Optimum Solutions, Inc. was a software development company providing Payroll, Human Resources, and Time & Attendance software for both the IBM iSeries (AS/400) and Microsoft Windows platforms or in the cloud. In October 2019 they were acquired by Kronos, Inc (now UKG after merging with Ultimate Software). Former Optimum products are now supported by Kronos / UKG, and are no longer sold available for sale.
Kronos Workforce Dimensions, later UKG Dimensions was a solution used to automate critical workforce processes such as timekeeping, scheduling, and leave management. The product has been discontinued, and is no longer available for purchase.
I would ask myself what data am I looking to house in this system before implementing. It is a very robust system so using Optimum to say only track employee personal information such as address and phone number would be a complete under utilization. I feel Optimum is best used for keeping records on employees, training records, OSHA and workers comp
UKG Dimensions provides an extensive feature offering for advanced scheduling in non-procedural clinical settings and administrative operations. Although EZ-Call can be used for procedural areas the lack of out the box integration with [UKG] Dimensions creates an undesirable experience for departments needing both products. UKG [Dimensions] can increase customer adoption by offering a more integrated experience for clinical settings requiring both products.
The setup of Optimum HRIS was intense as the software comes as a basic shell and everything is personalized to our organization. All earnings codes, leave time, employee types, job codes, taxes, etc. are set up for each company. While this was almost overwhelming at the beginning, we have so much control over the set up and better grasp of the inner workings of the system.
Tax updates come quickly and are easily applied. This is especially welcome at year end.
The built-in reporting is robust and offers a lot of options, but the ability to dig in to the database using SQL and Excel allows for very powerful reports that are infinitely personalized.
When exporting reports to Excel I found the formatting to be difficult to work with and having to reformat the reports can be a nightmare. My company's IT department created its own business tools to make the reporting format more user friendly.
UKG Dimensions is very user-friendly from an employee and supervisor standpoint. It is very robust on an admin level and can get complicated; however, you can do so many things with it that is outweighs the complexity. The security for UKG Dimensions needs to be revamped however. It is very cumbersome and not user-friendly.
Kronos Workforce Dimensions a new product, and it has a lot of scope for improvement, with future releases. One of the best tools to perform time tracking.
Their support team is very knowledgeable, and their SLA's are pretty tight. Any query raised would be addressed in a few hours.
Timeclock configuration can be complicated; however, their support team knows the processes and guidelines.
We evaluated some payroll services but found the ongoing cost greater than the initial cost of purchasing our own software and keeping the payroll process in house. Other payroll software was generally more expensive and we are satisfied with Optimum Solutions. I would say the main reason we stayed with Optimum Solutions, converting from their iSeries version to their Windows version, was because of their outstanding staff and support.
WorkForce Software has a solid foundation for enterprise scaled employee counts of 100,000 employees and supports multiple assignment configurations, i.e. one employee can have multiple timesheets that multiple managers can own. UKG has one employee to one timecard. It makes it hard for companies that have employees that can have multiple jobs within the organization that can have separate timecards that report to multiple managers. UKG works well for medium size employee counts, once over 10K employees, you start to see the system have performance issues. WorkForce was able to handle 80K employees and process an employee demographic file in 2 hours, while UKG with 26K employees takes 6 hours. WorkForce lacks end-user configuration documentation, while UKG has great documentation and training materials. UKG's user community is top-notch, while WorkForce's has before 3 years, there has been no improvement. UKG has a better support model for end-user support. Workforce provides database access and the ability to write javascript for integrations. UKG has no access to the database and uses APIs that are not [flexible] to retrieve data. End-user configuration for UKG does not require a programmer or IT professional, while WorkForce has a powerful rules engine policy editor that makes it highly [flexible].
Optimum Solutions lets us run all our payrolls seamlessly.
If we have any questions or problems Optimum Solutions is just a phone call or email away. The Customer Service is the best.
With the purchase of the Employee Self Service module that will be implemented in January of 2019 we will be able to eliminate the printing, folding, and distribution of check stubs as they will be available through self service. Also W2 information will be available there as well so no re-issuing of lost W2s saving us time and money.
