we are flexible outside of that. We provide all services from payroll to benefits to risk management along with the traditional HR tools like time off and job change capabilities. Who are TriNet’s competitors? Our largest competitor is a mishmash of services […]

We talked to George Brady, VP of Sales and Business Development at Personnel Data Systems (PDS) Software, about his perspective on safe data transmission, the development benefits of having an active user community, and why PDS customers call their bundled solution “the best-kept secret in HR.” Brady explained that PDS Software caters to HR departments at mid-sized companies, and is unique in that it continues to focus on on-premise deployments—although they do also have a licensed-hosting plan and a SaaS offering, which requires a 3-year commitment. Brady also said that PDS handles complex use cases well, by offering features like tips processing, grandfathered benefits plans, and mid-period pay increases, and by allowing companies to personalize the system to their own individual use case. Vista HRMS, the Core HR solution from PDS, was Top Rated by users on TrustRadius in 2015. Introduction to PDS Give us a brief introduction about your company and your product. PDS has been around since 1974, and we are only focused on HR solutions: payroll, benefits, recruiting, and time and attendance. We’re a small, privately owned company in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. Our target market is the 500- to 10,000-employee range. This is in part because of our […]

We talked to Malcom Fox, VP of Product Marketing at Epicor, about the benefits of deep integration between HR and ERP technologies. Fox explained that with this approach, Epicor can help the mid-market improve knowledge retention and transfer across the company. Epicor uses a social collaboration network, embedded in their legacy ERP product, to build a knowledge library. Constructing such a repository for skills and processes enables a company to more efficiently train new employees. According to Fox, as younger generations (who are less likely to remain with the same company longterm) become the majority in the workforce, it is important to institutionalize company knowledge on an ongoing basis. This can also help HR get recognized as a core department, with technology and capabilities that impact the entire company and remain relevant even after the onboarding stage. Introduction to Epicor Give us some background on Epicor, including your entrance into the HR space. Our legacy is ERP. We focus on the global midmarket manufacturing, distribution and retail space. We have found that our customers have employees, of course, and more and more of them need a solution to manage that. In 2010, we acquired Spectrum, an HR solution marketed as “an HR solution […]

Matt Singer, VP of Marketing at Jobvite, discusses the company’s focus on best-of-breed recruiting software, including how they handle social and trends toward mobile and predictive analytics. Singer also talks about the “recruiting funnel,” methods for building the talent pipeline, and the increasing importance of recruitment marketing to build interest in a company’s brand. According to user ratings on TrustRadius, Jobvite was a Top Rated recruiting product for mid-sized companies in 2015. Introduction to Jobvite Give us a brief overview of Jobvite, who you are and what you offer. Jobvite is a top-to-bottom recruiting platform; recruiting is all we have ever done and all we ever plan to do. We view recruiting as a funnel with passive candidates at the top and onboarding at the bottom, with reporting and analytics to optimize every step of the recruiting lifecycle over time. We have products for each step of the funnel. Deep Focus on Recruiting Why has Jobvite chosen to be a recruitment-only platform instead of adding functionalities for different aspects of HR? It starts with our CEO, Dan Finnigan, who is a big believer in the idea that there are two parts to HR: the personnel department, which is focused on existing employees and […]

  During October’s HR Tech Conference, we spoke to David Hurwitz, CMO, about how the SmartRecruiters Talent Acquisition platform works to maximize efficiency in the recruiting process. SmartRecruiters is built around three core components: recruitment marketing, collaboration, and management.  With an emphasis on deep, bidirectional integrations to major HRIS systems, SmartRecruiters has helped clients triple their recruiting productivity along with building collaboration across a company’s recruiting infrastructure. Introduction to SmartRecruiters Talent Acquisition What is the SmartRecruiters vision around recruitment and hiring? Our vision is set by Jerome Ternynck, our founder and CEO, who is a longtime veteran of the recruiting industry. He founded a very successful recruitment agency in Europe in the ‘90s before becoming a software entrepreneur. Jerome came to realize that talent acquisition is about so much more than just applicant tracking. ATS is more about compliance and internal “check-the-box” than about finding, sourcing, marketing to, and recruiting the best candidates. Additionally, it did not stimulate the collaboration between hiring managers and recruiters. ATS systems needed to be supplanted by a new generation of technology that would support the holistic, full-lifecycle approach to talent acquisition. He founded SmartRecruiters in 2010 as a next-generation talent acquisition platform that includes ATS […]

