Epicor HCM (discontinued) vs. Sage People

I could not recommend this system to anyone. If you do decide to go with this system, depending on organization size, you'll need at least one dedicated IT person with SQL/Report-builder experience to manage the system and reporting, as well as another full-time HR member to manage other administrative set-up and deal with the many, many, user support issues that will crop up. I'm shocked at the number of positive reviews for this product. A couple of them reiterate the same thing such as each of use (which is completely untrue) and many fields/tables for data storage, which leads me to believe that they're from Epicor or Epicor consultants

Sage is great for global, mid-size companies. It's also ideal if you have a good handle on your company's practices and policies, so that configuration of PTO and processes are seamless. It might be a challenge for larger companies, and for companies that are US based only.

Incentivized

• Timesheets show everything that time has been charged to in a quick glance. There is a lot of information displayed onscreen and is very easy to decipher.
• Employees charge their time on a well-designed front end program, and data is gleaned from that and dispersed into the various timekeeping and expense tracking modules.
• The abilities to charge time to direct, indirect and downtime are all valuable- see where time is being spent and use it as a coaching tool.

Incentivized

• It is completely web-based so both employees and HR administrators can access the software from anywhere with no need to install special software.
• Sage People is based on the Salesforce.com platform so it has a robust API which is well documented and easy to integrate with other systems.
• Sage People can integrate with almost any payroll system using their "Payflow" interface
• Customer support is responsive and helpful.

Incentivized

• Compliance is one area that needs further attention. For example in candidate self-service, the admin and managers can see the candidate's demographic information as part of their application, which shouldn't happen. If an internal candidate applies for a job, the hiring manager automatically gets access to that employee's record just like their regular manager.
• On the timesheets module, there are issues with CA specific OT calculation rules on a bi-weekly payroll, where it does not calculate OT for time worked in excess of 5 consecutive days. Also, the application has random (but rare) occurrences where it resets the time zone to the server time zone for users that clock-in/ out.
• Customizations that require professional services contracts can be somewhat difficult in terms of getting resources assigned. When upgrading the system to a new version, the admin has to conduct its own testing, including all and any customizations made to the system and then work with Epicor on resolving any issues.
• Customer Support structure could be better. Currently there is no official filtering of issues and expected response time for different kinds of issues, except for system access. When offering payroll and time keeping, the customer support should reflect reduced time for resolution of issues in these time sensitive areas.
• User training. Epicor HCM offers no free training, aside from webinars on new version releases. While they do offer training sessions, users have to pay for it. From a customer perspective this is difficult to accept. You pay to purchase the system/ module, but if you want to learn how to use it, you have to pay again.

• Sage Support is sometimes tricky, as the system is so configurable that each client's setup is unique.
• Sage is so configurable that at times it is a challenge to make use of all the functionality.
• Sage US Benefits functionality is progressing now that the company is building out the US based resources - CSM, Support, and Systems.

Incentivized

I just recently lost my job after 16 years, and purposely sought out a position where I could continue to work with HCM. I am now in a similar role to what I was in before, and can continue the same type of work and enhancements that I did at my other company.

Where it's good: Epicor HCM at a high level has a straight-forward interface for navigating to the main content sections at either the employee or HR administrator level. The interfaces are consistent throughout the application, and after a brief learning curve, one can navigate through the remainder of the interface pages in any content area without too much difficulty. HCM also has great tools for making sure the analysis of data is available and accessible to non-programmer personnel. Where it struggles: One thing working against the usability of the HCM product is the overuse of the row-selection scheme for all many to many relationships. HCM uses a "select the row from the left frame" and then "enter data corresponding to this row in the right frame" scheme for most of its data entry components. One example of overuse is the employee address entry. During the first setup of an employee or during a candidate's application, HCM allows the user to specify multiple addresses. While this functionality is desired for long-term storage, an option doesn't exist to forgo this interface type for quick initial entry for the primary use case (one address per employee). This is one example, but is particularly visible when a candidate must also bridge the learning curve.

Incentivized

The product was always available.

The product performs well. As with any software there are bugs and system enhancements needed, but there are channels in place to let Epicor know what they are so they can add to future versions. Open Enrollment and Salary Planning can be a bit slow at times.

The customer support is terrible. When we open cases, it takes weeks to get the development team to have the first look at the case. If development is required, their team commits on a delivery date and up to now—those dates were never respected. They don't do any follow up. Customer service is very bad. When we request an update on the development progress, nobody answers!

Incentivized

We had someone from Epicor come on site to do training, and we "shared" our trainer with another company who was also doing the same major upgrade. It was nice to have another company there so we could ask each other (and the trainer) questions. This allowed for more meaningful discussions during training.

As stated earlier, you won't find all of the problems and things that you would like to improve on until you implement. After go-live, you then will have a long period of adjustment as you get the data and processes to work the way that you really want them to.

Incentivized

After a failed implementation with Open4, we needed a solution that was more usable with our end-users. The outdated system provided by one of ADP's products needed to be replaced. We chose Epicor HCM because we were enticed by the functionality it provided and ease of use, as well as its ability to be integrated with Epicor ERP, a product which we had owned and used for several years.

Incentivized

We moved to Sage People from a 20+-year-old internally developed HR software. We also evaluated other HR software such as Kronos, SAP, and BambooHR. Ultimately, we chose Sage because of the extensive support they provided to us and the ability to customize to fit our organization's needs. We loved the fact that they were completely cloud-based and built on a reputable platform (Salesforce).

Incentivized

Performance is not noticeably impacted by adding more users. Microsoft IIS and SQL are Epicor HCM's underlying technology and have proven reliability. In addition, IS staff are easy to find that know these technologies.

• Report deadlines must always be extended as my organization's HR team must manually comb through the data for inaccuracies.
• Reports generated lack integrity. For example, I sent a report to a large donor and the report eliminated nearly 100 employees unbeknownst to my department.
• My organization is still waiting to see the ROI on Epicor. It hasn't been able to meet our basic needs.

Incentivized

• As a manager, it has streamlined my job for scheduling interviews and helping new employees feel welcome.

Incentivized