Saba Cloud vs. SumTotal Talent Development

Our organization uses Saba Cloud primarily to manage all types of learning systems or staff training empirically. In addition, it provides us with a quick test-based follow-up to the trainees. We use Saba Cloud to train our clientele in a professional manner with respect to our worldwide online service. With this tool we are able to enhance the customer experience with the organization. Similarly, our organization uses Saba Cloud to monitor the performance and effectiveness of our employees and customers after having access to all the information provided by the application to subsequently make learning and development reports.

Incentivized

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

• Saba Analytics for learning are comprehensive and customizable allowing us to view any variety of data we need internally or need to provide to our customers.
• Support has been amazing throughout our time with Saba. We have always been able to work quickly with someone to develop a new process or obtain guidance on a new feature.
• Saba Cloud delivers training in a clear and modern format, allowing customers to easily access and consume training.
• Saba Cloud also provides regular system updated which reflect the needs of their customer base.

• 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

• In the certification process, it only lets us do look back days it would be very beneficial to have a look backdate. Our services have a training year from July 1, thru June 30 and we assign training to services that are required by federal and state laws to be completed annually. During the pandemic we found a lot of staff taking jobs in other areas and still in their original position and then back again. If we assigned someone HIPAA training and they took this on July 4 and then in October went to a different service line the training plan would ask them to retake HIPAA. It would not pick up the one on July 3. That is the only real issue but it is a large one.

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

The only reason I wouldn't rate this a 10 is because we always want to evaluate the technology we use to drive our business. While Saba would be the "leader in the clubhouse", we would still perform our due diligence when it's time to renew.

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

As someone who creates classes and is also a learning administrator in the system, I have run into some issues with the system's capabilities for my needs. I am not a fan of having to use Adobe Captivate to download a PowerPoint presentation into the system, as my training sessions are much more than a glorified PowerPoint. Our organization has yet to turn on Saba Meetings, which may help with these limitations.

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

For the times that we have used the support provided by Saba, it has been a very pleasurable experience for our department. Part of our package with Saba includes a specified number of hours of "training" time with Saba. During these meetings, we have shared our desires of the product and the support personnel have either shown us how to accomplish our task or they have taken our requests to their developers to look at future enhancements. Overall, very pleased with the support.

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

Was not involved with integration.

Incentivized

We had extensive reviews with a plan of what we needed and must have out of the system, including custom learning paths and tracking inside our HRIS system to grant permissions and positions based on completed learning certifications and courses. We weighed each option and chose based on the one that met the most of the must-haves.

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

• We have heard from many people that the visibility of goals and skills expectations has impacted their engagement levels, which aids us in our retention goals.
• With the easier reporting provided by Saba, we are able to generate compliance training reports in real time, which keeps our regulators very happy.

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