During Dreamforce we spoke to Lumesse CMO Stephan Schmitt about how Lumesse is partnering with Salesforce to re-think the talent management user experience. Their new TalentObjects portfolio, available on the app cloud, anticipates the growing importance of talent to business strategy, and the need to develop better relationships with a skilled workforce. Schmitt explained that Lumesse is shifting the “workforce management” paradigm toward “workforce engagement,” with an emphasis on convenience and consumer-grad usability. The new platform is totally mobile, intuitively modulized, and designed to foster continuous engagement with talent communities. Give us some background on Lumesse—who are you as a company, and what is your grand vision? Lumesse is a talent management company. Our solution includes talent acquisition and talent management—performance, succession planning and development, learning, and onboarding. Our four-product suite covers the entire talent management space. We’ve been on the market for about 15 years, primarily in Europe. We have customers in the U.S. and in Asia Pacific, but about 80% of our customer base is made up of European companies. We believe that the talent management space will radically change in the next 5-10 years, and we want to lead the market in preparing customers for those changing business […]

Earlier today we announced the release of its TrustMaps™ for Talent Management software, which rank products based on user satisfaction ratings and evaluation frequency among SMBs and enterprises. Unveiled in the company’s first Buyer’s Guide to Talent Management Software, the TrustMaps™ help software buyers quickly locate the solutions most highly rated and widely adopted by companies of a similar size, and therefore most closely aligned to their needs. Each TrustMap™ depicts Talent Management suites on two dimensions – “likelihood to recommend” ratings by users and evaluation frequency on TrustRadius, as measured by unique page views. All ratings come from authenticated users of Talent Management suites who reviewed or rated the product on TrustRadius.com. The guide also includes common capabilities and key factors to consider when selecting Talent Management software. “Enterprise talent management suites encompass an ever-broader range of integrated capabilities forcing standalone vendors of individual components to focus on the mid-market or on more complex needs for niche markets.” said Vinay Bhagat, CEO of TrustRadius. “Our Talent Management TrustMaps™ provide HR professionals with a pragmatic approach to identify the best-fit solutions based on market segment, user satisfaction and evaluation frequency on TrustRadius.” Michael D. Haberman, Co-founder and Senior Consultant, Omega HR Solutions agrees: “With […]

A lot of HR tools are switching from being specialized to adding broader functionalities from other adjacent HR categories resulting in many talent management suites. Vendors are moving towards providing a one-stop shop, so customers don’t have to deal with the hassle of syncing data across multiple tools. However, picking best-of-breed vs. talent suites is much more than just comparing features and functionalities. We asked four experts: Tim Sackett, Jon Ingham, Ward Christman and Bryan Wempen about when HR should pick best of breed vs. talent suites and what the pros and cons of each system. Here is the take away from their responses: A lot of best-of-breed HR software often get acquired and assimilated into larger suites. If you are a nimble organization, which can adapt when HR software companies get acquired and want software with in-depth features, then go with the specialized HR tool. However, there is no guarantee that the software you purchase is not going to be merged with a mature product. Also, be aware that innovative products may require continuous training. However, if you prefer stability with everything located in one place then go for suites. Read their responses below for more insights: Tim Sackett Suite vs. […]

We recently conducted an in-depth analysis of 250+ reviews for 10 Core HR Software to understand how HR products were meeting customer expectations and what was important to buyers in the market. In our analysis, we found that Core HR software is seeing a shift in value from features to usability. More and more users are looking for a better user experience and usability and, as a result, many Core HR Software vendors are focusing on user experience improvements. So we asked three experts about their take on usability in HR: Tim Sackett A 20 year HR/Recruiting Talent Pro with a Master’s in HR and SPHR certification, currently residing in Lansing, MI.  Currently the President at HRU Technical Resources – a $40M IT and Engineering contract staffing firm and RPO. He tweets at @TimSackett I think all HR vendors face a core issue, not that there software isn’t valuable, effective, or return a great ROI, it’s how do we get people to actually use it the way it’s designed to be used. Which leads to your point of usability. If HR software isn’t user-friendly, it doesn’t get adopted and used properly, and ultimately the company doesn’t sign up to keep using it.  User […]

While conducting research for our latest Buyer’s Guide to Core HR Software, we observed a few key trends in the HR software space. Most notably, HR software is becoming more usable and more able to provide strategic insights. We asked three HR experts, Tim Sackett, Jon Ingham and Bryan Wempen about the changes they are seeing in HR software and how this is going to start affecting HR professionals and departments. Here are three major takeaways from their answers:  HR departments will need to hire more and more professionals who are strategic and forward-looking because software is reducing the burden of administrative tasks. HR architecture is going to have two significant parts: strategic and transactional. With changing software landscape, HR departments and managers will need to figure out which parts of HR will remain strategic and which of these will become transactional and process driven. In the long term, HR will become a function of finance or marketing. Read their full responses and their explanation: Tim Sackett A 20 year HR/Recruiting Talent Pro with a Master’s in HR and SPHR certification, currently residing in Lansing, MI.  Currently the President at HRU Technical Resources – a $40M IT and Engineering contract staffing firm and RPO. […]