The 4 Best Talent Management Products for Mid-size Businesses

John Ferguson
November 25, 2019
HR

The 4 Best Talent Management Products for Mid-size Businesses

It’s often difficult to identify the right talent management solutions, especially for the Mid-Sized market. There is often increased complexity due to biased articles and paid-for advertising. To give a fair comparison of talent management offerings for midsize businesses, we’re providing users’ experiences into some of the premier programs. These insights directly address the features, benefits and how they can improve your workflow and process. By shedding light on some of the pitfalls, you can evaluate what the right tool is without the plug.

Talent management solutions on this list, and in the category, include most or all of the core talent management functions, such as recruiting, onboarding, performance management, employee engagement, compensation management, succession planning, and learning management. We’ve sifted through users’ reviews on TrustRadius to give you a laser-sharp focus on their experiences with talent management products. These insights entail products’ boundaries, top pros and cons, and what makes each product stand out. To be included, the largest portion of these products’ reviewers must come from midsize businesses and the products should have at least 10 midsized reviewers on TrustRadius so we can provide more representative user insights. They are listed in alphabetical order in this post.

ADP Workforce Now

ADP Workforce Now stands out in the talent management space as an HCM with strong performance management, goal-setting, and reporting scores for talent management. Among over 240 midsized reviewers, many point to the performance management and reporting as top reasons to work with Workforce Now. Its core HR capabilities are also commonly praised, so you don’t necessarily have to sacrifice your other HR functions to expand talent management.  

Users cite some drawbacks to the platform. One capability a user criticized was the onboarding process for new hires. Manager tracking tools appear to struggle relative to the strength of the rest of the offering. However, if you’re not as worried about onboarding or already have satisfactory processes in place, the robustness of the core performance management and HR functionalities can provide a strong foundation for midsize businesses looking to invest more in cultivating their talent pool.

Ceridian Dayforce

Ceridian Dayforce’s user base is centered around the transition from midsize businesses to large business and enterprises. It is an HCM offering with over 448 midsized ratings and reviews, including consistent ratings of its talent management capabilities. Like most HCM products available, it’s core HR capabilities are highly rated, but it is also recognized for its onboarding features

User feedback for improvement includes a need for better reporting functionality. Implementation is also a fairly intensive process. However, while other products may rate more highly in individual areas, Ceridian’s reviews are amazingly consistent, and have the potential to deliver you an equally consistent experience if you can devote the resources to learning the software. 

Saba TalentSpace

Saba TalentSpace is the standalone talent management offering with a primarily mid-sized user base, which constitutes 65% of its ratings and reviews. Users that review Saba commonly point to its performance management capabilities as a strong benefit for the software, particularly its support for performance review processes and a near perfect score for performance plans. 

While Saba is a talent management powerhouse, no product is without its limitations. Recent users have complained of lower quality customer support than they’ve experienced in the past, which could be attributed to the transition period of Saba acquiring the product, formerly known as Halogen, and rebranding the offering into its portfolio. TalentSpace’s reporting capabilities could also benefit from improvements, according to some users. However, many of the lowest ratings given to TalentSpace come from enterprises, suggesting that users’ issues may come as much from scaling issues that may not occur for midsize businesses. 

Honorable Mention: UltiPro (The Scaling Option)

UltiPro ranks as one of the top rated HCM products listed on TrustRadius. Unlike other products on this list, UltiPro reviewers come primarily from enterprises (403 ratings and reviews). However, it has nearly as many midsize reviewers as well (364), earning it an honorable mention. This flexibility across sizes means users can scale up their HR and talent management capabilities as their company grows.

Given its focus on servicing the full range of HR functions, it makes sense that UltiPro would get good marks for the capabilities that overlap talent with HR management. For instance, onboarding capabilities are standard in HR management and talent management products and receives the highest-rated talent management function from to users

Some of the core talent management features receive slightly poorer marks from users. For instance, some of the performance and compensation planning functions feel limited or restricted to some users. 

Where to Go from Here

This list should help give you a starting point to know what the leading products are offering and how to differentiate between them. If you’re looking for more in-depth reviews or use cases that look more like yours, check out our full list of talent management offerings. If you’re still not clear on what talent management is, or what it can do for you, take a look at our breakdown of talent management software!

About the Author

John Ferguson
John is a Research Associate at TrustRadius, focusing on content development and buyer-guided research. His goal is to support and enable better software buying decisions, with an eye towards helping people from all backgrounds navigate the world of business software. He has a BA in Politics from Centre College.

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